This post continues the conversation started by the suggestive, subtle posts written by John Tomasi in his inimitable prose.  I find a lot of what John says appealing; my differences with him are largely about emphasis.   I suggest that the convergence between bleeding-heart libertarians (BHLs) and progressives is highly problematic.

John rightly rejects the claim that the differences between both camps are solely empirical.   As I suggested in my first post, they have important normative differences as well.   However, it would be equally wrong to confine disagreements between BHLs and progressives to the normative realm.   They do have important, sometimes crucial, empirical disagreements.   Appealing to the empirical sciences cannot solve those disagreements, because often the reasons that lead people to neglect social science are truth-insensitive.   If progressives became really convinced that open markets helped the poor and if all they cared about was helping the poor, they would have to support open markets.  However, the cost of doing this would be prohibitive, because they would have to give up their emotional commitment to vividly altruistic social engineering.   This commitment, and not concern for the poor, is what centrally animates the progressive agenda.

So BHLs must shrug their shoulders and continue to defend these fundamental empirical propositions:  that markets help the poor; that the correlation between private property rights and prosperity is undeniable; that very often government intervention is harmful or counterproductive; and so on.   John, then, is right and wrong at the same time.  He is right that the disagreement between both camps is more than empirical.  But he is wrong if he implies that the disagreement is only or mostly normative.

On the other hand, John is right that the commitment to human rights by both camps is markedly different.   But the problem is more serious that John suggests.   It is not just that progressives do not value economic liberties –although that would be enough to build a high wall separating both camps.   In addition, the account of human rights by both camps diverges considerably.   Progressives tend to support so-called “socio-economic” rights.   They even argue, at least sometimes, that these welfare rights are normatively equivalent to traditional civil liberties.   By definition, the progressives’ commitment to liberty is considerably inferior to the libertarians’, because supporting welfare rights is supporting expanded government power –the power of government to appropriate resources at gunpoint.  Progressives succumb to the seductive enticements of political power in ways that no BHL worth his salt can accept.   There are alarming signs that confirm this.  For example, progressives tend to be soft on authoritarian “socialist” regimes.   They are reluctant to criticize Castro, even today, and they have historically made excuses for the crimes of the Soviet Union.  What could possibly be the theoretical underpinning of such an attitude, if it’s not the twin convictions that capitalism is suspect and (more alarmingly) that individual liberty is not so important after all?

I can perhaps understand (with a heroic effort) why these positions evidence concern for the poor.  But I cannot understand how they can possibly be consistent with a commitment to individual liberty –the moral commitment that the two camps were supposed to share in the first place.

So:  it would be nice if we could bridge these gaps.  It would be nice especially for academic libertarians, who want to do well in their institutions amidst a perpetual, monolithic majority of progressive colleagues.  But I’m afraid it’s not so simple: maybe the philosophical landscape is frozen after all.