WEBVTT NOTE Robert Nisbet and the Conservative Intellectual Tradition 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.160 I noticed that a couple of you had a copy of my comments. 2 00:00:05.160 --> 00:00:11.440 I had sent those to Mark, just to give him some sense for what I was going to say, although 3 00:00:11.440 --> 00:00:15.840 I did notice there were several typos in it, and I've altered it at least somewhat for 4 00:00:15.840 --> 00:00:21.880 those of you who've actually taken the trouble to look at them. 5 00:00:21.880 --> 00:00:28.200 As you may have noted if you looked at that, I actually commenced my comments there by 6 00:00:28.200 --> 00:00:34.640 By giving some advice to graduate students, by sharing some advice that I got as a graduate 7 00:00:34.640 --> 00:00:42.240 student, the best advice I got in graduate school was from an older graduate student 8 00:00:42.240 --> 00:00:49.300 who told me to choose a dissertation topic about which my dissertation committee cared 9 00:00:49.300 --> 00:00:53.760 absolutely nothing and knew even less. 10 00:00:53.760 --> 00:00:59.560 I didn't write a dissertation that I did much with, but I sailed through. I had a couple 11 00:00:59.560 --> 00:01:04.480 of copy editing changes that I had to make and that was about it. But if the principle 12 00:01:04.480 --> 00:01:11.980 I followed then, to good effect, is at all generalizable beyond that context, I may well 13 00:01:11.980 --> 00:01:19.980 be acting very foolishly today because I will be talking about libertarianism and I'm at 14 00:01:19.980 --> 00:01:47.980 My extensive purpose today is to consider the thinking of the conservative thinker and social theorist Robert Nisbet, who I will argue is aptly described as a libertarian-communitarian. 15 00:01:47.980 --> 00:01:55.860 In addition to asserting that the phrase libertarian-communitarian is not oxymoronic, my ultimate purpose is to persuade 16 00:01:55.860 --> 00:02:02.860 you that the only viable form of libertarianism is libertarian-communitarianism. 17 00:02:02.860 --> 00:02:11.100 I will proceed by first giving a brief summary of Nisbet's thought, subsequently I will 18 00:02:11.100 --> 00:02:17.540 describe his criticisms of several groups of people on the right including certain libertarians, 19 00:02:17.540 --> 00:02:24.040 And I will conclude by identifying what I believe is a major failing in Nisbet's thought. 20 00:02:24.040 --> 00:02:28.620 Many of you are too young to know the work of Nisbet real well, let me just tell you 21 00:02:28.620 --> 00:02:30.420 a little bit about him. 22 00:02:30.420 --> 00:02:35.200 He died in 1996 at the age of 82. 23 00:02:35.200 --> 00:02:42.240 He was a post-stylist of the very first rank, really a wonderful author, arguably the first 24 00:02:42.240 --> 00:02:48.040 American Communitarian, and a figure in the Renaissance in conservative thought that occurred 25 00:02:48.040 --> 00:02:50.720 after 1950. 26 00:02:50.720 --> 00:02:56.160 He published his first and most influential book, The Quest for Community, in 1953, at 27 00:02:56.160 --> 00:03:00.540 the end of a three-year period that produced what he later called the freshette of books 28 00:03:00.540 --> 00:03:06.200 of an unmistakable conservative character, Russell Kirk's The Conservative Mind, Eric 29 00:03:06.200 --> 00:03:11.960 Vogeland's The New Science of Politics, Leo Strauss' Natural Right in History, William 30 00:03:11.960 --> 00:03:18.400 F. Buckley's God and Man at Yale, and Daniel Buirsten's The Genius of American Politics. 31 00:03:18.400 --> 00:03:24.920 As Russell Kirk observed, 1953 was the year the liberals began to listen, and Nisbet's 32 00:03:24.920 --> 00:03:29.720 quest for community received wide and warm attention from reviewers across the political 33 00:03:29.720 --> 00:03:35.240 spectrum. According to Nisbet, however, he had not particularly written the quest for 34 00:03:35.240 --> 00:03:38.040 for a Community as a Conservative Book. 35 00:03:38.040 --> 00:03:43.840 This is the case because until he read Russell Kirk's The Conservative Mind in 1953, Nisbet 36 00:03:43.840 --> 00:03:48.440 thought of conservatism as a European way of thinking associated with reaction to the 37 00:03:48.440 --> 00:03:50.320 French Revolution. 38 00:03:50.320 --> 00:03:53.200 Nisbet had studied this thought in great detail. 39 00:03:53.200 --> 00:03:58.560 His dissertation was on the thinking of the so-called reactionary enlightenment, chiefly 40 00:03:58.560 --> 00:04:04.840 the thinking of Bernard de Maistre and Chateaubriand, but whatever sympathies he may have had towards 41 00:04:04.840 --> 00:04:17.840 He agreed with those such as Lionel Trilling and Lewis Hartz in the 1950s, who argued that liberalism was the only authentic and political intellectual tradition in America. 42 00:04:17.840 --> 00:04:26.840 Certainly, he did not believe that a defense of business and opposition to the New Deal by themselves qualified one as a conservative. 43 00:04:26.840 --> 00:04:33.480 In fact, we do well to remember that Herbert Hoover ran as a true liberal and that it was 44 00:04:33.480 --> 00:04:39.440 not until the early 1970s that the Republican Party could claim to be the more conservative 45 00:04:39.440 --> 00:04:41.020 party. 46 00:04:41.020 --> 00:04:47.040 After all, it was the pro-business Republican Party that introduced the ERA into every Congress 47 00:04:47.040 --> 00:04:53.400 after 1923, and it was the Republican Party that most supported civil rights legislation 48 00:04:53.400 --> 00:04:57.800 and Opposed by State's Rights Democrats. 49 00:04:57.800 --> 00:05:00.820 According to Nisbet, his view of conservatism 50 00:05:00.820 --> 00:05:05.240 changed after he read Kirk's The Conservative Mind, 51 00:05:05.240 --> 00:05:07.840 because Kirk gave scholarly and timely pedigree 52 00:05:07.840 --> 00:05:11.980 to conservatism in America and the United States, 53 00:05:11.980 --> 00:05:15.800 demonstrating the key role of Burke in both countries. 54 00:05:15.800 --> 00:05:19.320 So convinced by Kirk was Nisbet that he 55 00:05:19.320 --> 00:05:22.480 began to describe American soil as being particularly 56 00:05:22.480 --> 00:05:32.480 In 1982, he claimed that there were two significant eruptions of conservative ideology in modern Western thought. 57 00:05:32.480 --> 00:05:39.480 First in 1790 through 1810 in Western Europe chiefly, but to some degree in the United States. 58 00:05:39.480 --> 00:05:44.480 And then in 1950 to 1970, largely in America. 59 00:05:44.480 --> 00:05:52.480 Having mentioned Nisbet's debt and admiration to Russell Kirk, I should also mention Kirk's admiration for Nisbet. 60 00:05:52.480 --> 00:05:56.480 For example, in The Politics of Prudence, Kirk says, 61 00:05:56.480 --> 00:06:04.480 People may desire to commence their serious study of conservative thought by reading a succinct but sensible manual on the subject. 62 00:06:04.480 --> 00:06:10.480 If so, I recommend particularly an agreeably slim volume by Robert A. Nisbet entitled, 63 00:06:10.480 --> 00:06:14.920 entitled, Conservatism, Dream and Reality. 64 00:06:14.920 --> 00:06:17.360 Kirk knew something of which he spoke. 65 00:06:17.360 --> 00:06:20.760 He was, for decades, the Dean of American Conservatism. 66 00:06:20.760 --> 00:06:22.680 And by all accounts, including Nisbet's, 67 00:06:22.680 --> 00:06:25.680 he was the person most responsible for inciting 68 00:06:25.680 --> 00:06:28.320 the post-World War II conservative intellectual 69 00:06:28.320 --> 00:06:30.760 movement in America. 70 00:06:30.760 --> 00:06:33.840 I agree with Kirk's assessment of conservatism, dream, 71 00:06:33.840 --> 00:06:35.400 and reality. 72 00:06:35.400 --> 00:06:36.900 In fact, I wrote the introduction 73 00:06:36.900 --> 00:06:40.500 for the 2002 Transaction Edition of the book. 74 00:06:40.500 --> 00:06:46.860 Nisbet's version of conservatism is simple, powerful, and quite appealing. 75 00:06:46.860 --> 00:06:51.040 At the same time, however, I'm compelled to acknowledge my belief that Nisbet's version 76 00:06:51.040 --> 00:06:56.920 of conservatism is somewhat peculiar, even perhaps singular. 77 00:06:56.920 --> 00:06:59.420 Let me explain. 78 00:06:59.420 --> 00:07:06.140 In an essay titled Still Questing, published in the Intercollegiate Review in 1993 to commemorate 79 00:07:06.140 --> 00:07:10.740 On the 40th anniversary of the publication of the Quest for Community, Nisbet said that 80 00:07:10.740 --> 00:07:15.940 any conservative group in the United States confronts a double task. 81 00:07:15.940 --> 00:07:21.740 The first is to work tirelessly towards the diminution of the centralized, on-the-competent 82 00:07:21.740 --> 00:07:26.460 and unitary state with its ever-growing debt and deficit. 83 00:07:26.460 --> 00:07:31.820 The second and equally important task is that of protecting, reinforcing, nurturing, where 84 00:07:31.820 --> 00:07:37.100 are necessary, the varied groups and associations which form the true building blocks of the 85 00:07:37.100 --> 00:07:45.140 social order. Certainly any conservative would recognize the importance of those two tasks. 86 00:07:45.140 --> 00:07:50.660 What is peculiar in Nisbett's view is that these are the exclusive and definitive conservative 87 00:07:50.660 --> 00:07:58.980 tasks. As he put it in Prejudice as a philosophical dictionary, making it even simpler, the sole 88 00:07:58.980 --> 00:08:08.980 The fundamental object of the conservative tradition is the protection of the social order and its constitutive groups from the enveloping bureaucracy of the nation-state. 89 00:08:08.980 --> 00:08:20.980 Nisbet maintained throughout his career that conservatism includes just two complementary components, anti-statism and social pluralism. 90 00:08:20.980 --> 00:08:42.980 It is this view of conservatism that led David Brooks a few years ago, soon after Nisbet died, in a piece that he wrote for the online AEI webpage, to call Nisbet an anti-individualist libertarian, and leads me to call him a libertarian communitarian. 91 00:08:42.980 --> 00:08:49.980 Certainly, by his definition of conservatism, Nisbett qualifies as a quintessential conservative. 92 00:08:49.980 --> 00:08:56.980 As I'll make clear in a few minutes, however, by this definition, many who call themselves conservatives do not qualify, 93 00:08:56.980 --> 00:09:04.980 because they fail to nurture the communities constituting the social order, and or they favor statist initiatives. 94 00:09:04.980 --> 00:09:13.980 Nisbet was in fact very quick to deny the label of conservatives to many who claimed it. 95 00:09:13.980 --> 00:09:22.980 Nisbet's own social pluralism and anti-statism were maintained unwaveringly over the course of his long and very productive career. 96 00:09:22.980 --> 00:09:29.980 In fact, in the Quest for Community, his first book, he announced the theme that united virtually everything he ever wrote. 97 00:09:29.980 --> 00:09:40.980 He stated there, quote, I have chosen to deal with the political causes of the manifold alienations that lie behind the contemporary quest for community. 98 00:09:40.980 --> 00:09:48.980 The real significance of the unitary state, he believed, was that it dislocated the authority and functions of traditional communities, 99 00:09:48.980 --> 00:09:58.980 those of, chiefly, kinship, conscience, locale and voluntary association, leaving individuals isolated and unattached. 100 00:09:58.980 --> 00:10:05.780 Like Tocqueville before him, Nisbet did not see the individual as opposed to one another. 101 00:10:05.780 --> 00:10:14.180 He saw them as mutually reinforcing poles, each opposed to the social groups and associations lying between them. 102 00:10:14.180 --> 00:10:20.180 Individual isolation and the fervent modern desire for a communal fellowship, Nisbet believed, 103 00:10:20.180 --> 00:10:27.380 result from the erosion of intermediate communities caused by the sovereign western state. 104 00:10:27.380 --> 00:10:34.980 According to Nisbet's ideal typical portrait, communities possess several requisite features. 105 00:10:34.980 --> 00:10:38.980 First, communities have functions that they fulfill. 106 00:10:38.980 --> 00:10:45.080 They arise to address perennial human needs and to solve problems. 107 00:10:45.080 --> 00:10:48.480 As Nisbet says, quoting Ortega y Gasset, 108 00:10:48.480 --> 00:10:51.980 quote, human beings do not come together to be together. 109 00:10:51.980 --> 00:10:55.480 They come together to do something together. 110 00:10:55.480 --> 00:11:02.880 2. A community's function must be transformed into a deeply held belief or dogma. The function 111 00:11:02.880 --> 00:11:12.880 must seem good, the literal meaning of dogma. 3. Authority, not power, characterizes communities. 112 00:11:12.880 --> 00:11:18.080 Authority arises through and is legitimized by spontaneous custom use and want, not as 113 00:11:18.080 --> 00:11:21.080 as with power through external force. 114 00:11:21.080 --> 00:11:25.080 Fourth, communities are hierarchical. 115 00:11:25.080 --> 00:11:31.080 Within a community, one's identity is bound up with one's status and roles, 116 00:11:31.080 --> 00:11:35.080 and it is impossible to raise such roles in a line of equality. 117 00:11:35.080 --> 00:11:43.080 He says, to follow the specification of one's role in a community is to engage in and be part of a pattern of authority. 118 00:11:43.080 --> 00:11:47.080 Fifth, communities are animated by a sense of honor 119 00:11:47.080 --> 00:11:52.880 It elevates the concerns of individuals beyond the merely utilitarian or pecuniary. 120 00:11:52.880 --> 00:11:59.640 And finally, communities sponsor feelings of solidarity and superiority. 121 00:11:59.640 --> 00:12:05.400 Their essential features expose communities to both widespread suspicion and state encroachment 122 00:12:05.400 --> 00:12:07.240 in the modern age. 123 00:12:07.240 --> 00:12:11.140 To modern critics, these features are unsavory. 124 00:12:11.140 --> 00:12:21.020 States are exclusive, intolerant, arrogant, inegalitarian and authoritarian. 125 00:12:21.020 --> 00:12:25.340 And to these same critics, the state is seen to be a more fair and efficient provider of 126 00:12:25.340 --> 00:12:27.140 social functions. 127 00:12:27.140 --> 00:12:32.820 Nonetheless, according to Nisbet, it's not those features that lead to the decline of 128 00:12:32.820 --> 00:12:36.140 community for the most part. 129 00:12:36.140 --> 00:12:40.140 War has been the chief historical occasion and means for the state to consolidate its 130 00:12:40.140 --> 00:12:49.580 The War State, he says, is the main cause of the welfare state. 131 00:12:49.580 --> 00:12:53.580 In Twilight of Authority, a book he wrote in the mid-70s, one of his more influential 132 00:12:53.580 --> 00:12:59.620 books, he estimates that 75% of all national programs in western societies designed to 133 00:12:59.620 --> 00:13:06.380 equalize income, property and opportunity in the last 200 years have been, in the first 134 00:13:06.380 --> 00:13:23.380 Concerning the United States specifically, Nisbet argued that although the full flowering of the welfare state occurred after the mid-1960s, the ultimate roots lie with Woodrow Wilson's actions during World War I. 135 00:13:23.380 --> 00:13:24.380 1. 136 00:13:24.380 --> 00:13:30.700 Nisbet says, quote, Wilson's political, economic, social and intellectual reorganization 137 00:13:30.700 --> 00:13:37.060 of America in the short period of 1917 to 1919 is one of the most extraordinary feats 138 00:13:37.060 --> 00:13:40.500 in the long history of war and polity. 139 00:13:40.500 --> 00:13:46.180 Within a few short months, he had transformed traditional, decentralized, regional and localist 140 00:13:46.180 --> 00:13:52.900 America into a war state that at its height permeated every aspect of life, end quote. 141 00:13:52.900 --> 00:13:56.900 Nisbet argued, in fact, that the New Deal was no more than an assemblage of government 142 00:13:56.900 --> 00:14:01.820 structures modeled on those that existed in 1917. 143 00:14:01.820 --> 00:14:06.300 Still according to Nisbet, it was World War II that gave the largest impetus to the idea 144 00:14:06.300 --> 00:14:08.660 of the national community. 145 00:14:08.660 --> 00:14:13.260 The real novelty and importance of World War II in Nisbet's eyes was that it created, 146 00:14:13.260 --> 00:14:19.940 quote, a formal, official and lasting union between the intellectual and the national 147 00:14:19.940 --> 00:14:24.860 Government, at least when the latter could be thought of as in trustworthy hands like 148 00:14:24.860 --> 00:14:30.260 Wilson's or FDR's. 149 00:14:30.260 --> 00:14:35.340 The Cold War followed, and the tie between the intellectual and national government became 150 00:14:35.340 --> 00:14:37.380 even firmer. 151 00:14:37.380 --> 00:14:42.740 He says, quote, political omnicompetence, with the state the spearhead of all social 152 00:14:42.740 --> 00:14:49.860 and cultural life, industrialization, however farcical in context, nationalization of education, 153 00:14:49.860 --> 00:14:56.900 rampant secularization and growing consumer hedonism, all this speaks modernity to the Western 154 00:14:56.900 --> 00:15:03.500 Clarity and the welcome sign of the developed, the progressive." 155 00:15:03.500 --> 00:15:08.340 Before World War I, socialist and liberal intellectuals viewed the state as a threat 156 00:15:08.340 --> 00:15:13.900 to liberties, but after a century of wars and the moral equivalents of war, the left-leaning 157 00:15:43.900 --> 00:15:52.900 two great traditions in Western thought, what he called, on the one hand, political monism and what he called, on the other hand, social pluralism. 158 00:15:52.900 --> 00:16:01.900 This distinction bears little relationship to the more conventional distinctions between liberal and conservative or between progressive and traditional thought. 159 00:16:01.900 --> 00:16:08.900 Political monism begins with Plato and includes Hobbes, Rousseau, Bentham and Lenin, among many others. 160 00:16:08.900 --> 00:16:16.900 According to Nisbet, each of these thinkers blended social nihilism with political affirmation. 161 00:16:16.900 --> 00:16:27.900 And the affirmation in each instance, he says, is the state conceived as being not force or repression, but justice, freedom and tranquility for the individual. 162 00:16:27.900 --> 00:16:36.900 Nisbet states in Twilight of Authority that within this tradition, such groups as family, locality, neighborhood, church and other autonomous associations 163 00:16:36.900 --> 00:16:48.900 are almost uniformly reduced to their individual atoms, made into unities dependent upon concession of existence by the state, or in some other way significantly degraded. 164 00:16:48.900 --> 00:17:04.900 Among the political monists, Nisbett called Hobbes and Rousseau the prime catalytic agents in modern political thought, and in 1953, in a letter to Russell Kirk, he called Rousseau the real demon of the modern mind. 165 00:17:04.900 --> 00:17:18.500 The tradition of social pluralism, on the other hand, begins with Aristotle and includes 166 00:17:18.500 --> 00:17:25.380 Aquinas, Burke, Tocqueville, Acton, Pradhan and Kripadkhan. 167 00:17:25.380 --> 00:17:29.460 For these thinkers, freedom proceeds less from the form of government than it does from 168 00:17:29.460 --> 00:17:35.860 From the relationship of government, whatever its form, to the communities comprising society. 169 00:17:35.860 --> 00:17:42.660 As Nisbet says, a government monarchical or oligarchical in structure can be a free government, 170 00:17:42.660 --> 00:17:46.640 if has been the case many times in history. 171 00:17:46.640 --> 00:17:52.140 It respects the other institutions of society and permits autonomies accordingly in the 172 00:17:52.140 --> 00:17:55.060 social and economic spheres. 173 00:17:55.060 --> 00:18:01.880 For pluralists, liberty cannot exist if the power of the state has reached out to encompass 174 00:18:01.880 --> 00:18:07.300 all spheres of social, moral, economic and intellectual existence. 175 00:18:07.300 --> 00:18:12.800 The chief aim of social pluralists is to nurture and preserve the groups and associations constituting 176 00:18:12.800 --> 00:18:15.560 the social order for Nisbet. 177 00:18:15.560 --> 00:18:20.800 Nisbet considered Aristotle, Burke and Tocqueville the most important social pluralists, but 178 00:18:20.800 --> 00:18:26.440 But he admired social pluralism in any form, be it called conservative, liberal or radical. 179 00:18:26.440 --> 00:18:32.880 Indeed, it's worth stressing that Pradhanan Kripadkin, both advocates of anarchist mutualism, 180 00:18:32.880 --> 00:18:37.160 were among the thinkers that Nisbet most admired. 181 00:18:37.160 --> 00:18:42.000 Nisbet's rather ecumenical view of social pluralism is worth stressing because he was 182 00:18:42.000 --> 00:18:49.800 very discriminating when assessing conservatives in terms of their social pluralism and anti-statism. 183 00:18:49.800 --> 00:18:57.320 He denied the label of conservative in Conservatism, Dream and Reality, Prejudices, a Philosophical 184 00:18:57.320 --> 00:19:09.440 Dictionary and various essays to militarists, populists, social conservatives and libertarians. 185 00:19:09.440 --> 00:19:13.920 Concerning militarists, he said flatly that the military spirit and conservatism have 186 00:19:13.920 --> 00:19:19.900 have nothing in common because war undermines the parochial affections while enhancing the 187 00:19:19.900 --> 00:19:28.440 power of the state and its centralized bureaucratic machinery. 188 00:19:28.440 --> 00:19:35.340 For their part, Nisbet says that populists dream the conservative nightmare, a society 189 00:19:35.340 --> 00:19:40.260 in which all constitutional limitations upon the direct power of the people or any passing 190 00:19:40.260 --> 00:19:53.260 Regarding social conservatives, Nisbett denied that those aligned with the far right, especially 191 00:19:53.260 --> 00:19:56.900 evangelicals, are genuine conservatives. 192 00:19:56.900 --> 00:20:01.280 He stated that conservative, in the Burkean sense of the term, could not be applied to 193 00:20:01.280 --> 00:20:07.340 most evangelicals because Burke distrusted enthusiasm in any form. 194 00:20:07.340 --> 00:20:13.380 Some evangelicals in his bit maintain, quote, there is an incessant desire to prove to others 195 00:20:13.380 --> 00:20:17.820 the exclusive truth of a single way of life or thought. 196 00:20:17.820 --> 00:20:23.500 At any rate, he observed that such groups as the moral majority and the Christian coalition 197 00:20:23.500 --> 00:20:29.500 seek to replace, quote, the social and economic provider state with what he called the moral 198 00:20:29.500 --> 00:20:31.460 provider state. 199 00:20:31.460 --> 00:20:37.160 He concluded that the far right is less interested in Berkian immunities from government than 200 00:20:37.160 --> 00:20:43.160 And it is in putting a maximum of government power in the hands of those who could be trusted. 201 00:20:43.160 --> 00:20:50.560 Finally, in an essay titled, Conservatism and Libertarians, Uneasy Cousins, first published 202 00:20:50.560 --> 00:20:57.720 in 1980, Nisbet described libertarians as reliable and strident anti-status, but he denied 203 00:20:57.720 --> 00:21:03.080 that they are genuine conservatives because they are not social pluralists. 204 00:21:03.080 --> 00:21:09.800 He says, more and more, one has the impression that for libertarians today, individuals are 205 00:21:09.800 --> 00:21:14.680 alone real, institutions are but their shadows. 206 00:21:14.680 --> 00:21:19.160 I believe the state of mind is developing among libertarians in which the coercions 207 00:21:19.160 --> 00:21:25.760 of family, church, local community and school will seem almost as inimical to freedom as 208 00:21:25.760 --> 00:21:29.000 those of the political government. 209 00:21:29.000 --> 00:21:35.900 He adds, libertarians appear to see social and moral authority and despotic power as 210 00:21:35.900 --> 00:21:41.680 elements of a single spectrum, as an unbroken continuity. 211 00:21:41.680 --> 00:21:47.120 If their argument goes, we are to be spared leviathan, we must challenge any and all forms 212 00:21:47.120 --> 00:21:53.760 of authority, including those that are inseparable from the social bond, end quote. 213 00:21:53.760 --> 00:22:00.160 In short, he says, among certain libertarians, the authority of communities is mistaken for 214 00:22:00.160 --> 00:22:05.400 the power of the bureaucratic state, and such authority is deemed as greater threat to liberty 215 00:22:05.400 --> 00:22:08.600 as state power. 216 00:22:08.600 --> 00:22:13.400 Nisbet identifies no libertarians by name in this essay, although I certainly have known 217 00:22:13.400 --> 00:22:20.040 libertarians who seem to deem the authority of natural institutions or voluntary associations 218 00:22:20.040 --> 00:22:25.360 is no different from the coercive power of the state. 219 00:22:25.360 --> 00:22:32.960 At the same time, however, certain libertarians clearly also qualify as social pluralists. 220 00:22:32.960 --> 00:22:39.120 Like Nisbet, they fear state power because it atomizes society and destroys communities, 221 00:22:39.120 --> 00:22:41.100 to my mind anyway. 222 00:22:41.100 --> 00:22:45.380 If Nisbet is well described as a libertarian communitarian, and as far as I know I'm the 223 00:22:45.380 --> 00:22:57.380 Because of his anti-statism and his social pluralism, the same can be said of Friedrich Hayek, Charles Murray and David Boas, despite their sometimes very different rhetoric. 224 00:22:57.380 --> 00:23:09.380 For each of these thinkers, we are animated by natural social sentiments, and our happiness depends in large measure upon our capacity to spontaneously pursue our social ends. 225 00:23:09.380 --> 00:23:18.380 In his classic essay Individualism, True and False, Hayek observes that for the old wigs or classical liberals, 226 00:23:18.380 --> 00:23:23.380 as far as I know he never called himself a libertarian, he always called himself an old wig or a classical liberal, 227 00:23:23.380 --> 00:23:34.380 the term self-love and selfish interest did not mean, quote, 228 00:23:34.380 --> 00:23:41.100 did not mean egotism in the narrow sense of concern with only the immediate needs of one's 229 00:23:41.100 --> 00:23:43.140 person proper. 230 00:23:43.140 --> 00:23:53.460 The self for which alone people are supposed to care did as a matter of course include 231 00:23:53.460 --> 00:23:58.680 their family and friends, and it would have made no difference to their argument if it 232 00:23:58.680 --> 00:24:04.260 had included anything for which people did in fact care. 233 00:24:04.260 --> 00:24:16.260 If you've got your copy of the Second Treatise, look to see what Locke says about self-love. 234 00:24:16.260 --> 00:24:29.260 It's not limited to us. It's us and our friends. It's our self-love which causes us to be partial towards ourselves and our friends. 235 00:24:29.260 --> 00:24:35.260 and that is what causes the condition of war in the state of nature. 236 00:24:35.260 --> 00:24:41.260 Such care and concern, Hayek argued, is in fact instinctual. 237 00:24:41.260 --> 00:24:44.260 He says in The Fatal Conceit, 238 00:24:44.260 --> 00:24:50.260 Our instincts of solidarity and altruism are molded in the environment of the face-to-face tribe. 239 00:24:50.260 --> 00:24:56.260 In his writing, of course, in The Fatal Conceit and earlier writing, he's very much an evolutionary thinker. 240 00:24:56.260 --> 00:25:08.260 He says, quote, an isolated man would soon have been a dead man. The primitive individualism described by Thomas Hobbes is hence a myth. End quote. 241 00:25:08.260 --> 00:25:19.260 He says that within the extended order, the old instinctual responses such as solidarity and altruism continue to retain some importance by assisting voluntary collaboration, 242 00:25:19.260 --> 00:25:27.260 Even though they are incapable by themselves of creating a basis for the extended order. 243 00:25:27.260 --> 00:25:37.260 Nonetheless, according to Hayek, reconciling our natural instincts with the extended order is as necessary as it is terribly difficult. 244 00:25:37.260 --> 00:25:40.260 He says, rather famously, 245 00:25:40.260 --> 00:26:01.260 If we were to apply the unmodified, uncurbed rules of the micro-cosmos, i.e. of the small band or tribe, or of, say, our families, to the macro-cosmos, our whiter society, as our instincts and sentimental yearnings often make us wish to do, we would destroy it. 246 00:26:01.260 --> 00:26:06.260 Such efforts lead to the fatal conceit and the years of socialism. 247 00:26:06.260 --> 00:26:14.260 What Hayek states in the next sentence, which completes his paraphrase of Kant, is just as important, however. 248 00:26:14.260 --> 00:26:25.260 Quote, if we were to apply, always to apply, the rules of the extended order to our most intimate groupings, we would crush them. End quote. 249 00:26:25.260 --> 00:26:45.260 These rules, of course, the rules of contract, exchange, trade, competition, gain and privacy, according to Hayek, if extended beyond their proper sphere are as destructive as the fatal conceit. 250 00:26:45.260 --> 00:26:49.260 At least that's how I read his paraphrase of Kant there. 251 00:26:49.260 --> 00:26:58.260 Arguably, this is precisely what anti-communitarian libertarians, like the ones Nisbet criticizes, seek to do. 252 00:26:58.260 --> 00:27:05.260 For his part, Murray says in his book, In Pursuit of Happiness and Good Government, 253 00:27:05.260 --> 00:27:11.260 The pursuit of individual happiness cannot be an atomistic process. 254 00:27:11.260 --> 00:27:16.260 It will naturally and always occur in the context of communities. 255 00:27:16.260 --> 00:27:26.960 The state's role in enabling the pursuit of happiness depends ultimately on nurturing not individuals, but the associations they form." 256 00:27:26.960 --> 00:27:39.260 And before I proceed, I would think that, in fact, the pursuit of, in pursuit of happiness in good government would qualify as both a libertarian and a communitarian classic. 257 00:27:39.260 --> 00:27:42.860 I think it's a wonderful book, personally. 258 00:27:42.860 --> 00:27:52.860 Murray believes with Nisbet that it is not enough to be an anti-statist if that anti-statism combines with an unalloyed valorization of the individual. 259 00:27:52.860 --> 00:28:02.860 As Tocqueville observed 170 years ago, the tutelary administrative state is not the enemy of socially disembodied individuals. 260 00:28:02.860 --> 00:28:08.860 Rather, such a state depends upon the existence of such individuals. 261 00:28:08.860 --> 00:28:13.300 In order to develop this point, I will dilate for a moment on several observations made 262 00:28:13.300 --> 00:28:23.220 by David Boas in his chapter on civil society and libertarianism, a primer. 263 00:28:23.220 --> 00:28:32.400 Given their simultaneous and equal concern for civil society and free market, Boas asserts 264 00:28:32.400 --> 00:28:47.080 That had the term not been wrongly appropriated and utterly corrupted by statists, the right term for libertarian would be socialist. 265 00:28:47.080 --> 00:28:51.360 Page 24 of Libertarianism. He's not being perverse there. 266 00:28:51.360 --> 00:29:00.000 He's simply saying that if we made a legitimate distinction between society and the state and terms were used appropriately, 267 00:29:00.000 --> 00:29:04.280 We didn't allow statists to choose the term socialism. 268 00:29:04.280 --> 00:29:09.000 It would be an apt description for a libertarian. 269 00:29:09.000 --> 00:29:13.600 He asserts, quote, we can barely survive and hardly flourish 270 00:29:13.600 --> 00:29:16.720 without interacting with other people. 271 00:29:16.720 --> 00:29:20.360 We want to associate with others to achieve instrumental ends, 272 00:29:20.360 --> 00:29:24.200 producing food, exchanging goods, developing technology, 273 00:29:24.200 --> 00:29:28.600 but also because we feel a deep human need for connectedness, 274 00:29:28.600 --> 00:29:31.720 for Love and Friendship and Community. 275 00:29:31.720 --> 00:29:39.240 The associations we form with others make up what we call civil society. 276 00:29:39.240 --> 00:29:43.800 We call these associations civil society because that is what the Scottish moralists called 277 00:29:43.800 --> 00:29:44.800 them. 278 00:29:44.800 --> 00:29:50.240 But for Marx, who got the term from Hegel, who got it from Adam Ferguson, civil society, 279 00:29:50.240 --> 00:29:56.120 which includes markets, was a great evil, the source of social atomization for which 280 00:29:56.120 --> 00:30:13.120 The Irony, as Boas says, is that Marxism created in the Soviet Union a society far more atomized than anything in the capitalist world. 281 00:30:13.120 --> 00:30:23.120 Boas's important point is that the concentration of state power creates de-socialized individuals, a point made long ago by Tocqueville. 282 00:30:23.120 --> 00:30:45.120 The other side of the Tocquevillian equation not mentioned by Boas needs to be stressed, at least if I want to get some disagreement, however, that valorizing individuals, deeming them as alone real, and believing that institutions are mere shadowy emanations necessarily leads to the growth of the state. 283 00:30:45.120 --> 00:31:03.120 The causal arrow does not move just one way. Individualism and the concentration of state power necessarily grow in tandem. When individuals are atomized, the state is the only institutional organ capable of undertaking significant tasks. 284 00:31:03.120 --> 00:31:33.120 Consequently, I would assert that any libertarian who is not also a communitarian in the vizbedian sense of the term, not the habits of the heart sense of the term, and social pluralist, one who advocates an epidermal form of individualism, who employs contractual language to describe all relationships, who believes that authority is indeed one with power, and who fails to comprehend our innate sociability, 285 00:31:33.120 --> 00:31:52.560 In keeping with his anti-statism and social pluralism, and the conclusions of both the 286 00:31:52.560 --> 00:32:00.160 quest for community and the twilight of authority, Nisbet suggests that the great need of our 287 00:32:00.160 --> 00:32:04.860 Our age is to address the balance between the power of the unitary state and the authority 288 00:32:04.860 --> 00:32:07.040 of communities. 289 00:32:07.040 --> 00:32:13.440 What we need, he suggests, is a new laissez-faire, a form of laissez-faire that has as its object 290 00:32:13.440 --> 00:32:18.200 not the abstract individual, whether economic or political man, but rather the social group 291 00:32:18.200 --> 00:32:21.000 or association. 292 00:32:21.000 --> 00:32:25.160 The new laissez-faire would supplement, not replace, the old laissez-faire, because the 293 00:32:25.160 --> 00:32:30.820 The liberal values of freedom and autonomy are best achieved when community flourishes, 294 00:32:30.820 --> 00:32:37.460 when conditions foster diversity of culture, plurality of association, and the division 295 00:32:37.460 --> 00:32:39.500 of authority. 296 00:32:39.500 --> 00:32:44.520 Of course, Nisbet recognized the legitimate role of the national state regarding issues 297 00:32:44.520 --> 00:32:47.980 of justice, national defense, and public works. 298 00:32:47.980 --> 00:32:54.480 Extensive administration and arbitrary power, both of which Nisbet feared, should not be 299 00:32:54.480 --> 00:33:00.040 Confused with Strong and Energetic Government within its Proper Sphere. The latter is as 300 00:33:00.040 --> 00:33:06.440 necessary to spontaneous sociability as the former are dangerous. But, Nisbet says, from 301 00:33:06.440 --> 00:33:12.360 the centrality of the government, it does not follow that it must be omnacompetent, 302 00:33:12.360 --> 00:33:16.960 responsible for daily existence and ever in our lives, and worst of all, pretend moral 303 00:33:16.960 --> 00:33:22.140 teacher, guide to virtue and mother of spirit. 304 00:33:22.140 --> 00:33:25.980 From these few comments, it should be clear that Nisbet's fear of the government as a 305 00:33:25.980 --> 00:33:29.980 moral teacher and mother of spirit was indiscriminate. 306 00:33:29.980 --> 00:33:33.560 He feared such a government, be it of the left or right. 307 00:33:33.560 --> 00:33:38.900 What my brief comments cannot convey is just how rich a resource Nisbet's works are for 308 00:33:38.900 --> 00:33:43.280 any committed social pluralist and anti-statist. 309 00:33:43.280 --> 00:33:49.080 From issues of perennial concern, such as the sources of corrosive self-doting and the 310 00:33:49.080 --> 00:33:54.040 The Vital Role of the Family to the Maintenance of Social Order and Individual Achievement 311 00:33:54.040 --> 00:33:59.920 To the more timely issues of School of Vouchers, which he was writing about in the 1970s, the 312 00:33:59.920 --> 00:34:05.840 use of faith-based organizations to administer government programs, and community approaches 313 00:34:05.840 --> 00:34:12.040 to crime, Nisbett's works are a potential source of great illumination. 314 00:34:12.040 --> 00:34:19.640 As tempted as I am to conclude on this laudatory note, I will not do so, because I believe 315 00:34:19.640 --> 00:34:26.820 that Nisbet had a glaring failure in his thinking, which requires notice, if for no other reason 316 00:34:26.820 --> 00:34:30.960 than to save my comments from hagiography. 317 00:34:30.960 --> 00:34:37.160 Simply put, for all his genius and insight, Nisbet failed to fully recognize the role 318 00:34:37.160 --> 00:34:44.840 of Human Nature in Human Affairs, or to use a term Dennis Wrong used years ago to criticize 319 00:34:44.840 --> 00:34:52.560 the tendencies of sociological thinking, Nisbet had an over-socialized view of human beings. 320 00:34:52.560 --> 00:34:59.960 More simply yet, Nisbet was a social constructivist. In his view, human nature is neither a leash 321 00:34:59.960 --> 00:35:07.080 nor a guide. What human beings are and do is the result of culture and social inventions. 322 00:35:07.080 --> 00:35:13.160 For example, in Twilight of Authority, he writes of our quote, natural impulses towards 323 00:35:13.160 --> 00:35:20.120 social initiative and social invention, but this inventiveness is completely detached 324 00:35:20.120 --> 00:35:23.040 from nature, biology and instinct. 325 00:35:23.040 --> 00:35:29.320 He says quote, the origins of kinship in man's history are of course lost, but we do better 326 00:35:29.320 --> 00:35:36.960 Consider to conjure up a vision of some primitive salon, the Athenian lawgiver, then of mere 327 00:35:36.960 --> 00:35:44.080 instinct in the fashioning of structures as ingeniously designed as clan, moiety and tribe, 328 00:35:44.080 --> 00:35:49.040 with their complex requirements of endogamy and exogamy, and their delicate balancing 329 00:35:49.040 --> 00:35:52.760 of authority and responsibility." 330 00:35:52.760 --> 00:35:58.080 He continues, if mankind's earliest social inventiveness is to be seen in kinship after 331 00:35:58.080 --> 00:36:14.080 to the Invention of Agriculture and the Metallurgical Arts. 332 00:36:14.080 --> 00:36:20.360 The local community was invented, he says, quote, in every legitimate sense of the word, 333 00:36:20.360 --> 00:36:27.160 local community with its complex functions and roles was a social invention. 334 00:36:27.160 --> 00:36:33.720 The flipside of Nisbet's social constructivism is what might be called his biophobia, an 335 00:36:33.720 --> 00:36:39.920 aversion to biological explanations of virtually any social phenomenon. 336 00:36:39.920 --> 00:36:45.360 Biophobia and social constructivism are maintained today by a bewildering array of people ranging 337 00:36:45.360 --> 00:36:51.940 from most feminist and literary deconstructionists on the left to many anti-Darwinian Christians 338 00:36:51.940 --> 00:36:55.000 and conservatives on the right. 339 00:36:55.000 --> 00:37:00.800 I need not be a Darwinian biologist to believe, however, that although nature is always expressed 340 00:37:00.800 --> 00:37:07.520 via nurture, no biologist believes in genetic determinism, natural inclinations and even 341 00:37:07.520 --> 00:37:10.720 natural institutions exist. 342 00:37:10.720 --> 00:37:17.680 I would submit, for instance, that at this point the evidence is overwhelming that kinship, 343 00:37:17.680 --> 00:37:25.880 The requirements of endogamy and exogamy, reciprocal friendship, in-group tribal affections, 344 00:37:25.880 --> 00:37:32.320 out-group tribal animosities, and local community are not historical products of inventive geniuses. 345 00:37:32.320 --> 00:37:37.400 They are grounded in the most vigorous inclinations of human nature. 346 00:37:37.400 --> 00:37:41.560 They have existed as long as our species has existed. 347 00:37:41.560 --> 00:37:45.360 Although the precise form and condition of these inclinations is of course influenced 348 00:37:45.360 --> 00:37:49.600 by Culture and Social Invention. 349 00:37:49.600 --> 00:37:52.280 Nisbet's social pluralist heroes, Aristotle, Burke, 350 00:37:52.280 --> 00:37:54.760 and Tocqueville, maintain this view. 351 00:37:54.760 --> 00:37:57.080 Each of these thinkers argued for the importance 352 00:37:57.080 --> 00:38:01.040 of intermediate institutions, because such institutions 353 00:38:01.040 --> 00:38:05.480 express essential natural human sentiments. 354 00:38:05.480 --> 00:38:09.000 Although Aristotle grounded the social order in human nature 355 00:38:09.000 --> 00:38:12.720 far more thoroughly than did Burke and Tocqueville. 356 00:38:12.720 --> 00:38:18.220 Nisbet's justifications for local and parochial institutions, by contrast, are made in terms 357 00:38:18.220 --> 00:38:23.880 of their functionality and efficiency. Such terms can be reliable, but without a bedrock 358 00:38:23.880 --> 00:38:29.760 standard in human nature, one's argument can be overturned by references to functionality 359 00:38:29.760 --> 00:38:35.160 and efficiency. For example, I believe the evidence is very strong that nature recommends 360 00:38:35.160 --> 00:38:40.600 that children be raised by their biological parents and other kin, and certainly Nisbet 361 00:38:40.600 --> 00:38:48.200 also defended traditional notions of the family, but if efficiency and functionality are the 362 00:38:48.200 --> 00:38:53.940 standards justifying the traditional family, then those who believe the state can and should 363 00:38:53.940 --> 00:38:59.280 take an active role in raising children will likely gain ground by invoking these same 364 00:38:59.280 --> 00:39:00.280 standards. 365 00:39:00.280 --> 00:39:06.720 In any event, I believe that Nisbet's neglect of human nature weakens his case for communities 366 00:39:06.720 --> 00:39:12.600 or Intermediate Institutions, and that his belief in social invention led him to several 367 00:39:12.600 --> 00:39:14.920 dubious conclusions. 368 00:39:14.920 --> 00:39:22.360 For example, he cited the youth communes of the 1970s as indicating the recovery of community, 369 00:39:22.360 --> 00:39:27.440 and he was friendly towards Emil Durkheim's corporatism, a scheme by which professions 370 00:39:27.440 --> 00:39:31.960 and industries would be arranged on communal principles. 371 00:39:31.960 --> 00:39:37.300 Without a full acknowledgement of human nature, there are no means by which to recognize the 372 00:39:37.300 --> 00:39:41.800 limits of social invention. 373 00:39:41.800 --> 00:39:47.520 In this regard, I will note my own view that Burke's acquaintance David Hume, in an inquiry 374 00:39:47.520 --> 00:39:54.840 concerning the principles of morals, and Burke's good friend Adam Smith in The Theory of Moral 375 00:39:54.840 --> 00:40:00.180 Sentiments, provide the most convincing and complete accounts ever written on the natural 376 00:40:00.180 --> 00:40:08.320 Social passions are instincts and their relationship to social institutions, historical and otherwise. 377 00:40:08.320 --> 00:40:15.580 As Nisbet once observed, the moral philosophy of the Scottish moralist was richly socio-biological, 378 00:40:15.580 --> 00:40:17.880 just as Aristotle's had been. 379 00:40:17.880 --> 00:40:22.800 The Scottish moralist, he said, quote, located the source of every significant pattern of 380 00:40:22.800 --> 00:40:26.180 behavior in some passion drive or instinct. 381 00:40:26.180 --> 00:40:33.820 Altruism, Smith thought, was the innate drive in man that made society possible, just as 382 00:40:33.820 --> 00:40:39.940 the instinct to truck and barter, to buy and sell, was the true source of the economic 383 00:40:39.940 --> 00:40:40.940 system. 384 00:40:40.940 --> 00:40:44.380 Smith, of course, never used the term altruism. 385 00:40:44.380 --> 00:40:50.540 The term was coined by Auguste Comte in the mid-19th century, but he did argue that benevolence, 386 00:40:50.540 --> 00:40:55.900 selfless regard for others, is grounded in natural social passions that weaken with social 387 00:40:55.900 --> 00:41:10.900 In order from strongest to weakest ties, our parents, children, siblings, extended family, friends, colleagues and neighbors are recommended to our care by nature, according to Smith. 388 00:41:10.900 --> 00:41:17.900 Our goodwill is unlimited, he argued, but our good offices, our active duties, are inherently limited. 389 00:41:17.900 --> 00:41:21.900 Universal benevolence, he believed, is utterly impotent. 390 00:41:21.900 --> 00:41:29.900 Nisbet also criticized universal benevolence, but if local community is a social invention 391 00:41:29.900 --> 00:41:36.260 ungrounded in nature, and if social inventions are to be assessed in terms of their utility, 392 00:41:36.260 --> 00:41:42.020 why should we not hope that institutions based upon universal benevolence will replace local 393 00:41:42.020 --> 00:41:43.420 communities? 394 00:41:43.420 --> 00:41:51.220 At the very least, Nisbet provides no reason to not experiment with such social inventions. 395 00:41:51.220 --> 00:41:56.700 During Smith, let me note one more important point. Although Smith argued for the existence 396 00:41:56.700 --> 00:42:03.780 of innate drives and moral sentiments, he is aptly described as being sociobiological. 397 00:42:03.780 --> 00:42:11.220 As most of you know, he hardly denied the significance of such institutions. For example, 398 00:42:11.220 --> 00:42:16.240 the propensity to truck barter and exchange may be innate, but Smith's attacks on the 399 00:42:16.240 --> 00:42:20.520 mercantile system and the wealth of nations make perfectly clear he believed that free 400 00:42:20.520 --> 00:42:26.400 Free and unregulated markets, which simultaneously release our innate drives and harness them 401 00:42:26.400 --> 00:42:32.600 for the public good, are anything but inevitable even within commercial societies. 402 00:42:32.600 --> 00:42:37.640 I've just taken a side there and note that for Smith, we are of course by nature social, 403 00:42:37.640 --> 00:42:40.600 but we're not by nature political. 404 00:42:40.600 --> 00:42:49.080 Political regimes only emerge in the hurting stage, they're not part of the original condition. 405 00:42:49.080 --> 00:42:54.600 Smith argued social institutions can easily warp the natural moral sentiments even if these 406 00:42:54.600 --> 00:42:58.500 sentiments can never be entirely perverted. 407 00:42:58.500 --> 00:43:04.900 As Nisbet's student Jerry Mueller says, Mueller studied with Nisbet at Columbia. Many of you 408 00:43:04.900 --> 00:43:10.740 would know his book, Mind in the Market, a wonderful book. In another book, his book 409 00:43:10.740 --> 00:43:17.440 on Smith, he says of Smith, he was a psychological institutionalist. In both his major works, 410 00:43:17.440 --> 00:43:22.600 This sought to identify the institutional means by which the better angels of our nature 411 00:43:22.600 --> 00:43:28.920 could be deduced and by which even our baser instincts might be made to serve the greater 412 00:43:28.920 --> 00:43:30.920 good. 413 00:43:30.920 --> 00:43:36.960 Returning in conclusion to Nisbet, his neglect of human nature may be considered something 414 00:43:36.960 --> 00:43:42.120 of an occupational hazard because sociologists are given to social constructivism. 415 00:43:42.120 --> 00:43:50.120 Specifically, though, Nisbet was greatly influenced by Emile Durkheim, who asserted, 416 00:43:50.120 --> 00:44:00.120 quote, individual natures are merely the indeterminate material that the social factor molds and transforms, end quote. 417 00:44:00.120 --> 00:44:06.120 Like Durkheim, Nisbet overappraised the importance of the social factor in molding individual nature, 418 00:44:06.120 --> 00:44:12.160 of Human Nature, and he mis-assessed the plasticity of human nature, in my view anyway. 419 00:44:12.160 --> 00:44:18.080 Consequently, as great a thinker as I believe Nisbet was, I also believe that sure guidance 420 00:44:18.080 --> 00:44:22.840 for an understanding of our social nature and institution actually comes from the likes 421 00:44:22.840 --> 00:44:25.160 of human Smith. 422 00:44:25.160 --> 00:44:30.640 Like Nisbet, they were social pluralists and anti-statists, but they grounded their views 423 00:44:30.640 --> 00:44:35.640 used in a systemic, systematic and truthful account of human nature. 424 00:44:35.640 --> 00:44:46.640 In short, classical liberals, about whom Professor von Mises wrote so eloquently, were the original and most insightful libertarian communitarians. 425 00:44:53.640 --> 00:44:58.640 I assume I'm supposed to take some questions or observations. 426 00:44:58.640 --> 00:45:13.640 Overall, I think your points are well taken, and that a lot of libertarians have written things about the importance of voluntary associations towards the maintenance of social order and so on and so forth. 427 00:45:13.640 --> 00:45:22.640 But when libertarians talk about individualism, they mean it in two senses, when they talk about legitimate individualism. 428 00:45:22.640 --> 00:45:29.640 The first is metaphysical, namely that only individuals exist. Social institutions never exist apart from the actions of individuals. 429 00:45:29.640 --> 00:45:36.640 And the second is moral, namely that when we judge the value of those institutions, we look at their effects on individuals. 430 00:45:36.640 --> 00:45:44.640 We don't say, you know, families are good because they're families. We say they're good because they hurt their children, because they perform these functions. 431 00:45:44.640 --> 00:45:49.640 And if you deny those points, you're left with only two options. One is that either the institutions are good in themselves. 432 00:45:49.640 --> 00:46:19.640 themselves. And that seems to be the way that NISPIT is going from your presentation of it. And the other way is that these institutions exert forces beyond the ability of individuals to control, and that then the state needs to come in and make sure those forces are benevolent, which is the left-wing way of taking the argument that institutions have their own power. So that's why I think I'm kind of hesitant to talk about institutions as anything but the results of individual action, because otherwise you end up in one of those two positions. 433 00:46:19.640 --> 00:46:25.640 I guess I feel comfortable with what you're saying, at least I understand what you're saying. 434 00:46:25.640 --> 00:46:36.640 But I'm not certain, I'm just not clear on the significance of that original distinction, the metaphysical and then the moral. 435 00:46:36.640 --> 00:46:44.640 I'm just being dim, I guess. But why is that distinction significant for someone who would be a libertarian? 436 00:46:44.640 --> 00:46:49.640 Well, I'm just saying that we don't mean that you reject voluntary associations by that. 437 00:46:49.640 --> 00:46:53.640 There are two sentences in which we mean that individuals are the fundamental moral units 438 00:46:53.640 --> 00:46:57.640 and that they're the fundamental metaphysical units. 439 00:46:57.640 --> 00:47:01.640 And that so both when we're talking about the characteristics of institutions, 440 00:47:01.640 --> 00:47:04.640 hence the metaphysical point, and when we're talking about their values, 441 00:47:04.640 --> 00:47:08.640 the moral point, we may have to make an appeal to individuals. 442 00:47:08.640 --> 00:47:35.640 Okay. Now if I were not a libertarian on the metaphysical dimension and said, for example, that the family is a natural institution that exists as a consequence of biological urges and hormones and things of that sort, would I be violating some tenet of libertarianism? 443 00:47:35.640 --> 00:47:42.640 Not as a political philosophy, I'm just talking about the metaphysics from which libertarians approach the institution. 444 00:47:42.640 --> 00:47:48.640 They're not denying that man has a social nature, that he has a tendency to associate, and so on and so forth. 445 00:47:48.640 --> 00:47:54.640 But rather, these institutions, you can't just point to something and say, that's a family. 446 00:47:54.640 --> 00:47:56.640 It's always composed of individuals. 447 00:47:56.640 --> 00:48:02.640 There's a complex of actions together that we call family relations, because they're of a certain character. 448 00:48:02.640 --> 00:48:06.640 Well, I feel comfortable with that. 449 00:48:06.640 --> 00:48:19.640 I just want to clarify, somewhere Mises points out that if you observe a group of men and women planting a flag on an area of land, 450 00:48:19.640 --> 00:48:29.640 those people could be, depending on their thoughts and the meanings of their actions, being representatives of the British Crown. 451 00:48:29.640 --> 00:48:34.640 Or, with those same actions, they could be claiming for themselves. 452 00:48:34.640 --> 00:48:38.640 It depends on what their, you know, the meanings of those actions always depend on their thoughts. 453 00:48:38.640 --> 00:48:45.640 So they are real in a different sense than the British government is real. 454 00:48:45.640 --> 00:48:55.640 Or to take a more current example, when the tanks, the Soviet tanks, have their guns pointing out at the crowd around the parliament building, 455 00:48:55.640 --> 00:49:02.080 and the Communist Party holds up, they were acting as part of the Soviet state, but when 456 00:49:02.080 --> 00:49:06.160 their minds changed over a few days and the turrets turned inward, so the guns were pointing 457 00:49:06.160 --> 00:49:15.440 at the parliament, then the Soviet state disappeared as a thing because people's ideas changed. 458 00:49:15.440 --> 00:49:22.360 Individuals are real in a different way than these institutions are. 459 00:49:22.360 --> 00:49:32.360 depend on their thoughts and meanings, and so when you say that libertarians believe that it's just a mere shadowy emanation, 460 00:49:32.360 --> 00:49:40.360 I don't think that's necessarily the right way of putting it, or a clear way of putting it. 461 00:49:40.360 --> 00:49:48.360 Well, I think you were quoting me there, but I was paraphrasing Lisbeth earlier. I did change, I just thought I wouldn't state it exactly. 462 00:49:48.360 --> 00:49:53.360 I was paraphrasing something that he asserts. 463 00:49:53.360 --> 00:49:56.360 And again, it's a really wonderful essay. 464 00:49:56.360 --> 00:49:59.360 It has been reproduced a couple of times. 465 00:49:59.360 --> 00:50:03.360 You don't have to go back to 1980 and find the modern age. 466 00:50:03.360 --> 00:50:05.360 It's really a wonderful essay. 467 00:50:05.360 --> 00:50:07.360 But alas, there are no footnotes. 468 00:50:07.360 --> 00:50:10.360 And he mentions no libertarians by name. 469 00:50:10.360 --> 00:50:12.360 It's kind of unsettling. 470 00:50:12.360 --> 00:50:17.360 But I've certainly known libertarians who seem to me to get fairly close to that. 471 00:50:17.360 --> 00:50:28.360 But on the other hand, I've known others who are self-professed libertarians, like Boas and Murray, who don't seem to be talking that language to me. 472 00:50:28.360 --> 00:50:31.360 I'm sorry, should I go back to... 473 00:50:31.360 --> 00:50:38.360 It's just a quick comment. The reason that I find concern is when I see statements like the abstract individual, 474 00:50:38.360 --> 00:50:47.360 Just seems wrong to me. The individuals are real, and they're more real in a sense than the institutions, which are just a result of their actions. 475 00:50:47.360 --> 00:50:53.360 Well, again, I feel comfortable with that. Right here? 476 00:50:53.360 --> 00:51:15.360 I'm a little concerned about the usage of social pluralism and the grouping of NISBID with Hayek, specifically in regards to the way NISBID talks about the two forces of conservatism. 477 00:51:15.360 --> 00:51:26.360 The first to be anti-status and the second to protect, reinforce, nurture where necessary the very groups and associations which form the true building blocks of the social order. 478 00:51:26.360 --> 00:51:39.360 I'm curious if this second task doesn't present an excessive emphasis on the intrinsic qualities of particular institutions 479 00:51:39.360 --> 00:52:09.360 and ignores the more Hayekian conception of recognizing the process in which we create institutions that a more Misesian would say that is categorized by volunteerism and ownership and property that we can systematically recognize the benefits of, say, capitalist organizations versus status organizations but to just say, to support the groups and associations which form the true building blocks of the social work 480 00:52:09.360 --> 00:52:30.360 I mean, it implies things like churches and businesses, but I think an effect of framing it that way might turn into like a bipartisan platform conception, in which we're more interested in particular policy issues and the stances in which these institutions take versus these other institutions. 481 00:52:30.360 --> 00:52:43.360 So the libertarian would be left to say, I'm an advocate of the church over the state, but that doesn't necessarily close the door at eliminating that church from becoming stated. 482 00:53:00.360 --> 00:53:17.360 I should say this, I may be the only sociologist in the country who calls himself a classical liberal, and who teaches Hayek and has for 17 years in a core class. 483 00:53:17.360 --> 00:53:29.360 I'm a great enthusiast for Hayek. I would have to concede this, he spends much more time talking about the importance of the rules of the extended order. 484 00:53:29.360 --> 00:53:37.120 That's the important thing in Hayek. But I do think that those passages I 485 00:53:37.120 --> 00:53:43.520 quoted are really quite important. As in all classical liberal thought, there's a 486 00:53:43.520 --> 00:53:51.240 fundamental divide between institutions wherein strangers meet and institutions 487 00:53:51.240 --> 00:53:57.080 that are familial. You can find it in Hume, Smith, the realm of benevolence, the realm 488 00:53:57.080 --> 00:54:04.480 of Justice, and it may be, just trying to make sense of what Nisbett is saying there, 489 00:54:04.480 --> 00:54:12.040 for those who he's criticizing, there may be a certain temptation to neglect the significance 490 00:54:12.040 --> 00:54:21.280 of those, I'll even use the term, natural institutions of the family. 491 00:54:21.280 --> 00:54:27.000 I was online just yesterday and came across an essay by a woman who's named many of 492 00:54:27.000 --> 00:54:36.000 A libertarian, though, I'm not certain she still calls herself that, Jennifer Roback Morse, on the family. 493 00:54:36.000 --> 00:54:43.000 And I think she's quite eloquent on the family and points some very important things out to libertarians. 494 00:54:43.000 --> 00:54:49.000 As the family gets weaker and weaker, the state necessarily grows. 495 00:54:49.000 --> 00:54:56.000 I'll recommend this essay. I can't remember the name of the contract in the title. 496 00:54:56.000 --> 00:55:08.000 It was in the April policy review. So again, I'm just trying to make sense of Nisbet's description there of people in 1980 who he calls libertarians. 497 00:55:08.000 --> 00:55:22.000 I don't think that's Hayek. Now, the fact is, I think we'd all agree, it's vastly more important to talk about the rules of the extended order and make a defense for those. 498 00:55:22.000 --> 00:55:28.960 Those. But it's not either or. That in fact, we've got to at the same time recognize the 499 00:55:28.960 --> 00:55:35.520 importance of natural institutions, I use plural, I think there's only one, the family, 500 00:55:35.520 --> 00:55:41.040 and then voluntary associations at the same time. So at least to some degree I'm trying 501 00:55:41.040 --> 00:55:46.080 to just justify what strikes me as really excessive rhetoric there when he's talking 502 00:55:46.080 --> 00:55:59.080 When I came across Mises, I was curious as to how he was so well accepted into the conservative movement. 503 00:55:59.080 --> 00:56:06.080 Then when I read your statements about him denying the term conservative to established conservatives, 504 00:56:06.080 --> 00:56:14.080 I wondered even more, why was he so welcomed in the umbrella of the greater conservative movement 505 00:56:14.080 --> 00:56:19.080 if he was really born in their theoretical side. 506 00:56:19.080 --> 00:56:24.080 It is a good question, and it's something of a mystery. 507 00:56:24.080 --> 00:56:31.080 He was an engaging man and a man with quite a bit of public influence. 508 00:56:31.080 --> 00:56:37.080 He was an extremely handsome man, not that I'm thinking people too influenced by that sort of thing, 509 00:56:37.080 --> 00:56:40.080 but it is peculiar that he got away with things. 510 00:56:40.080 --> 00:56:46.080 I gave a presentation in April to ISI Group, a conference of about 300 people. 511 00:56:46.080 --> 00:56:49.080 Much of what I said today was drawn from that. 512 00:56:49.080 --> 00:56:57.080 And there I had occasion to point out that he was not pro-abortion, but he was anti-anti-abortion. 513 00:56:57.080 --> 00:57:04.080 And boy, in that crowd, they just shut off. 514 00:57:04.080 --> 00:57:08.080 He was not opposed to abortion. 515 00:57:08.080 --> 00:57:17.080 He just shut down. I could see the crowd, most of them very religious, intensely evangelical and catholic students. 516 00:57:17.080 --> 00:57:23.080 It was over. I didn't need to say anything more after that. Nisbet pitched it. 517 00:57:23.080 --> 00:57:28.080 And I even had a fellow from Christendom College say, should we have had this conference on Robert Nisbet? 518 00:57:28.080 --> 00:57:36.080 He's not a conservative. Early on he was very close to Russell Kirk. 519 00:57:36.080 --> 00:57:46.080 Issues like abortion did not loom large for people who called themselves conservative in 50 to 73 when he was establishing his reputation. 520 00:57:46.080 --> 00:57:52.080 He did write beautifully. He really was a wonderful stylist of the English language. 521 00:57:52.080 --> 00:57:59.080 It's worth reading even if you don't think you'll like him because of his capacity to turn a phrase. 522 00:57:59.080 --> 00:58:07.080 And he was well connected. He ended up at AEI. He was close with people like Irving Kristol and others. 523 00:58:07.080 --> 00:58:16.080 Certainly, no doubt, there were people who wouldn't have much talk with Nisbet, who called themselves conservatives. 524 00:58:16.080 --> 00:58:22.080 I did want to get one on their hand. We need to finish within two minutes, is that right? 525 00:58:22.080 --> 00:58:29.320 Let me just note this, the real mystery for me as a sociologist, again, a peculiar sociologist, 526 00:58:29.320 --> 00:58:36.280 someone who calls himself a classical liberal, how did he flourish so much within my field? 527 00:58:36.280 --> 00:58:43.200 He was a sociologist and a conservative. Many of you have been on college campuses, though 528 00:58:43.200 --> 00:58:52.040 seldom go together, but he did extremely well. He was a dean at Riverside, was the 529 00:58:52.040 --> 00:59:03.040 According to Wilfer McClay, the highest paid professor in the United States when he became the Albert Schweitzer Professor of Humanities at Columbia, 530 00:59:03.040 --> 00:59:10.040 was the president of the Pacific Sociological Society and a conservative. 531 00:59:10.040 --> 00:59:16.040 Again, this may just be that I came of age as a sociologist in the 70s and 80s, 532 00:59:16.040 --> 00:59:21.480 And there were about three of us who would fall anywhere on the right side of the spectrum. 533 00:59:21.480 --> 00:59:28.280 I'm exaggerating. There are more than three. But that, for me, is even a larger mystery. 534 00:59:28.280 --> 00:59:31.800 How did he flourish as much as he did in sociology? 535 00:59:33.080 --> 00:59:36.600 I said I would get your hand, so maybe we should make this the last question. 536 00:59:37.800 --> 00:59:41.080 I was just wondering if you could elaborate on the quote where he says, 537 00:59:41.080 --> 01:00:10.960 I believe I got that quotation I didn't put that 538 01:00:10.960 --> 01:00:16.960 I put the page in on that. I just put some of those page numbers in there to remind me. 539 01:00:16.960 --> 01:00:21.960 I believe that came from the present age. If not, it was from the twilight of authority. 540 01:00:21.960 --> 01:00:30.960 But I must say that it struck me as reminiscent of debates that were going on at an earlier time in the 70s 541 01:00:30.960 --> 01:00:36.960 and maybe into the early 80s about modernization and all of that. 542 01:00:36.960 --> 01:00:44.960 The rhetoric there strikes me as being something from another era. 543 01:00:44.960 --> 01:00:54.960 Now, he can't be described here as someone who is opposed to modernization overall. 544 01:00:54.960 --> 01:01:03.960 At least I wouldn't feel comfortable if I left the sense that he believed that the poor ties should remain poor forever. 545 01:01:03.960 --> 01:01:11.240 But he did think that among what he called the Clarity, there may have been a certain 546 01:01:11.240 --> 01:01:21.640 indifference to local institutions. Anything that represented modernity was ipso facto good. 547 01:01:21.640 --> 01:01:26.480 That's what he's asserting there. I wouldn't want to defend it. When we look at what has 548 01:01:26.480 --> 01:01:32.480 has happened in Asia since he wrote that. Industrialization is damn nifty. 549 01:01:32.480 --> 01:01:38.480 Well, I guess we're out of time. Thank you.