Big Government Revisited

A while ago I announced on this blog that I Hate "Big Government." Specifically, in that post I argued against the usage of the phrase "big government" to refer to a government specifically defined as having a large budget, compared to its country's economy, e.g. when Medicare, a large federal spending program financed by ordinary taxes, is attacked as being a form of "big government." To me, the phrase is meant to conjure up visions of George Orwell's 1984 and a big surveillance state that has infringed the liberties of its subjects, but general taxes, I argued, don't really infringe on people's liberty very much (setting aside the question of whether they're economically desirable) and once the government has its hands on the money, well, it can spend it however it wants without violating anyone's liberties. And I still think that's basically correct, but I recently gained a deeper appreciation of what the "big government (a.k.a. big budget)" complaint is. The thing is, it's not about the tax side of the equation, it's about the spending side.

John Stuart Mill Demolishes Libertarianism

John Stuart Mill, whose work I praised in my last post, is most famous for his book On Liberty, a spirited defense of the proposition that people not be coerced, either by legislation or by social pressure, in matters concerning only or primarily themselves. You might think that, if anyone would be included within the bounds of a word such as "libertarian," it would be the dude who wrote a book called On Liberty. Nope. Not by the modern sense of that word, anyway. This paragraph is so good it needs to be reproduced in block form:

Again, trade is a social act. Whoever undertakes to sell any description of goods to the public does what affects the interest of other persons, and of society in general; and thus his conduct, in principle, comes within the jurisdiction of society; accordingly, it was once held to be the duty of governments, in all cases which were considered of importance, to fix prices and regulate the processes of manufacture. But it is now recognized, though not till after a long struggle, that both the cheapness and the good quality of commodities are most effectually provided for by leaving the producers and sellers perfectly free, under the sole check of equal freedom to the buyers for supplying themselves elsewhere. This is the so-called doctrine of "free trade," which rests on different grounds from, though equally solid with, the principle of individual liberty asserted in this essay. Restrictions on trade, or on production for purposes of trade, are indeed restraints; and all restraint, qua restraint, is an evil; but the restraints in question affect only that part of conduct which society is competent to restrain, and are wrong solely because they do not really produce the results which it is desired to produce by them. As the principle of individual liberty is not involved in the doctrine of free trade [my emphasis], so neither is it in most of the questions which arise respecting the limits of that doctrine... Such questions involve considerations of liberty only in so far as leaving people to themselves is always better, caeteris paribus, than controlling them; but that they may be legitimately controlled for these ends is in practice undeniable."

As the principle of liberty is not involved in the doctrine of free trade. Yeah. Chew that one over, modern American libertarians. This is why one can be a liberal, which I think in its modern sense is first and foremost about devotion to pretty much Mill's exact ideas about individual liberty, without being a libertarian: those ideas simply don't tell us anything about the proper scope of economic regulation. Economic activity by one person, basically by definition, affects more than just that one person, and is therefore amenable to regulation where appropriate. It is an empirical question when such regulation will be appropriate, not one that can be settled by reference to grand philosophical first principles.

Earlier in the book, by the way, Mill also says that each individual is responsible to society for doing their share of the work of maintaining/defending society, a share which must be determined by some principle of equity. In modern society we choose the "progressive income tax" as the primary principle of equity, and it seems to me to be entirely within the scope of Mill's ideas of liberty. There really isn't much in this work that's inconsistent with anything in the modern American-liberal platform, and it's the definitive statement of the modern ideal of individual liberty.

"Economic Libertarian" Doesn't Make Any Sense

The way I've always understood the word "libertarian" is that it describes a philosophy espousing extremely low levels of interference by the government in the conduct of people's affairs. It opposes such interference in the economic sphere, and it opposes such interference in the personal sphere. Libertarianism, I've always thought, means a concurrent commitment to economic liberty, personal liberty, and civil liberty. The result is a political ideology which is, put in slightly crude terms, "right-wing" on economic issues and "left-wing" on social issues. That's what it's supposed to mean, anyway, if you take the word itself seriously. Of course, in modern American parlance that's not quite how people interpret this word.

Take, for instance, this post by Jonathan Chait about the Koch brothers' dispute with the Cato Institute. Here's the relevant excerpt, regarding the promotion of John Allison to the leader of Cato:

Allison's ascension is in keeping with the general trend of the Washington libertarian movement to define itself mainly in economic terms. ... It's not just economic libertarianism in general that moves the likes of Allison, but a specific belief that economic freedom is defined primarily as opposition to egalitarianism. (As opposed to focusing on something like the regulatory power of state and local business cartels.) Allison has called egalitarianism "the most destructive principle in our society." The general thrust of Rand-influenced libertarianism, which you see in the philosophy of Rand-influenced Republicans like Grover Norquist and Paul Ryan, is that the central evil in public life is the poor using the political system to gang up on the rich and redistribute their resources.

Now, I think this is a perfectly accurate description of what's going on here, and I'd bet that Chait is using the word "libertarian" to describe Allison, Norquist, etc. in a way that's at least slightly ironic or cynical. But still, the philosophy he's describing is what people mean nowadays when they use this word. A libertarian, by default, is someone primarily concerned with economic liberty, and in particular "freedom" from egalitarianism. That is not, on my understanding of what the words are actually supposed to mean, a libertarian. Calling it economic libertarianism, after all, means you're neglecting the social/cultural/civil libertarian component. Not necessarily repudiating it, mind you, but not putting any effort toward promoting it. But if you drop libertarianism's social-issues component, it becomes just a brand of economic conservativism. And if by "economic liberty" you don't mean, particularly, the kind of regulatory stuff Matt Yglesias likes to talk about, and Steven Calabresi likes to talk about, but rather just broad-brush opposition to redistribution of wealth (which is not, in my opinion, very much of a liberty issue at all), then it's not even a distinctive brand of economic conservativism. Anti-egalitarianism has been the driving force of economic conservativism for a good long while now. A think tank whose purpose is to promote anti-egalitarianism is not in any meaningful sense a libertarian think-tank, even if some of the people there might also tell you they have no serious problem with gay marriage. Can we please stop describing them as such?

The Tea Party Are Not Civil Libertarians, Okay?

Toward the end of a blog post about an apparently-dead-or-at-least-comatose NSA proposal to, I dunno, surveil the Internet more than the government already does, Kevin Drum tosses this line into an attempt to analyze the partisan breakdown of the issue:

Obviously the GOP base is inclined to think that anything Obama opposes must be good, and they certainly supported the increased surveillance powers that George Bush gave to NSA. On the other hand, tea partiers tend to be suspicious of this kind of Big Brotherish monitoring.

But the problem is, there's just no truth to this! At no point has the Tea Party in any noticeable way made any sign that it opposes the security state! They love the security state, as well they should, as they're just the very most conservative of conservative Republicans. Because if you're against surveillance, you must be for the people we want to surveil, which means you support the Islamofascists in their efforts to take over America and impose Sharia law here. Of all the many, many things to mind about the mainstream media over the past few years, perhaps the one I mind the most is the way absolutely no one challenges the assertion that the Tea Party is about libertarianism. It just is not. True, the movement is in some ways inspired by Ron Paul's quasi-libertarian campaign from 2008, but they've taken all of the least libertarian parts of his platform and ditched the parts that make one kind of almost admit that he's an actual civil libertarian. It's just one great big lie that the Tea Party opposes "Big Brother" government surveillance programs. It's just a lie.

Ron Paul is not Progressive, not even about wars or drugs

Ron Paul is a nasty, old, bigoted, angry white man. This much, I think, the majority of left-wingers will readily grant, at this point in history anyway. Between the newsletters and the opposition to anything the federal government ever wants to do that's, you know, good, and the failing to be pro-choice and the monetary crankery and the opposition to anything resembling civil rights laws, it's a pretty clear picture. But some of them, even while admitting that in general he's not a very nice guy, will nonetheless insist on spending a fairly large amount of time and effort talking up his supposedly progressive views on foreign and drug policy. The basic argument is that we should like Ron Paul's foreign and drug policies because he is opposed to the Wars in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and on Drugs. He deserves some amount of credit, these people say, for having the right position on some issues, even if he's very very wrong on most issues.

And I suppose he does, in a way. After all, his fellow-competitors in the Republican primary are as wrong as he is on most issues, give or take, and much more wrong on these two. But I think it's worth emphasizing that Ron Paul does not have a progressive foreign policy. Nor is his anti-War on Drugs stance the result of some latent liberaltarianist streak. In both cases what we see is the result of his universal opposition to anything the federal government ever does. I've always thought he's not so much a libertarian as he is an antifederalist. As best I can tell, his own personal preferences for proper public policy would criminalize abortion (and embryonic stem cell research on embryos that would be discarded anyway), have government schools teaching children religious doctrines, and would subsidize private religious schools. He may or may not be in favor of criminalizing most common currently-illegal drugs and establishing a system of ID cards. His big point is that he doesn't want the federal government doing any of these things. He's basically an anti-federalist, plus some lack-of-understanding on economics and some bigotry.