In my most recent post I compared the moral status quo among political philosophers to a frozen sea. That frozen expanse separates, on one coast, libertarians and classical liberals and, on the other, (self-described) high liberals of various sorts. The classical liberals and libertarians affirm the importance of private economic liberty and are skeptical of social or distributive justice. The high liberals affirm social justice but minimize or deny the moral importance of private economic liberty.

As I mentioned, I think of bleeding heart libertarianism as an icebreaker entering this frozen state of affairs. But it would no doubt be more accurate to describe BHL as a fleet of icebreakers, exhibiting a variety of hull designs, different captains and crews, and (perhaps) very different navigational plans.

What makes a ship a member of the BHL Line? All BHL vessels are committed to challenging the moral status quo I described. In their various ways, BHL ships seek to open new conceptual lanes between two long frozen ideologies. BHLs do this by seeking to combine two erstwhile un-combinables: a commitment to private economic liberty and a commitment to social justice.

I wish to emphasize the diversity of the BHL Line. Part of what’s so interesting about the bleeding heart libertarian movement is that there are so many different ways to approach the problem of combining these un-combinables. I applaud this. To paraphrase Mao: “Let a thousand icebreakers boom.”

So in proposing a research program for bleeding heart libertarians, I very much mean to be proposing but one such program. I hope that some people (most notably from the classical liberal camp) will find my BHL icebreaker—in design and strategy—attractive enough to decide to jump aboard and lend a hand. But if you do not like the particular icebreaker that I am about to describe, I hope that you will keep an open to mind when you consider others (or, perhaps better, that you will seek to design a new one all your own).

Having sounded a note of open-mindedness, I fear that some readers and contributors to this blog may find what I say next a bit harsh. For there is one pattern of vessel design that I believe does not merit inclusion in the BHL Line. I adverted to this defective design in my opening post. I am thinking of a class of vessels built from the following thought: “BHLs and traditional liberals share the same moral commitments and differ merely about an empirical question: which set of institutions, (roughly) free market ones or (roughly) big government ones, best honor or help secure those shared moral commitments?”

Vessels built from this thought worry me. They seem content merely to skim atop the moral deadlock, rather than driving into and disrupting it so that its conceptual blocks might be broken free and then somehow rearranged. To me, such vessels seem more like flitting ice-sailboats than icebreakers of the BHL Line. Worse, such vessels seem to me exhibit engineering flaws that directly flow from the idea that motivates them: the idea that BHL’s share the same basic moral commitment of the left liberals. I doubt that any vessel built from this idea could float, or even skim.

What would it mean for BHLs to share the same moral commitments of the left liberals? Two things. First, it would mean that BHLs join the high liberals in affirming the same list of basic rights and liberties that are held by all citizens. Second, it would require that BHLs accept the high liberal account of what it means to show proper concern for the poor. Both requirements are problematic.

Consider the first. Libertarians (and classical liberals) have long insisted that wide-ranging private economic liberties are among the most sacred and inviolable rights of free citizens. Are the ice-surfers really willing to abandon this idea? High liberals such as John Rawls recognize only a spare and attenuated list of economic liberties as basic. For the Rawlsians, the question of whether the list of constitutionally protected rights should be “thickened up” so as to include, for example, the right to own private productive property is one that must be decided in light of historial, cultural and economic conditions. Maybe liberalism will call for a socialist economy, maybe it will allow some kind of private market. Should BHLs join the high liberals in that approach to basic rights and liberties? If they do, in what sense do they remain libertarians or classical liberals at all?

The second requirement is equally problematic. Let’s accept that BHLs can join high liberals in being concerned for the poor. Let’s even accept that the BHLs can join them in expressing that concern in terms of a commitment to social justice (there are lots of clues in Hayek about how this might be done). Heck, let’s even accept that BHLs can affirm the same formal conception of social justice as the high liberals. That formal conception goes something like this: when considering a variety of institutional forms, social justice requires that we prefer the one that, while fully respecting the basic rights and liberties common to all citizens, brings about the greatest benefits to the poor.

To traditional libertarians, this may already seem like a lot to concede. But the ice-skimmers would require BHLs to go one big step further still. They would require BHLs to allow the high liberals to decide what goods or states of affairs properly count as “benefiting” to the poor. High liberals tend to think that social equality benefits the poor, even if the price of that equality is that the poor have a smaller bundle of materials goods than they might have had in a society that allowed more inequality. In part this is because they think the personal experience of political participation is more valuable to people than the personal experience of wealth and income. There are complex issues here. Allow me simply to state that there is no a priori reason to think that BHLs should be ready to agree with the left liberals about which set of “benefits” are most valuable to the poor.

So, I have emphasized the diversity of the ships of the BHL. There are many different types of icebreaker that might plausibly be launched against this frozen sea in search of new ways of combining the un-combinables: private economic liberty and social justice. I have also expressed my skepticism about the seaworthiness of one design: the form of BHL that claims to affirm the same moral ends as the high liberals and to disagree with them only about empirical means.

Now, allow me to invite you to walk with me out to the end of a long pier jutting out from the classical liberal camp (zip up, its going to get windy). Moored at the end is the first of a new line of BHL icebreakers. I call her Free Market Fairness. Let’s go aboard. I’m eager to show you around.