WEBVTT

NOTE The Ignorance of 'New York Magazine'

1
00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:09.880
The Ludwig von Mises Institute presents The Libertarian Tradition, an audio series with

2
00:00:09.880 --> 00:00:13.160
Jeff Rigenbach.

3
00:00:13.160 --> 00:00:20.420
On Boxing Day, December 26th, New York Magazine ran an article, The Trouble with Liberty,

4
00:00:20.420 --> 00:00:25.780
by Christopher Beam, that has provoked a bit of blogging and more than a bit of hand-wringing

5
00:00:25.780 --> 00:00:41.580
The Austrian economist Bob Murphy published a response a couple of weeks ago here on this website, and a fine response it was,

6
00:00:41.580 --> 00:00:52.380
incisively identifying the problems with the way that New York Magazine article portrayed libertarian ideas about taxation, banking policy and war.

7
00:00:52.380 --> 00:00:58.300
I'd like to add a few comments of my own to the ones Bob made, focusing my own attention

8
00:00:58.300 --> 00:01:04.620
on different issues and perhaps doing my part to make certain libertarians understand that,

9
00:01:04.620 --> 00:01:08.340
on the whole, this article was a good thing, not a bad thing.

10
00:01:08.340 --> 00:01:14.220
Oh, it won't win any prizes for the accuracy with which it depicts libertarians and their

11
00:01:14.220 --> 00:01:21.660
ideas, but the author, a young freelancer, not yet 30, did, as Bob Murphy noted, do his

12
00:01:21.660 --> 00:01:22.660
Homework.

13
00:01:22.660 --> 00:01:28.140
To put matters a bit more exactly, Beam did a quick study of the relevant material so

14
00:01:28.140 --> 00:01:32.180
that he could appear to be more knowledgeable than he really is.

15
00:01:32.180 --> 00:01:37.220
One of the basic skills you need to master, it seems to me, if you want to be a successful

16
00:01:37.220 --> 00:01:40.460
practitioner of intellectual journalism.

17
00:01:40.460 --> 00:01:43.140
And on the whole, he did pretty well.

18
00:01:43.140 --> 00:01:48.680
As Bob Murphy puts it, Beam wasn't setting out to write a hatchet job and tries to be

19
00:01:48.680 --> 00:01:51.140
fair to libertarians.

20
00:01:51.140 --> 00:01:59.140
Bob himself managed to read two-thirds of the way through Boehm's article before he even began to feel annoyed by anything in it.

21
00:01:59.140 --> 00:02:05.140
He writes that followers of Murray Rothbard should be grateful for at least certain passages in the article,

22
00:02:05.140 --> 00:02:13.140
so fair and even-handed and accurate are they with regard to libertarians and the libertarian movement.

23
00:02:13.140 --> 00:02:20.140
Needless to say, the entire article is not as fair and even-handed and accurate as certain passages in it may be,

24
00:02:20.140 --> 00:02:21.140
may be.

25
00:02:21.140 --> 00:02:27.140
But even when Boehm makes the usual crude errors commonly made by people trying to understand

26
00:02:27.140 --> 00:02:32.180
the libertarian movement as outsiders, he manages to be less offensive than he might

27
00:02:32.180 --> 00:02:33.460
have been.

28
00:02:33.460 --> 00:02:39.260
Like most outsiders, Boehm is strongly drawn to the notion that libertarians and conservatives

29
00:02:39.260 --> 00:02:44.620
have something in common other than putting their pants on one leg at a time.

30
00:02:44.620 --> 00:02:50.300
He's strongly drawn to the idea, that is, that libertarians and conservatives have something

31
00:02:50.300 --> 00:02:53.660
in common ideologically.

32
00:02:53.660 --> 00:02:59.500
Beam gives evidence early on of actually understanding what libertarianism is.

33
00:02:59.500 --> 00:03:05.820
He quotes the definition offered by David Bowes of the Cato Institute in his book, Libertarianism

34
00:03:05.820 --> 00:03:12.220
a Primmer, the view that each person has the right to live his life in any way he chooses

35
00:03:12.220 --> 00:03:15.980
so long as he respects the equal rights of others.

36
00:03:15.980 --> 00:03:17.620
This is a good definition.

37
00:03:17.620 --> 00:03:23.700
But before you can even begin to feel congratulatory toward Young Beam, he messes it up.

38
00:03:23.700 --> 00:03:30.100
Like any political philosophy, he writes, libertarianism contains a thousand sub-strains,

39
00:03:30.100 --> 00:03:35.540
ranging from anarchists who want to destroy the state to picket-fence conservatives who

40
00:03:35.540 --> 00:03:39.220
just want to put power in local hands.

41
00:03:39.220 --> 00:03:46.560
Oh, and how do conservatives who just want to put power in local hands exemplify the

42
00:03:46.560 --> 00:03:52.600
view that each person has the right to live his life in any way he chooses, so long as

43
00:03:52.600 --> 00:03:55.620
he respects the equal rights of others?

44
00:03:55.620 --> 00:04:01.180
How exactly do such conservatives qualify as libertarians at all?

45
00:04:01.180 --> 00:04:06.740
Are laws regulating what drugs people can take, what pictures they can look at and what

46
00:04:06.740 --> 00:04:13.660
What They Can Read, Long Pet Enthusiasms of Conservatives, rendered somehow libertarian

47
00:04:13.660 --> 00:04:18.700
by being imposed on people by local hands?

48
00:04:18.700 --> 00:04:24.780
In another passage, Beam insists that the Tea Party is the closest thing to a mass libertarian

49
00:04:24.780 --> 00:04:30.920
movement in recent memory, despite the fact that, by his own admission, tea partiers surveyed

50
00:04:30.920 --> 00:04:37.120
by Cato split down the middle between social conservatives and social liberals, making

51
00:04:37.120 --> 00:04:42.640
half of them traditional republicans and half libertarians.

52
00:04:42.640 --> 00:04:46.200
But what sort of libertarians are these people?

53
00:04:46.200 --> 00:04:51.960
The kind who say they want lower taxes, a smaller government, a free market and personal

54
00:04:51.960 --> 00:04:58.440
freedom, but also believe it is self-defense to drop bombs on innocent civilians who happen

55
00:04:58.440 --> 00:05:21.960
Beem also writes that libertarians want less state intrusion into the market, which aligns

56
00:05:21.960 --> 00:05:28.080
them with Republicans, but also less interference in social choices, which aligns them with

57
00:05:28.080 --> 00:05:31.560
with Democrats Wrong, on both counts.

58
00:05:31.560 --> 00:05:36.800
First, Republicans do not want less state intrusion into the market.

59
00:05:36.800 --> 00:05:44.800
John McCain, the 2008 GOP nominee for president and a good example of a mainstream Republican,

60
00:05:44.800 --> 00:05:48.600
supported Obama's bailout of the financial services industry.

61
00:05:48.600 --> 00:05:52.360
He also supports regulating tobacco as a drug.

62
00:05:52.360 --> 00:05:58.000
Second, Democrats do not necessarily want less interference in social choices.

63
00:05:58.000 --> 00:06:04.000
It is Democrats who have given us laws regulating speech that is politically incorrect, that

64
00:06:04.000 --> 00:06:06.880
is, speech that might offend someone.

65
00:06:06.880 --> 00:06:13.400
It is Democrats who urge us to ban or regulate every legal product some bureaucrat has decided

66
00:06:13.400 --> 00:06:15.100
is not good for you.

67
00:06:15.100 --> 00:06:21.280
It is Democrats who stand most firmly and fanatically behind laws restricting the ownership

68
00:06:21.280 --> 00:06:23.480
and use of guns.

69
00:06:23.480 --> 00:06:29.920
Still, admittedly, Beam's understanding of American political realities is not so crude

70
00:06:29.920 --> 00:06:34.480
that he thinks of libertarians as simply part of the American right.

71
00:06:34.480 --> 00:06:40.320
As he himself puts it, there's no inherent reason that free marketers and social conservatives

72
00:06:40.320 --> 00:06:43.720
should be allied under the republican umbrella.

73
00:06:43.720 --> 00:06:48.960
It's true, he acknowledges, that republicans speak the language of libertarianism.

74
00:06:48.960 --> 00:06:54.320
They talk about shrinking government and cutting the deficit, but Boehm frankly regards this

75
00:06:54.320 --> 00:06:57.060
Republican talk as hypocrisy.

76
00:06:57.060 --> 00:07:03.440
For not only have Republicans studiously avoided specifics when it comes to deficit reduction,

77
00:07:03.440 --> 00:07:07.660
they have also followed a consistent policy when in power.

78
00:07:07.660 --> 00:07:11.000
They talk shrinkage, do growth.

79
00:07:11.000 --> 00:07:16.120
Even right-wing godhead Ronald Reagan expanded the federal government, bailed out Social

80
00:07:16.120 --> 00:07:22.480
Social Security and signed off on tax hikes. Bush 43 was only the latest in a long line

81
00:07:22.480 --> 00:07:25.080
of Republican spenders.

82
00:07:25.080 --> 00:07:31.360
It should come as no surprise then that libertarianism has adherents on the left, too. They just

83
00:07:31.360 --> 00:07:38.840
organize around different issues. Whereas righty libertarians stew over taxes and bailouts,

84
00:07:38.840 --> 00:07:45.320
lefty libertarians despise de facto suspension of habeas corpus, surveillance and restrictions

85
00:07:45.320 --> 00:07:46.880
on whom you can marry.

86
00:07:46.880 --> 00:07:52.360
Thus, right-wing libertarians charge that the Bush presidency gave the lie to small

87
00:07:52.360 --> 00:07:59.840
government can't by pushing Medicare Part D, No Child Left Behind, and a $3 trillion

88
00:07:59.840 --> 00:08:06.720
war, while left-wing libertarians are furious that Obama talked a big game on civil liberties

89
00:08:06.720 --> 00:08:11.880
but has caved on everything from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to the Defense

90
00:08:11.880 --> 00:08:14.280
of Marriage Act to Gitmo.

91
00:08:14.280 --> 00:08:20.280
Meanwhile, the country faces a massive and growing deficit, too much government, that

92
00:08:20.280 --> 00:08:26.200
neither party has the power or the inclination to fix.

93
00:08:26.200 --> 00:08:31.240
Beam thinks it's significant that, as he puts it, the biggest victories of the right

94
00:08:31.240 --> 00:08:37.080
and the left in the last weeks of this lame duck session of Congress were about stripping

95
00:08:37.080 --> 00:08:43.160
down government, tax cuts, and releasing the shackles of don't ask, don't tell.

96
00:08:43.160 --> 00:08:51.320
He comments, If there were ever a time to harness libertarian energy, on left and right, it's now.

97
00:08:51.320 --> 00:08:52.720
Beam goes further.

98
00:08:52.720 --> 00:08:58.040
The controversy just before Thanksgiving about the Transportation Security Administration's

99
00:08:58.040 --> 00:09:04.600
new airport body scanners, he writes, was a reminder of just how strong, not to mention

100
00:09:04.600 --> 00:09:09.160
loud, the libertarian streak is in American politics.

101
00:09:09.160 --> 00:09:14.620
He believes that there's never been a better time to be a libertarian than now.

102
00:09:14.620 --> 00:09:21.040
The right is still railing against interventionist policies like the troubled asset relief program,

103
00:09:21.040 --> 00:09:24.480
the stimulus package and health care reform.

104
00:09:24.480 --> 00:09:30.680
Citizens of all political stripes recoil against the nanny state, which is nannier than ever,

105
00:09:30.680 --> 00:09:36.520
passing anti-smoking laws, banning trans fats, posting calorie counts, prohibiting

106
00:09:36.520 --> 00:09:54.120
Behm presents some interesting statistics to back up this part of his argument.

107
00:09:54.120 --> 00:10:00.680
He reports, without identifying his source, that about one in ten Americans self-identifies

108
00:10:00.680 --> 00:10:28.640
As I've already observed, this rough-and-ready sorting device, economically conservative and

109
00:10:28.640 --> 00:10:33.840
and Socially Liberal is not a particularly useful one if what you're trying to do is

110
00:10:33.840 --> 00:10:38.800
separate out libertarians from the surrounding statists.

111
00:10:38.800 --> 00:10:43.440
Economically conservative is really just another name for looking with favor on handouts to

112
00:10:43.440 --> 00:10:45.400
big business.

113
00:10:45.400 --> 00:10:50.300
Conservatives do not advocate a truly free market, and it is those who regard themselves

114
00:10:50.300 --> 00:10:56.080
as socially liberal who are largely responsible for the recent penetration of the nanny state

115
00:10:56.080 --> 00:10:58.680
and to Issues of Nutrition.

116
00:10:58.680 --> 00:11:04.940
More important, you can be economically conservative and socially liberal while also taking the

117
00:11:04.940 --> 00:11:11.680
profoundly un-libertarian position that it is all right, or even admirable, to reign

118
00:11:11.680 --> 00:11:18.440
death on innocent third parties to a dispute between states, one of which may well be worse

119
00:11:18.440 --> 00:11:21.640
than the other, but both of which are illegitimate.

120
00:11:21.640 --> 00:11:28.400
Still, Beam reports that the number of Americans who describe themselves as economically conservative

121
00:11:28.400 --> 00:11:31.780
and socially liberal seems to be growing.

122
00:11:31.780 --> 00:11:40.080
In a 2009 Gallup poll, he notes, 23% of Americans responded to questions about the role of government

123
00:11:40.080 --> 00:11:46.840
in a way that categorizes them as libertarian, up from 18% in 2000.

124
00:11:46.840 --> 00:11:54.280
A survey conducted by Zogby for the Cato Institute has put the libertarian vote at around 15%.

125
00:11:54.280 --> 00:11:57.600
Loosen the wording and the pool expands.

126
00:11:57.600 --> 00:12:03.320
When the Zogby survey asked voters if they would describe themselves as fiscally conservative

127
00:12:03.320 --> 00:12:10.300
and socially liberal, also known as libertarian, the number rose to 44%.

128
00:12:10.300 --> 00:12:37.300
Of course, the more you loosen the wording, the greater the risk you run of counting as libertarians people who erroneously believe themselves to be libertarians because they don't really understand what libertarianism entails and implies.

129
00:12:37.300 --> 00:12:43.240
Still, setting all my caveats aside for the moment, it seems encouraging that such a large

130
00:12:43.240 --> 00:12:49.820
proportion of American adults think of themselves as advocates of small, inexpensive government,

131
00:12:49.820 --> 00:12:55.240
a free market, and a society in which people mind their own business and leave their fellow

132
00:12:55.240 --> 00:12:59.340
citizens alone to live their own lives as they prefer.

133
00:12:59.340 --> 00:13:04.600
A society in which anything that's peaceful is tolerated.

134
00:13:04.600 --> 00:13:10.600
On the other hand, whatever people tell opinion pollsters, however they may say they identify

135
00:13:10.600 --> 00:13:16.400
themselves, it is not yet possible to achieve any significant portion of the libertarian

136
00:13:16.400 --> 00:13:20.100
agenda through the use of the political process.

137
00:13:20.100 --> 00:13:25.200
As Beam puts it, if a libertarian wants to get elected, he's going to have to bend

138
00:13:25.200 --> 00:13:29.280
a few principles, deal with reality as it exists.

139
00:13:29.280 --> 00:13:32.200
The same is true if he wants to legislate.

140
00:13:32.200 --> 00:13:37.360
He points out that since the election that made the supposedly libertarian-leaning Rand

141
00:13:37.360 --> 00:13:44.000
Paul a Senator from Kentucky, the newly elected Senator has challenged Republican orthodoxy

142
00:13:44.000 --> 00:13:50.120
by suggesting he's willing to cut military spending, but during an appearance on CNN

143
00:13:50.120 --> 00:13:55.920
on November 9th, a week after the election, he ended the interview rather than name a

144
00:13:55.920 --> 00:13:57.400
spending cut.

145
00:13:57.400 --> 00:14:02.720
And as for Ron Paul's heroic call for abolition of the Federal Reserve Board,

146
00:14:02.720 --> 00:14:10.720
Beam writes correctly that if he tried, Republicans would smother him just as quickly as Democrats would.

147
00:14:10.720 --> 00:14:16.300
It might seem ironic that libertarian goals are politically unattainable at present,

148
00:14:16.300 --> 00:14:21.120
even though there's never been a better time to be a libertarian than now.

149
00:14:21.120 --> 00:14:26.640
For as Beam notes, there's no idea more fundamental to our country's history.

150
00:14:26.640 --> 00:14:32.140
Every political group claims the founders as its own, but libertarians have more purchase

151
00:14:32.140 --> 00:14:33.300
than most.

152
00:14:33.300 --> 00:14:38.760
The American Revolution was a libertarian movement, rejecting overweening government

153
00:14:38.760 --> 00:14:39.760
power.

154
00:14:39.760 --> 00:14:45.520
The Constitution was a libertarian document that limited the role of the state to society's

155
00:14:45.520 --> 00:14:52.240
most basic needs, like a legislature to pass laws, a court system to interpret them, and

156
00:14:52.240 --> 00:14:54.420
a military to protect them.

157
00:14:54.420 --> 00:15:00.580
So some founders, like John Adams and Alexander Hamilton, wanted to centralize power.

158
00:15:00.580 --> 00:15:06.540
All the government-run trappings that came after—the Fed, highways, public schools,

159
00:15:06.540 --> 00:15:12.720
a one-and-a-half-trillion-dollar-a-year entitlement system—were arguably departures from our

160
00:15:12.720 --> 00:15:16.620
society's hard libertarian core.

161
00:15:16.620 --> 00:15:18.100
And so they were.

162
00:15:18.100 --> 00:15:23.960
For that matter, contrary to Beam's rather naive assumption, the U.S. Constitution was

163
00:15:23.960 --> 00:15:27.720
was a departure from our country's hard libertarian core.

164
00:15:27.720 --> 00:15:33.360
It was, really, the founding document of the Counter-Revolution that set in only a few

165
00:15:33.360 --> 00:15:40.240
years after the Revolution itself was supposedly won and began rolling back its achievements.

166
00:15:40.240 --> 00:15:45.440
If Beam had a firmer grasp of the realities of American history, he would not have made

167
00:15:45.440 --> 00:15:46.440
this error.

168
00:15:46.440 --> 00:15:52.240
Similarly, it might be argued that if more Americans had a firmer grasp of the realities

169
00:15:52.240 --> 00:15:58.680
of American History, they might support libertarian reforms more readily at the ballot box.

170
00:15:58.680 --> 00:16:04.400
For example, most Americans believe that, as Christopher Beam puts it, there are reasons

171
00:16:04.400 --> 00:16:10.160
our current society evolved out of a libertarian document like the Constitution.

172
00:16:10.160 --> 00:16:15.920
The Federal Reserve was created after the Panic of 1907 to help the government reduce

173
00:16:15.920 --> 00:16:17.680
economic uncertainty.

174
00:16:17.680 --> 00:16:24.200
The Civil Rights Act was necessary because states' rights had become a cover for unconstitutional

175
00:16:24.200 --> 00:16:25.280
practices.

176
00:16:25.280 --> 00:16:30.320
The welfare system evolved because private charity didn't suffice.

177
00:16:30.320 --> 00:16:32.380
Well, no.

178
00:16:32.380 --> 00:16:36.800
The Constitution is not a particularly libertarian document.

179
00:16:36.800 --> 00:16:41.900
The Federal Reserve does not help the government reduce economic uncertainty.

180
00:16:41.900 --> 00:16:46.200
The government is the major source of economic uncertainty.

181
00:16:46.200 --> 00:16:51.280
The Federal Reserve is its principal tool in creating such uncertainty.

182
00:16:51.280 --> 00:16:57.460
The Civil Rights Act outlawed freedom of association on private property, which up to that time

183
00:16:57.460 --> 00:17:00.300
had been entirely constitutional.

184
00:17:00.300 --> 00:17:06.280
And actually, a combination of private charity and families taking care of their own did

185
00:17:06.280 --> 00:17:12.680
suffice to provide for almost all cases of indigence up to the time of the New Deal.

186
00:17:12.680 --> 00:17:20.180
For more about the specifics, see Marvin Olasky's 1992 book, The Tragedy of American Compassion.

187
00:17:20.180 --> 00:17:25.800
The welfare system evolved to give politicians something to trade for votes, and to advance

188
00:17:25.800 --> 00:17:31.160
the agendas of certain politically influential special interests.

189
00:17:31.160 --> 00:17:36.240
Beam would do well, as would all other interested parties, to take a look at Murray Rothbard's

190
00:17:36.240 --> 00:17:42.600
article Origins of the Welfare State in America, written around the same time as Olasky's

191
00:17:42.600 --> 00:17:43.600
Look.

192
00:17:43.600 --> 00:17:48.760
Rothbard reminds us, for example, that among the interests lobbying hard for adoption of

193
00:17:48.760 --> 00:17:56.760
the Social Security Act in 1935 were big businesses who were already voluntarily providing costly

194
00:17:56.760 --> 00:18:02.640
old age pensions to their employees and were hoping to use the Federal Government to force

195
00:18:02.640 --> 00:18:08.680
their small business competitors into paying for similar costly programs.

196
00:18:08.680 --> 00:18:15.480
So it is, Rothbard explains, that the enabling legislation for the Social Security boondoggle

197
00:18:15.480 --> 00:18:22.360
deliberately penalizes the lower-cost employer and cripples him by artificially raising his

198
00:18:22.360 --> 00:18:26.200
costs compared to the large employer.

199
00:18:26.200 --> 00:18:31.200
Also injured, of course, are the consumers and the taxpayers who are forced to pay for

200
00:18:31.200 --> 00:18:33.480
this largesse.

201
00:18:33.480 --> 00:18:39.780
So, all in all, I agree with Bob Murphy that Christopher Beam did his homework before undertaking

202
00:18:39.780 --> 00:18:42.400
his article, The Problem with Liberty.

203
00:18:42.400 --> 00:18:46.340
I agree that he didn't set out to do a hatchet job on us.

204
00:18:46.340 --> 00:18:52.920
And I think that by and large he did an unusually creditable job, particularly for one so young

205
00:18:52.920 --> 00:18:56.740
and for a reporter working in the mainstream media.

206
00:18:56.740 --> 00:19:02.320
Beam's chief problem is a certain degree of historical illiteracy, but that's commonplace

207
00:19:02.320 --> 00:19:04.120
in our society.

208
00:19:04.120 --> 00:19:09.240
It is, therefore, one of the chief things we have to focus on in our educational efforts

209
00:19:09.240 --> 00:19:16.200
to reach the day when something seriously close to libertarianism is politically achievable

210
00:19:16.200 --> 00:19:18.620
in this country.

211
00:19:18.620 --> 00:19:19.720
This is Jeff Rigenbach.

212
00:19:32.320 --> 00:19:36.320
The Theory of Money and Credit