When Conservatives Are Right

By On October 24, 2012 · 63 Comments · In Current Events, Libertarianism, Liberty

I’m a libertarian, not a conservative. We all know what that means. However, there is a point where, in my judgment, conservatives are right: Obama and the high liberals want a sharp reduction of American influence in the world. (Gallup reports that if the vote for the American presidency were held globally Obama would get 80%. That is predictable: it reveals the correct perception by others that Obama is the one to lead the United States into global decline.) In this call for American disengagement, high liberals are joined by my fellow libertarians. But, as I argued before in this blog, this is a grave mistake. If the world must have a hegemon, by all means, the United States, with all its imperfections, is the best the world will get. When I say best, I mean the United States is the one hegemon that is likely to preserve and defend liberal values more than any alternative. Put differently: there are libertarian reasons to support a prominent role of the United States in world affairs. Not reasons of strategy or power, a la Kissinger, but moral reasons. Liberty is a rare and delicate commodity. It takes very little to destroy it.  The libertarian mainstream isolationist doctrine is naïve and self-defeating. Of course, we must put pressure from within to get our government to do the right thing. I support civilian trials for terrorists, and have raised serious doubts about targeted killings. My views on coercive interrogations and surveillance are in line with libertarian mainstream thought. But the notion that the United States is a force for evil in the world must be rejected. I cringe when I see my libertarian friends post about the (objectionable) power of the President to detain terrorists indefinitely, while saying nothing about the outrageous violations of human rights in other nations. I sense a lack of proportion, as if the United States anti-terrorist policy (objectionable as it is) was the main threat to liberty with which a liberty-lover should be concerned. It is not. (This does not prejudge the important issue, which libertarians rightly underscore, of the justified demands that our government may press on the citizenry to sustain its global position.)

 
  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1702318862 Jason Brennan

    In contrast, I see our foreign policy as a force for evil that makes us and the world less free overall.

    • Fernando Teson

      Sure. Try the Soviets Union or China as hegemons.That will surely help liberty.

      • http://www.facebook.com/yourfriendben Ben Simon

        Who said we needed a hegemon?

        • http://twitter.com/Locker205 Zachary Taylor

          Even if we didn’t have a hegemon we’d still get a bipolar or multipolar world in which all the nations that the author believes would make objectionable hegemons are still the most powerful.

        • http://twitter.com/rinkumathew Rinku Mathew

          No one did. Fernando’s statement was a conditional. “…If the world must have a hegemon, by all means, the United States, with all its imperfections, is the best the world will get….”

        • RickDiMare

          What’s driving the need for a hegemon seems to be the need to develop a reliable worldwide monetary system that can accurately measure value and establish a uniform system of property rights. And as Mr. Teson says, the United States, with all its flaws, is in the best position to provide this. I agree.

    • Sean II

      I see our foreign policy as a force for stupidity that fails to make us or the world more free.

      But the world doesn’t need any help making itself less free. Whatever mischief we cause down in the desert or up in the mountains, it’s pretty much a lateral move in terms of unfreedom.

      And it would be irresponsible to forget that, for about five decades, our foreign policy was the only thing making the world less a living diorama of 1984.

      That remains true, even if we totally missed the cue to bow and go home.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Alex-Durante/602647576 Alex Durante

    Wow I thought I was the only libertarian that felt this way. Great post.

  • http://thecrackshotcrackpot.wordpress.com The Crackshot Crackpot

    Jacques Delacroix, a sociologist educated at Stanford many, many, many years ago, also has similar thoughts. I recommend reading through the comments thread as well…

  • http://www.facebook.com/erik.mn.9 Erik Mn

    You’ve given bleeding heart a whole new meaning. I’ll never feel like you do, and I “reject” your ideas. Does this make you want to put your mitts all over me? Step off!

  • djw

    This comment section should be interesting.

    I’ll leave the moral issue alone and take issue with an empirical one: that Obama has been or is likely to read to a retreat from the broad “US as global hegemon” status quo. If anything, the Obama administration is rather less likely to do things that will lead to a reduction of effective American influence in the medium term than a hypothetical Romney administration (or, for that matter, the very real Bush administration).

    • djw

      read sb lead

    • http://www.facebook.com/people/Jerome-Bigge/100003095962760 Jerome Bigge

      The use of force to the excessive degree the US has done in the past decade has created more enemies for the US than what existed prior to our attacks upon the people of Iraq and Afghanistan. The more innocent people killed by our drones (collateral damage in US military terms) merely increases the number of people who have every reason to hate the US. In effect we are creating enemies faster than ever. Our drone warfare in Pakistan is likely to create another enemy nation, this one with known nuclear weapons. The long term consequences of all this are not likely to be good for the USA. Libertarians understand that the use of force (except in self defense) is eventually counterproductive.

      • Sean II

        Obviously this madness has to end, but we should be prepared for the possibility that our enemies will remain enemies long after the last drone strike is struck.

        Going cold turkey on global military adventurism is a necessary condition for the United States to stop making new foes, but at this point it’s probably not going to be sufficient.

        There always was a tiny bit of truth in that “they hate us for our freedom” argument, even if the people making the argument had no clue what freedom really is. Probably it’s fairer to say “they hate us for about fifty different reasons, one of which is we’re jingoistic psychos, and another of which is we don’t beat women or kill gay people as often as they think we should.”

        Hell, at this point, THEY might not know exactly why they hate us.

  • Ethan Pooley (furball4)

    This leaves a lot of open territory. “A prominent role”. “A hegemon”. We can be those things without adopting others’ national security interests as our own. And being a force for good requires that we deal with other nations respectfully – hardly a description of our history in, say, the Middle East. We primarily treat them as means, not as ends in themselves. We could be a force for good, but instead we seem to be a paranoid manipulator.

    Prominence arises from being the strongest economy and the educator of the world’s elite, too – both positions which we have endangered in pursuit of a military policy that is far removed from any clear notion of national security.

  • Concern guy

    The account manager of bleeding heart libertarians should have a better criteria in selecting posts. This one was really poor, claiming to be libertarian thinking but It was just some amateur writing of old fashion Reaganism. Please be serious again.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/James-Peron/1311942969 James Peron

    US foreign policy not only has created endless enemies but it has undermined freedom int he US. Even if I assumed that US interventionism made the rest of the world better off, I know it makes the US worse off. It undermines freedom in the US.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-peron/perpetual-war_b_2013007.html

  • MARK_D_FRIEDMAN

    Fernando,
    Thanks for this, which is long overdue at BHL. I agree with every word. It opens up a larger issue, which I believe also merits a full discussion: Is there a doctrinaire liberrtarian position that favors non-interventionism or “isolationism” (the more familar term)? I think not. I believe that one’s views on foreign policy are the product of various empirical judgments and philosophical positions (just war theory, doctrine of double effect, etc.) that are not compelled, in either direction, by first libertarian principles. Thus, reasonable libertarians can disagree.

    This is obviously a complicated issue that will not be resolved any time soon. But I will try to get the ball rolling with one simple thought. Locke held that in a state of nature an unpunished aggressor represents a threat to all law-abiding people, and that accordingly he may be punished by all, not just those he victimized. For all practical purposes the international realm is a state of nature, and therefore all relatively just and peace-loving nations may individually or in concert act to punish aggressors. Of course, whether on a particular set of facts it is wise or prudent to punish is an entirely different question. What do you think?

    • http://independent.academia.edu/DannyFrederick Danny Frederick

      Isn’t there a collectivist assumption lurking there? If I see A attack B, I am entitled to punish A. But I am not entitled to pick up your prized China vase and hit A over the head with it – at least, not without your permission, or, at the very least, not without compensating you for the loss of the vase. But if the government punishes an aggressor government (and not in direct self-defence), it is making its citizens pay the cost of its action – at least, all those citizens who do not agree with the action. Perhaps it could fund the war by means of a tax on those who support it; but then you get a free-rider problem; and that is not the way governments work in any case.

      • MARK_D_FRIEDMAN

        Hi Danny:
        As always, good to hear from you. Your question/challenge is a perfectly reasonable one. For purposes of my short comment, I simply assumed that a relatively just and peaceful state may legitimately employ coercive taxation to fund national defense (the “China vase” in your analogy). In Chapter 4 of my book I provide an extended argument for this view, and an abbreviated discussion here: http://naturalrightslibertarian.com/2012/10/justifying-the-minimal-state-part-ii/#more-441.

  • Sergio Méndez

    Well, I think this post is wrong in many ways. Starting with the the
    idea of a hegemon that “will defend liberal values” all around the
    world. Is not simply an intellectual travesty (because how can you pretend to
    be dominant and defend at the same time values of liberty), but also because
    the evidence against such idea. What has prevailed is precisely, the
    Kissingerian way of power (which is hidden exactly behind the discourse of
    “defense of liberty in the world”), masquerading behind the liberal
    ideology of defending “liberty” in the globe: or, in other words,
    neoconservativism.

    The other part that is wrong with this post is that it assumes
    libertarians only condemn US human rights violations or civil liberties
    violations. Most libertarians are overtly critical of those violations in other
    countries and abuses of power of other government. But even if they didn´t,
    that will not be an excuse to remain also silent about US power abuse. It will
    only mean that those libertarians should start also condemning those abuses in
    other countries that are not the US.

    Finally Mr. Teson says that “I sense a lack of proportion, as if
    the United States anti-terrorist policy (objectionable as it is) was the main
    threat to liberty with which liberty lover should be concerned.” I do not
    know if it is the main threat, but even if it isn´t, it is one of the biggest
    ones for two reasons:

    1. Its violations are amplified by its power. In other words, US abuse
    of power is amplified by the imperial power at its disposal, its gigantic
    military, its enormous economical influence, its presence all around the world
    with military bases.

    2. Because, unlike other countries, US actions are hidden precisely
    behind ideological rhetoric of liberalism (or more exactly, a twisted version
    of it). In other words, they’re many times (sucesfully) sold out as beneficial,
    necessary and good. What is more dangerous that something evil and dangerous
    packet and sold out as virtuous, good, desirable? Mr. Teson post is, again, proof
    of that.

    • Murali

      I want to add to this. Even here in Singapore, which has very friendly relations with the US, I fairly often get looked upon as some weird american apologist when I try to talk about civil liberties. America is perceived as trying to convert the world to liberalism by the sword. This does the cause of liberalism a disservice.

  • Belshazzar

    Starting off with two unsubstantiated claims (liberals want a sharp reduction of American influence in the world… perception by others that Obama is the one to lead the United States into global decline.) and building an argument from these shaky foundations is pretty weak sauce, Fernando.

  • Gavin Beeker

    Mr. Tosen-
    Thank you for writing this excellent post. I grapple between libertarian ideals and the conservative emphasis upon political realism and our duty to project our values throughout the world. And I’m so glad to see this debate opened up here on the sharpest, most thoughtful libertarian site on the web. The United States can and has played a beneficent role in the world – guaranteeing the sovereignty of smaller states against aggressors, ensuring open waters, etc.; we can do this without becoming a police state at home. I think you’ve opened an incredibly fruitful area of discussion here, one that brings libertarian ideology out of the rarefied realm of abstract ideals and towards a tragic view of life, especially where global politics are concerned. To me, the question becomes how can we do this while maintaining a robust constitutional republic? Perhaps we can’t, at least so long as our civic culture is insular and isolationist, but I applaud your bravado to at least address it.

  • http://www.facebook.com/ben.bachrach Ben Bachrach

    Fernando doesn’t explain how the US would obtain/maintain a benevolent hegemon. The professed “end” never justify the “means” because the ends never happen. Following the non-aggression principle is what defines a libertarian. Recommending any policy that violates the NaP because it might protect liberty falls outside of the definition of libertarianism.

  • geoih

    So, you’re a kind of ‘give them liberty, or give them death’ kind of a guy?

  • djw

    Also, would be curious to hear your thoughts on why, if American hegemony is, in fact, good for liberty around the world, Obama is very popular around the world precisely because he’d be end/reduce American hegemony. Are the vast majority of humans anti-liberty? Confused about the actual consequences of American hegemony?

  • http://aaronmclin.blogspot.com/ Aaron

    There is an assumption hidden in all of this, and as it isn’t called out, it doesn’t prompt much debate. Of all of the nations on Earth, I do not believe that the United States is the foremost example of liberal values to be found. Therefore, I would make one change.

    “If the world must have a hegemon, by all means, the United States, with all its imperfections, is the best the world will get. When I say best, I mean the United States is the one hegemon – of those nations that would want the role – that is likely to preserve and defend liberal values more than any alternative.”

    To a certain degree it strikes me that any nation that truly wished to “preserve and defend liberal values” wouldn’t want the role of global hegemon in the first place. I would much more expect a global hegemon to do exactly as I understand the United States to currently be doing – which is to directly protect its own interests. Where those interests call for the imposition of a certain interpretation of liberal values, we’re all over it. But where our interests conflict with those values, we ignore liberalism, even while we speechify about how important it is. Of course it’s hypocritical, even if it’s realistically no more or less hypocritical than any other nation – since most feel the need to wrap their own actions in rhetoric designed to foster legitimacy in the eyes of others.

    Most are critical of the United States for its stance on liberalism for, I believe, the same reason they’re critical of the American stance on gun control. While it’s pretty obvious that Mexico would benefit as much or more than the United States from controlling or banning personal access to firearms, no-one honestly expects Mexico to be able to accomplish any meaningful restrictions. Conversely, the conventional wisdom seems to understand that in the United States, it would be simple. By the same token, people believe the United States could keep its actions much more in line with its rhetoric without risking destabilization of the government or society (although corporate profits might suffer), and so, against that backdrop of raised expectations, people are more disappointed in the United States than they are in Russia, which isn’t seen as remotely capable of managing the same level of liberalism. You may categorize this attitude about Russia as “the soft bigotry of low expectations,” and I wouldn’t necessarily disagree with you, but as they say, life isn’t fair.

    • martinbrock

      “… the United States, with all its imperfections, is the best the world will get.”

      Why should I believe this statement? How can I know that it’s true? When does it cease to be true? Assuming that it has ever been true, how can I know that it hasn’t ceased to be true?

      • http://aaronmclin.blogspot.com/ Aaron

        Not bad questions, but I would submit that Mr. Teson might be a better person to ask them of, since that’s part of his orginal statement. I simply added in the clause “of those nations that would want the role.” But I didn’t want to strip anything of its context, so I included the chunk of the orginal that would surround it. (For some reason, my original italics weren’t preserved.) Personally I think there are better options, but none of them would likely want the role of global hegemon.

  • martinbrock

    “If the world must have a hegemon, …”

    I reject the hypothesis and everything following it. The only universal rule I can support is a rule against all other universal rules, and the United States hardly exemplifies a hegemon enforcing this rule. The United States operates the largest system of lawful slavery on Earth, explicitly established in its Constitution and denied by no one. Anyone believing that the United States is or ever was a great bastion of liberty is out of touch with reality.

    • RickDiMare

      It is easy to underestimate what it takes to establish a monetary system capable of supporting a liberal hierarchy of property rights.

      Money and property exist purely by law, not at all in nature, and therefore require extensive law enforcement systems to support them.

      But again, this is not to say the U.S. presently has its property rights priorities in order. In fact, I think they’re upside down. There’s no recognition of the property right an individual has in labor/wages and way too much legal support for privilege-holders (corporations, patent holders, so-called “owners” of large tracts of land/ocean/atmosphere, people standing close to the Fed, etc.)

      But, generally speaking, and in support of Mr. Teson’s view that the U.S. system is the best we’ll get, the U.S. can no more tolerate international trade partners having their own monetary system to measure economic value anymore than it could tolerate each of the 50 states imposing their own conception of what “dollar” means (or gallon, bushel, pound, acre, ounce, etc.)

      • martinbrock

        Money and property are artifacts established by rules respected within a community, but you overestimate the difficulty of establishing both, and I see no need for any liberal hierarchy.

        The only way to order property rights acceptable to a free people is to defend people respecting any property rights they choose in a community comprised exclusively of people freely respecting the rights. The U.S. does not now and has never defended this principle.

        The incredibly anti-labor policies of the U.S. Is hardly unprecedented. It is the whole history of the United States. Periods in which the U.S. encouraged corporatist labor unions were not exceptional. Some illiberal state policies are better than others, I suppose, but that’s little comfort to the people laboring under the statutory privileges bestowed on more privileged people at their expense.

        If the U.S. system is the best we’ll get, we’re royally screwed, but I refuse to be so pessimistic, even if the refusal requires denying reality. Call it my libertarian faith.

        The U.S. certainly could tolerate 50 monetary systems. It could tolerate 50,000 monetary systems. Free people can easily decide how many monetary systems are enough. Competing currencies have never been more conceivable. If I don’t like the look of the dollar, I can see practically every price at Amazon.com in Danish kroners at the click of a button.

        The only thing preventing me switching all of my accounting to another currency is the necessity of paying countless taxes and other rents imposed by the statutory class commanding my obedience. If I switched to kroners, you and I could still trade though you choose the dollar instead. Each of us could even imagine that everyone else uses the currency of our choice.

        I use one debit card to trade in different currencies in different countries routinely. The U.S. could easily tax my income in any currency of my choice, including a private currency. Amazon.com obviously has all of the necessary information technology already, and this technology is far simpler, and far less ominous, than technology the U.S. employs to design, construct, deploy and (God forbid) operate its arsenal of nuclear weapons.

  • Khan Po

    Hmmmm, I don’t think I agree with you here. I speak against the objectionable power of the President to detain terrorists indefinitely, but not against other human rights violations because my chance of being able to affect change is greater for the former than the latter. I agree that the United States may be the best global force we could have, but I don’t agree that I shouldn’t complain about and try to make changes in the areas where it has been, shall we say…less than good.

  • jcg11

    1. “If the world must have a hegemon, by all means, the United States, with
    all its imperfections, is the best the world will get. When I say best, I
    mean the United States is the one hegemon that is likely to preserve
    and defend liberal values more than any alternative.”

    You present a false comparison here – a U.S. with neo-conservative/conservative policies as hegemon v.s. non-U.S. country as hegemon. That misses the point. The comparison we care about is a U.S. with neo-conservative foreign policies v.s. a U.S. with more libertarian foreign policies. It’s a mistake to assume that libertarian foreign policy is incompatible with U.S. dominance. Simply because the U.S. adopts foreign policies that are not neoconservative does not mean that another country will be dominant.

    2. “There are libertarian reasons to support a prominent role of the United
    States in world affairs. Not reasons of strategy or power, a la
    Kissinger, but moral reasons. Liberty is a rare and delicate commodity.
    It takes very little to destroy it. The libertarian mainstream
    isolationist doctrine is naïve and self-defeating.”

    The problem is that too many conservatives who stress the importance of liberty in foreign policy embrace the paradoxical notion of forcing people to be free (e.g. Iraq). When a larger more powerful country exerts its will over you “for your own good,” this is necessarily inconsistent with liberty. Neoconservative foreign policy is contrary to liberty, and largely ignores other countries rights to self-determination, a fundamentally libertarian idea.

    3. “I cringe when I see my libertarian friends post about the
    (objectionable) power of the President to detain terrorists
    indefinitely, while saying nothing about the outrageous violations of
    human rights in other nations”

    The power of the president directly concerns the people of the U.S. The human rights violations occurring in other nations do not, unless, say, the perpetrator is a threat to the safety of U.S. citizens. The U.S. has no duty to involve themselves in the affairs of other nations. The people of foreign countries have a right to determine for themselves how they choose to be governed, and how to work out the wrongs that occur within their borders, whereas we have no right to tell them how to live their lives.

    • martinbrock

      You make excellent points. Teson presumes that the absence of U.S. hegemony implies the success of some illiberal hegemony instead, but the presumption is baseless. U.S. hegemony doesn’t account for the rising tide of liberalism in the latter half of the 20th century. The failure of illiberal regimes accounts for it.

      Soviet and Chinese tanks didn’t impose state socialism across the world in the 20th century. The idea of state socialism (and closely related fascism) spread across the world, and tanks followed it. When the idea proved disappointing, to put it mildly, other ideas replaced it.

      Had the U.S. intervened even less than it did, state socialism would have risen and then fallen all the same. The destruction in its wake would have been no worse, and the resistance of more liberal states to its advance would have been stronger rather than weaker.

      Unfortunately, bad ideas keep coming back in new guises, but liberals can’t stop the next wave either.

  • Fallon

    High Liberals want to diminish US influence in the same way that Bismarck and American Protestants wanted to undermine Catholicism via forced government schooling. Although the risk to their own upper status as Protestants was on the table too by virtue of a new public administrative vs. traditional private apparatus– Bismarck and the American Blue Bloods took the gamble: they saw themselves in position to man and control the school heirarchy and thereby snuff out Catholic influence; which they did at first, at least in the States. Likewise, the current High Liberals see themselves taking the best offices in the UN, World Bank, IMF, and other forcefully imposed alphabet soup bureaucracies.
    Not Protestants vs. Catholics (immigrants) this time around, the new elitist assumption of power looks like an entitlement for Ivy leaguers and their international academic/technocrat equivalents. Markedly, these worldly elitists relate to each other more than to their fellow countrymen. (But surely, not all of them met at a Goldman Sachs event?)
    Who plays the role of the Catholics? Well, who doesn’t?

  • http://twitter.com/VelizCF CFV

    There is more “conservatism” than just “neocon” conservatism. Check out “paleoconservatism” (the kind of conservatism that wisely would tell you that it was/is a stupid thing to go to Irak -or to Afghanistan- and try to build “democracy (American-style)” there).

    • martinbrock

      Justin Raimondo gave me a reason to identify with some Old Right at least, but I’ve never felt much kinship with any “conservatism”. I don’t want to conserve anything. I want market forces creatively to destroy everything around me continuously. Libertarianism was born and raised on the Left. It’s too bad that the Left then left us, but it didn’t leave us on the Right. Liberty was never on the Right and still isn’t.

      • http://twitter.com/VelizCF CFV

        Martin: thanks for the comment. It was just a quick point about the meaning of “conservatism;” not about libertarianism, or the relation between them.

  • purple_platypus

    I’ve got to call out one other false premise besides the several that have already been mentioned. Does it ever even fucking OCCUR to anyone on the American right that people outside the US prefer Obama because he’s at least somewhat less likely to launch wars of aggression against them for no real reason?!? Because to the rest of us, it’s, like, REALLY bleeding obvious.

    This amounts to reducing US influence only if you believe military aggression is the only means of doing so, and completely ignore the concept of diplomacy – something Obama is, to put it rather mildly, far better at than Bush was or an out-of-touch empty suit like Romney is ever likely to be. Moreover, if such wars of aggression are your idea of “preserv[ing] and defend[ing] liberal values”, then on behalf of everyone outside the US and those in it who take freedom seriously for more people than just themselves, you are cordially invited to take YOUR idea of “liberal values” and shove it up your ass.

    • Aeon Skoble

      “people outside the US prefer Obama because he’s at least somewhat less likely to launch wars of aggression against them for no real reason?!?”
      Which is presumably why he got the Peace Prize. Meanwhile, he’s been incredibly bellicose. Increased troop presence overseas, drone strikes, Gitmo. If people outside the US think that because he’s a Democrat he’ll be more peaceful, they’re as deluded as American progressives.

      • purple_platypus

        I’m well aware that Obama is far from a peacenik. That doesn’t conflict with anything I said. First of all, there is substantial reason to think any current Republican with a reasonable shot at the presidency would be even worse, (a) in taking an even more bellicose position on Iran than Obama and (b) in the offense anyone remotely like Romney is liable to cause from his sheer stupidity, insensitivity and lack of anything resembling human emotion.

        Also, laying Gitmo on Obama is just plain disingenuous. He’s made it clear that he wants it shut down and any time Congress is prepared to cooperate on that, they are welcome to do so. It’s not his fault that he’s dealing with the most obstructionist Congress in history.

        • Aeon Skoble

          “Also, laying Gitmo on Obama is just plain disingenuous. He’s made it clear that he wants it shut down and any time Congress is prepared to cooperate on that, they are welcome to do so. It’s not his fault that he’s dealing with the most obstructionist Congress in history.”
          No. As Commander-in-Chief, he does not need Congress to order the military folks running Gitmo to do anything. This is an all-too-typical case of running against something as a candidate, then finding it expedient to exploit it after you win. His DoJ has fought hard for NDAA. You can’t possibly blame congress for that. Now that he has power, he finds that it’s pretty awesome and wants more of it.

        • jc

          and anyway, didn’t obama also think his getting the peace price was kind of a joke?

          • jc

            prize* ha…

  • Joseph R. Stromberg

    Where conservatives (of certain kinds) tend to be right is in such areas as the claims of community, morality and law as things not necessarily to be invented by
    Emersonian individualists busily reinventing themselves, respect for traditions
    (not all of them), and an understanding that most human beings cannot and will
    not find much moral guidance in the laws of physics and will probably find room
    for religion. Poor old liberals may have to go on, yet a while, characterizing everything they dislike as “feudal survivals” owing perhaps to willful failure to read J. S. Mill.

    *Some* conservatives even question the modern corporation as such (and rightly so). Some of them understand that little “institutional datum” mentioned by Oskar Lange, namely, that in modern societies a very small group of people own most of the means of production and everyone else has to work for them. They don’t find a proletarian society of mass non-ownership very fetching. At this point distributism and agrarianism
    become interesting. Perhaps those roads are closed. If so, then some modest
    welfare institutions may be needed to take up the slack, if we insist on (or have no choice about) the class basis of modern societies. To this extent the BHL project in which libertarians try to think their way out of a corner makes sense.

    What does not make sense is for libertarians (or anyone) to take up mainstream conservative views precisely where conservatives are at their worst, which is in the areas of foreign affairs and national security (as it is called). If the task is merely to reinvent liberal imperialism, there is no need to consult *any* conservatives. We can just re-read J. S. Mill, Alexis de Tocqueville, and others of that ilk. Wars to enforce copyright or impose a monetary unit on the world are not likely to be very popular, unless our rulers really can invent robots and miss-aisles that can do their own moral theory while inflicting injuries, a prospect which remains rather unlikely.

    Bertrand de Jouvenel once contrasted libertarians and securitarians, but, alas, he was only thinking of those who favor economic security. Heaven knows what he would make of our obsessive national securitarians.

    As for America’s worldwide moral leadership, I think much of the world is sick of it, and many of us (Americans) are too. If a society is “about” what its leaders and people do most of the time, as A. J. P. Taylor suggests, then America is about preaching and bombing. Even if the preaching is mainly secular and the bombs are very, very smart, this is not likely to have a happy ending.

    As for dear old ‘market forces creatively destroying everything around us continuously,’ that is part of the problem, not the solution, unless we are to believe that destruction is naturally creative, in which case it is odd for it to be called destruction and not something else. That somehow brings preaching and bombing back to mind, and makes me wonder why BHL engages runaway trolley cars rather than the (so far) undemonstrated morality of airpower.

  • Why Yes Indeed

    It’s interesting that this post is 100% free from any sense of history, of actual empirical facts about U.S. foreign policy. How, exactly, did the U.S. guarantee liberal values in Iran in 1953? Or in Greece from 1967 to 1974? Or in Latin America at just about any time? Did it guarantee liberal values in its support for Saddam Hussein? Does it today in its support of the Saudi gov’t against the marginally less repressive Iranians?

    The U.S. “war on terror” actually IS the main threat to liberty that an American should be concerned with. What effect, exactly, does an obsession with the crimes of foreign regimes have, other than a risk-free moral high?

  • http://twitter.com/PolitixDain Dain Fitzgerald

    “I cringe when I see my libertarian friends post about the
    (objectionable) power of the President to detain terrorists
    indefinitely, while saying nothing about the outrageous violations of
    human rights in other nations.”

    This argument is mirrored oddly enough in domestic squabbles like Juan
    Williams complaining that what happened to Trayvon Martin is dwarfed by
    the black community’s problems stemming from non-police/white people
    actors. The fact is perception and in-group affinity matter as evidenced by the global opinion poll Teson cites.

    Acknowledging the above is ALSO conservative.

  • famadeo

    Are you worried that America is losing as certain kind of influence or influence *at all*? I see some tention between your concern that it’s role in the world is declining and the proposition: “…the United States is the one hegemon that is likely to preserve and defend liberal values more than any alternative.” in that such a proposition is hardly any way to characterize what America’s role has actually consisted of. It’s foreign policy has historically and overwhelmingly been military.

    Also, you say “if there must be a hegemon…”, which seems to me like an act of resignation on the part of a libertarian.

    I guess what concerns me above anything else this: if America’s supposed legacy of freedom around the world is declining, what do you propose should be done to resverse this, if, as you claim, you reject “isolationism” and are alligned with conservatives on this point?

  • ThaomasH

    “in my judgment, conservatives are right: Obama and the high liberals want a sharp reduction of American influence in the world.
    (Gallup reports that if the vote for the American presidency were held globally Obama would get 80%. That is predictable: it reveals the correct perception by others that Obama is the one to lead the United States into global decline.)”

    Both are strange “judgements;” I wonder on what set of evidence they are based.

  • http://www.libertariancomment.com/ Glenn

    Setting aside “thick libertarianism” for a moment, I’d like to frame the question in this way. If one accepts the nature of the national order, human history and the inevitability of empire, then it follows one could recommend the U.S. as less overtly evil, murderous and destructive as many other countries/cultures might be if they were similarly situated. But that is really only an argument based on what’s good for the “world” – what about what’s good for the U.S.A.?

    What are we out to accomplish in the world, can we accomplish it and if so, specifically how? I think this is the question that folks of all political stripes get stuck on, and I think you have foundered on it here. You also axiomatically assume that a state is the only actor that could matter, when in fact L3 or others can put a sizeable amount of military punch anywhere in the world pretty quickly. As an aside, before I get to my main beef, I’d like to point out that the states squeeze out private initiatives that might respond to genocide or other human suffering on an large scale.

    Look at it from another perspective. What are we offering to the world? We’ll keep it stable because that helps us get richer, allows us to live in uninterrupted peace and keeps us from having to fight really big wars? What’s the payoff for people for whom the status quo is let’s say, less than ideal? And it’s pretty clear at this point that we are not able to do a very good job at stabilizing the Muslim world. In fact, look region by region at attitudes and actions towards the U.S. and one can pretty readily conclude that our efforts are not nearly as welcome as we imagine. That’s because the hamhandedness, arrogance and uniintended consequences of our presence and meddling is pretty nasty to be subjected to.

    Me, I agree, we need to try to stabilize the world. I say we build an empire. Let’s open up the books on the U.S. Add new states. Or create an alternate to the U.N. that’s only for countries that celebrate real liberal values. It might just be Estonia, but that would be okay with me. Listen, I’m not saying either of those things actually are good policies but what they reflect is a different instrumentation and strategy for how to achieve stability. What I can’t see doing is more of the same that has the world on a knife’s edge the way it is right now. Empires either grow or die. Our’s should grow – voluntarily with states that want what we have – not Social Democracy, but Liberal Democracy. I know, I dream. Just sayin’…

    • RickDiMare

      “Empires either grow or die. Our’s should grow – voluntarily with states that want what we have – not Social Democracy, but Liberal Democracy.”

      When you say “with states,” I assume you mean states that have been formally incorporated into the union, in which case I’d agree that this is really the only responsible way to expand the U.S. “empire.” But we can’t continue supporting foreign countries that want the advantages and protection our system offers without fully submitting to our tax and monetary laws, i.e., without paying “membership dues” required by the U.S. Constitution (which is not to say U.S. tax attorneys presently have an adequate understanding of how tax laws should be prioritized and enforced).

      • RickDiMare

        “When money shall be recognized in the law, when it is defined, when its volume, magnitude, dimensions, limits are set forth as precisely, fixed as unchangeably, and protected as securely from alteration, as are now the dimensions of the yard-stick, the pint-pot, and the pound-weight, then, and
        then only, will money perfectly resemble other measures; for then only will it become a concrete thing of known dimensions. When this comes to pass, Aristotle’s definition of its function will resume its original correctness, and money will be as fit in fact, as it is now only in theory, to measure the relation called value.” Alexander Del Mar, “The Science of Money” (1885), from Chapter 4, “The Function of Money is to Measure Value” http://ia700408.us.archive.org/19/items/scienceofmoney00delmrich/scienceofmoney00delmrich.pdf

        Here, Del Mar is describing a problem that has existed with the U.S. since the Constitution was ratified.

        I present it to support my position that U.S. statehood must be required of foreign countries who heavily rely on the U.S. to protect their borders and the property rights of their people.

        The problem Del Mar is describing has never been solved, even to this day, probably because U.S. territories have been continually expanding, so the volume of money needed has always been in question.

        In short, a money-issuer must have regulatory control over those that use its currency so the system can accurately measure economic value, and if the money-issuer doesn’t have this power, endless trade wars are the result.

  • Tom Blanton

    Fernando says he is a libertarian, but it sounds like he may be a libertarian but. There are too many libertarian butts in the world.

    Perhaps a discussion of why the world needs a hegemon might help Fernando sort out his issues.

  • Joseph R. Stromberg

    An interesting proposal from ‘Glenn.’

    Question: with all the nice outside states coming into the union, will any provision be made for the peoples of existing states who might wish to *leave* the present union?

    • RickDiMare

      Apparently not.

      “The U.S. Congress may admit new states on an equal footing with existing ones; this last happened in 1959 with the admission of Alaska and Hawaii. The U.S. Constitution is silent on the question of whether states have the power to leave unilaterally, or secede from, the Union, but the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled[2][3] secession to be unconstitutional, a position driven in part by the outcome of the American Civil War.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._State

  • SimpleMachine88

    First, this isn’t a conservative view per se. You sound like the New Republic, or MSNBC on why Congress doesn’t need to worry about a little thing like overthrowing a country.

    Your right that it’s good for other countries to have liberal regimes. On the other hand, I don’t care. I mean I care, but not the “I’m going to get shot over it” kind of caring. And, frankly, I doubt you would either. But congrats on volunteering others to.

    The world is a lot better of with us as the Hegemon, but we aren’t. Hegemoning them is a trouble we don’t need. I’m suppose there’s some reason for other countries, but I know there’s a good reason for oceans.

  • http://twitter.com/gshevlin gshevlin

    The posting destroys its credibility with a whopper of a strawman in the first couple of sentences. The idea that 80% of foreigners wanting Obama to be re-elected means that they want a sharp reduction of American influence in the world is an assertion with no evidence offered to support it. Fernando needs to go back to school and study Argument and Debate 101 if he wants to stand any chance of impressing me. This pile of poorly-constructed cack is almost a waste of bandwidth.

  • Joseph R. Stromberg

    So some guy issues money and thereby gets a right to control everyone for whom he has provided this ‘service,’ whether they wanted it or not. Who is this guy and how may we be rid of him? Let him ‘measure’ his own damned values.

    BTW, when I asked the question about secession, I thought we were dealing in speculative matters, like monetary unification as an argument for empire. I wasn’t expecting to hear about opinions of the Soo-preme Court; although as far as speculative reasoning goes, the Court is very good in its odd little way.

    • RickDiMare

      Unbeknownst to most, taking away the power to issue money (really, the power to issue property rights) away from “some guy” (a king, czar, pope, etc.) was the main reason the Jefferson/Madison duo created a fully public entity called the U.S. federal government, then gave its board of directors (Congress) the exclusive power “to coin [metallic] money.”

      However, over the past several decades we’ve been duped into believing that only the Federal Reserve Corp. can issue money, whose currency is not really money, but a money substitute.

      All non-coin U.S. money is really either a borrowing of coined money under the Borrowing Clause (I:8:2), or a borrowing and lending of the borrowed-coined money under the Commerce Clause (I:8:3). In other words, the power to issue money substitutes can be shared with private parties, but not the power to issue coined “base money.”

      Regarding state secession, individuals are free anytime to leave the country and renounce citizenship, but no state is allowed to secede once incorporated into the United States. This is because the Constitution did not create a contract between state governments and the federal government, but between the people of the states and the federal government.

      This is why we have a dual citizenship, state and federal, and why all power to issue money was stripped from state governments by the Constitution, which sought to establish one uniform national currency, the U.S. dollar, regulated and binding on the people of the states, not on state governments.

      So, there’s nothing “speculative” about the Supreme Court’s reasoning. They’re talking about a binding, contractual, enforceable legal relationship when it comes to money and property rights. Just ask the IRS, who enforces an income tax on all users of money substitutes.

  • Joseph R. Stromberg

    Really, I tend to disregard arguments in which forty-some disembodied 18th-century paragraphs start *dictating* to the states about this and that. In such presentations, agency falls entirely by the wayside and everyone contrives to forget that it was *the states* that *agreed* not to use certain powers which they otherwise could jolly well have gone on using.

    As for the Court, from the day it opened its doors it was always writing little essays in Federalist ideology, in addition to dealing (a bit) with the case in hand. So, yes, I think ‘speculative’ applies. (Of course speculation plus an army will get you a comic-opera exercise in upper-class panic, but let’s leave the alleged suppression of the Whiskey Rebellion to one side.) Since we’ve just been given a good summary of Federalist ideology, I need say no more. (Jefferson had next to nothing to do with the ffounding by the way.)

    It would have been odd for the states to have made a ‘contract’ with a federal government that did not yet exist. If contract theory is to be used, then the only available parties were the states, but all that may be left to another time.

    As for money, it probably won’t do much good to wade into the debate over money issued directly by Congress, money issued by federally chartered super-bankers (= debt), or the additional evils (as some see it) of fractional-reserve banking, with one school calling for its utter suppression (Mises, Rothbard, Hulsmann, Ron Paul et al.), or its mitigation by geographical distribution among micro-banks (Larry White).

    All the radical alternatives may indeed entail higher transaction costs. Well, there are always costs. It will be costly (probably very costly) to undertake a global crusade to lower transaction costs. Plus we will have to put up with our own arrogant American commissars of freedom and they will, with characteristic lack of generosity, leave us nowhere escape their kindly grasp. A future not worth fighting for.

    • RickDiMare

      “It would have been odd for the states to have made a ‘contract’ with a federal government that did not yet exist. If contract theory is to be used, then the only available parties were the states, but all that may be left to another time.”

      Joseph, maybe I wasn’t clear, but the Constitution, through our use of the monetary system, does not create a contract between state governmental entities and the federal government. The Articles of Confederation did that, which is why we had such a weak federal government prior to 1787.

      The Constitution created a contract between **the people** contained within the various states and the federal government. This is why, even if a state were to try to secede, the feds would still have legal jurisdiction over the natural and artificial/corporate persons contained within it.

      I wrote short essay about it here: “Doc #13: Your Unavoidable Binding Contractual Relationship with the Federal Government:” http://www.facebook.com/groups/CommonWealthTax/doc/175304405916044/