Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Messing with libertarians

When I want to mess with my libertarians friends, I always pose the following scenario. Suppose you got what you wanted. Suppose you got a society in which government was minimal, in which legal imposition of morality was all but eliminated &c.

What if it turned out that the people who flourished in such a society turned out to be the ones who voluntarily imposed strenuous moral restraints on themselves? And what if a disproportionate number of these well-adapted human beings came out of a subculture where family is important, where those families have both a male and female parent, where sexual activity outside marriage is, while not eliminated, restricted and where behaviour is everywhere hemmed in by social constraints found only in that subculture, thereby ensuring that this subculture came to dominate that society.

At which point it gets to be a lot of fun to sit back and watch them splutter.

Of course, I don't know that would happen, although I suspect something like it would (and I doubt it would be a good thing because oligarchy is only a good thing when the only alternative is something even worse). But how are you going to convince me that I'm wrong? When I ask questions like that, my libertarian friends usually point at themselves, "Look at me, I don't do any of those things and I am successful."

Well yes, you are successful in a highly bureaucratized society that limits the impact that the agency of others can have on you. But seriously, you are part of a very small and geeky minority. Take away all those restraints and do you honestly think your values are the ones that will prevail?

If liberty really matters to us, we have to take virtue seriously.

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