Political Libertarianism

Joanna, Sam:

The important thing is "particular." Of course, one can't say something without not saying something else. If I say "The grass is green" I've implicitly contradicted the proposition that grass is orange. So yes, you can't make a claim without making a claim. And the claim that liberal order is worth endorsing is certainly a claim. The point is that one needn't have any _one_ particular worldview to _also_ affirm the claim that liberal order is worth having, and, indeed, there are VERY MANY worldviews from within which one can affirm that claim.

Obviously, there are people (hello Osama!) who disagree vehemently with the idea of a liberal order. The argument isn't addressed toward Osama; it's addressed toward people who already live in a basically liberal society, already benefit from it, and see themselves as having reason to go along with it. The claim is that political libertarianism would an even better job of producing the benefits of liberal order.

I'm an interloper here, but I have to agree with the previous point. I think you are correct to say that Feser attacks a straw-man version of neutrality. If liberal neutrality entails that no one may legitimately critize anyone else's conduct on the grounds that this violates the neutrality principle, then liberalism would cease to be a moral viewpoint altogether. But you go on to say, "The point of liberal neutrality is to preserve liberal (bottom-up, cooperative) order. If people who have views inconsistent with a cosmopolitan liberal society feel marginalized, then, to the extent that this prevents these views from being enacted within society, that's a very good thing." I agree entirely, but isn't that precisely a distinctively liberal vision of the good life, one that emphasizes the overriding social importance of toleration, mutual respect, individual pursuit of projects, and so on? I do not think you can plausibly deny that these ideas are not grounded in certain philosophical assumptions about human nature, the theory of rights, etc. Why not simply embrace it as the theory of the good that seems most reasonable?

Great article, Will. Although I agree with all of it and appreciate how you've presented it, I'm a little uncomfortable as well with the statement that Rob pointed out:
The governing principles of a free, pluralistic, cosmopolitan society therefore must not rely on the philosophical viewpoint of any particular worldview,. . .
Do you mean 'any particular religion' rather than worldview? Because the goal of a 'free, pluralistic, cosmopolitan society' certainly is a worldview in of itself. But even so, our Enlightenment/Deist forefathers definitely had intellectual and moral commitments upon which they based this nation. I'm a bit cringy about claiming to be outside/above the ranks of other worldviews.

Again, don't have time to address these matters in the explicitness they deserve. For now, I thought I'd address your smug, shitty little claims about me.

You write:

(4) Obeisance. No. If I can speak for JS, I'd say that we've internalized very high intellectual standards of clarity and cogency, and so recognize good work when we see it, regardless of silly labels about left and right. I feel that I cannot say the same for you, Rob.

Don't doubt you've internalized high standards of "clarity and cogency," Will -- never meant to impugn you, certainly not on that front, which is one of the reasons I've enjoyed reading your work.

Point of fact, however, what you take for "clarity and cogency" -- qualities which of themselves are indispensible but, alas, are only instruments and instrumental toward the message -- are easily mistaken for profundity, insight, and substance, these which you ascribe to Rawls but which many people far better read and equipped with far greater intellectual caliber -- quite certainly than either you or JS -- consider Rawls to sorely lack. You've not demonstrated any familiarity whatsoever with the relevant texts -- some of which I've mentioned above -- utterly devastating to everything you write about.

With what limited time I have, Will, I've tried now and again to share with you brief statements of retort. If you see fit to deem these sufficient evidence and grounds to consider me intellectually not-up-to-snuff, then so be it. One is then given to certain skepticism regarding your vaunted position as "free and open thinker" and the infantile uses to which you put it.

Rob, You're caught in so many sets of false alternatives at once that it's really hard to know how to address your comments some times.

(1) Stipulative: I didn't mean anything about agreement and contract. I just mean that Rawls is simply using "political" as a term of art to mean something like the contrary of "comprehensive"... "affirmable from a wide array of moral perspectives" or something like that. I understand that you have a very thick, moralized conception of politics according to which the "political" is essentially part of a comprehensive philosophical view about the good, power, etc. You are not engaging the debate by repeating your conviction about this.

(2) social contract --> natural rights. False.

(3) Do you really think that the problem with stopping the growth of government has something to do with somebody or other having correct views about natural rights and political legitimacy? Naive.

(4) Obeisance. No. If I can speak for JS, I'd say that we've internalized very high intellectual standards of clarity and cogency, and so recognize good work when we see it, regardless of silly labels about left and right. I feel that I cannot say the same for you, Rob.

(5) I know you aren't going to "get" the point of a philosophy of minimalist neutrality. I'm sure you feel like you've got nothing to do if you're not defending the faith and fighting to make sure men who love each other can't marry, that you're not overrun by mexicans, and that, in general people are allowed to act only in accordance with the ideas of medieval monks. I'm sure you get a charge out if it and that it means something to you. But like or not, there are lots of different folks in this country who believe what they believe every bit as strongly as you do, and if you don't back down, they won't either, and then we just get lousy, unproductive political war. Maybe it's inevitable, but I don't think it is.

There's no confusion here. "Stipulative" -- agreement, contract, etc. I have no time to get into it now and have thus no other way of saying it here, but the social contract is completely impossible without natural rights; and without that, there is NO legitimacy to the government whatsoever. No wonder that libertarianism has been so utterly otiose in estopping the government's malignant growth to the exclusion of civil (private) society. No wonder that you and Julian give such obeisance to Left-wing thinkers of sufficient "with-it-ness,"gravitas and blessing bestowed by The Exalted Ones (gee, talk about information cascades). You're willing to bargain away the most fundamental rights for the sake of securing of "lifestyle" rights: libertarianism thus conceived as proving itself on equally nihilistic, apolitical -- and yet unwittingly radically politicized -- basis as Leftism. (Julian really should go work for Katrina v.d.H.).

Rob, Rawls's notion of "political" is stipulative. Understand what he's saying. Don't get yourself all confused by spelling.

A political conception of social order stands free of any single comprehensive perspective

Oh, B-jeebus, Will -- please do us a favor and go read Carl Schmitt's Concept of the Political, Strauss's trenchant criticism thereof (published under same cover), Struass's The Political Philosophy of Hobbes, and then Neumann's essays on Schmitt which I mailed to you.

I can tell already that your understanding of "the political" is a complete mess.

The governing principles of a free, pluralistic, cosmopolitan society therefore must not rely on the philosophical viewpoint of any particular worldview,. . .

An utterly self-refuting statement.

To say, with Rawls, that no one in liberal society such as the United States is properly forced to believe in anything in particular is arrant horseshit.