Samizdata

Beauty of Grey criticizes a couple of our recent offerings:

This sort of shrill extremism is a big reason why most people view libertarians as a third party wacko fringe group, just on this side of the Larouchies on the respectability scale. The sneering condescension Perry displays probably won’t help their poll numbers any, either.

Firstly it was Brian Micklethwait, not me, who wrote the first piece ‘Beauty of Grey’ mentions. Also the fact is that the majority of libertarians in the USA who deign to vote actually vote Republican, not Libertarian. Ever heard of Ron Paul? That should be obvious and as a ‘small l’ libertarian that is of no concern to me.

I would have thought the jocular tone would have made it apparent that Brian was not seriously supporting the idea of people being mugged. He is just saying that if people advocate and legitimise political actions that result in a more violent society, he is not going to be too concerned if they reap the harvest they have sown and I certainly agree. That ‘Beauty of Grey’ should decry our lack of moral relativism and therefore our sentiment that people are responsible for the consequences of their actions in the ballot booth, is certainly rather revealing. But that is not the same as Brian actually advocating mugging. Victim disarmament supporters “deserve” being mugged because they are responsible for people being helpless when confronted by an emboldened mugger, not because Brian is going to organize bands of libertarian muggers to roam the streets looking for ‘liberals’. To read his remarks any other way strikes me as bizarre.

Secondly, ‘Beauty of Grey’ clearly has no idea what modern self-described socialist parties who are in power in various western European countries actually advocate and do. He can delude himself that the pervasive incrementalist approach to regulating economic activity that pretty much defines the Democratic Party (and elements of the Republican Party) in the USA is materially different to that of the French or British or German or Swedish government’s ‘democratic socialist’ model but it is not. The only difference is that there is more effective political opposition to it in the USA.

Modern ‘democratic socialism’ is a strange hybrid between paleo-socialist aims of outright national ownership of the means of production and the national socialist approach of allowing nominal ownership of the means of production but regulating the ways in which they can be used to require the support of National Objectives: control by overt ownership vs. control by regulation… but the end result is still control by the state, it is only how you get there that varies. How does this differ from the ‘liberalism’ of the Gore/Kennedy/Schumer way? These are people who constantly advocate ‘National’ solutions driven by regulations rather than free markets. The only difference is the language they use to describe what they want.

That Gore’s plank does not explicitly lay out the pervasive role of the state, and that ‘Beauty of Grey’ therefore thinks that there is a huge difference between the ‘liberal’ and the modern democratic socialist, says more about ‘Beauty of Grey’s’ credulity than the political process he describes. Vast areas of economic (and private) life are subject to regulation and thus the owners of the means of production find their control ever more circumscribed by the state as it tells you who you may or may not trade with, who you may hire or fire, how you educate and interact with your children, how (and if) you protect yourself from harm, the manner in which you may marry, how you must clear the snow from property you do not even own in front of your house, how you install plumbing and electrical wiring in your own home etc. etc. Yet we are to believe that the sanctity of private property is alive and well and living in ‘liberal’ constituencies in the USA.

Or maybe I just missed the plank in Gore’s platform that called for a state seizure of the means of production and an abolition of private property? They do try to sneak things by you in the fine print, those scoundrels.

I could not have put it better myself. Beauty of Grey’s remarks demonstrate exactly how effective the incrementalist approach is. Al Gore wants exactly what Gerhard Schroder, Tony Blair and Lional Jospin want. And what do Gerhard Schroder, Tony Blair and Lional Jospin all call themselves? Socialists.

If Beauty of Grey is going to talk about ‘the fine print’ it would behoove him to read it first. Perhaps he should start by getting the author right on things he criticizes.