What follows is the (slightly modified) text of a talk I will be delivering on a panel with Bas today–indeed, at roughly the time this first appears on-line, if I set it correctly.

What is BHL? Well, it’s a family of libertarian (and hence liberal) views that also share a deep concern to prevent suffering (and perhaps promote at least minimal individual well-being). Some of us actually approve of limited government interventions (perhaps in the form of a social insurance scheme or a guaranteed basic income) to end suffering; all agree that allowing individuals extensive (negative) liberty is likely to create the least suffering possible. Most of us favor pretty strong, if not absolute property rights. One could be a minarchist or an anarchist BHL. Many of my BHL co-bloggers seem to be of the view that the empirical facts settle the question whether we should be BHLs or not (indeed whether we should be libertarians or not). That is, they think the main reason to favor libertarianism is that a society governed by libertarian rules would be a society with less suffering and poverty. Now I agree that a genuinely libertarian, which is to say free-market, society is likely to be one with less suffering and poverty than any more statist society. But I am not persuaded that I should think we are wrong about justice if that empirical claim were somehow demonstrated to be false. I do what philosophers call “ideal theory”—something fairly unpopular amongst BHLs—and in part that means I am seeking a pure theory of justice, regardless of the empirical facts. As it happens, I think the correct ideal theory is a version of libertarianism. Indeed, a version of BHL. I think such a theory is needed to help us figure out what we should aim to make society like–and I think the empirical data can be useful once we have the ideal theory in place (we then use the data to see how we can get closer to the ideal).

It might help if I back up and explain why my heart bleeds. At the end of the day, I suspect something like this is why the hearts of all of my co-bloggers bleed as well, though they would likely tell the story differently. So, consider abused children. A young boy beaten with a bat by his birth father until he is unconscious. A young girl whose birth mother would throw boiling water on her. Another young boy who spent the first 2-1/2 years of his life in a bathtub. A 2 month old girl whose birth father vaginally raped her. These are all real cases (somewhat modified). I hope its clear that these children did not deserve the treatment they received at the hands of their birth parents. But here’s the thing: none of our children deserve us. My son doesn’t deserve me. Your children don’t deserve you. You didn’t deserve your parents. When we first come into the world, we haven’t done anything by which to say “because of that, I deserve this.” Desert is earned. So, children don’t deserve their situation. None of them. When their situations are bad, my heart bleeds for them.

Our world is obviously a world that contains injustices. If stories like those just mentioned don’t enrage or upset you, we probably have nothing further to discuss. You might, on the other hand, reasonably think the only thing to do is use the criminal justice system to penalize the perpetrators. I think that is wrong, but its a position that leaves room for discussion.

So, in short, my heart bleeds and makes me want a system that prevents harms to children (and others) in the first place. Of course, the point is perfectly generalizable: there are unjust events in our world that should be avoided and not merely corrected for with a penal system. Avoiding these events will require policies meant to help the most vulnerable. At the end of the day, this does not worry me since my libertarianism takes toleration to be the primary political requirement with a normative view that what justifies an end to toleration is harm, understood as Feinberg understands it—as wrongful setbacks to interests. When harm is done—whether to a child or an adult—interference is permitted. The interference doesn’t have to come from the government, but it can. Importantly, many governments—ours included—also do harm. That, obviously, is not permissible.

So, let me turn to my libertarianism. At a certain point, an individual simply has to take responsibility for her life. So, while I may wonder what happened to the birth parents of those abused children to make them the sorts of people that would abuse children, my heart doesn’t really bleed for them. (Well, it might a little given what we know is likely to have happened to them, but nonetheless…) At some point it becomes their failing and it is reasonable to say they should have done something to change their ways.

My view about personal responsibility early on made be into a libertarian—well before I had ever heard the term. I’m not one who became a libertarian upon reading Rand, Heinlein, Rothbard, Nozick, or anyone else. The first time I read those people’s works, I simply found others that believed as I already did—I wasn’t transformed (though I appreciated hearing others articulate the view I already accepted and could not yet defend). I’ve always thought government interfered way too much in our lives. I recall thinking, as a child, that our public schools—which I was in—were a problem. I recall thinking, as a teenager, that the DMV was crazy and that many laws were clearly not for the governed but for those that governed. Etc. When I got to college and read the classical liberals—Locke, Smith, Mill, etc—I was home.

Locke tells us that as we are “all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions.” Mill elevates the basic idea there into a jurisprudential principle, claiming that “The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number is self-protection … the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others” (Mill 1859, 9). And yet, governments have all sorts of laws that have nothing to do with harm prevention—and that actually do harm. Licensing laws for doctors, hairstylists, interior designers, etc, all have harmful effects. Many tax policies—perhaps especially import tariffs—have harmful effects. Forced schooling, I think, has harmful effects. I can go on, of course, but I won’t.

So, my bleeding heart and my libertarianism merge. My heart bleeds because none of us deserve the family, country, or economic system we are born into. That is limited, though, by the fact that one has to eventually take responsibility for one’s life. But some may wonder how this merging takes place. People worry about so-called fusionism between liberal—in the colloquial sense—and libertarian ideas in the same way some of us always worried about the fusion between libertarian and conservative ideas. So there are so-called Rawlsekians, seeking to merge Rawls and Hayek. While I hold both of those thinkers in high regard, I don’t seek to merge their ideas but to explain the best possible political theory. I think that is already present in the classical liberal thinkers and I hope to contribute to making that view more widely understood and accepted. There are many ways to do this. For me, its primarily about treating the harm principle that Mill provided as the sole principle that justifies law. That means that government ought take no actions that are not meant to prevent or rectify harms. That means it can interfere with you—and your property—if you seek to do me harm or do do me harm. It means the property scheme within a society must not be harmful. And it means the government itself is not permitted to do harm.

I have a book coming out soon that tries to make a case for a particular social and political view of what should be tolerated, based on the harm principle. (Its not geared solely toward academic political philosophers and I do hope some of you will read it.) The term “social justice” appears in the book but once—and there its only an indication that the fictional peoples I am discussing have a history of considering the topic—but as I hope is clear, my libertarianism is not just about property. Indeed, I now think the grounding value for my whole view is freedom from harm—where again, that is wrongful setback of interests. I happen to think that a system of strong property rights is a great way to limit harm and to promote well-being, but it is the harm and well-being that concern me most. Especially when the most vulnerable—children—are involved.