Autistic libertarians?

Emily Esfahani Smith, associate editor at The New Criterion, wrote a provocative article for the Washington Times, in which she pored over data and conclusions from the "largest study of libertarians to date, 'Understanding Libertarian Morality,' published recently in the scientific journal PLOS ONE." One of the study's authors was Jonathan Haidt, whose work has been noted on Montana Headlines before.

The study identified six core moral principles: care, liberty, fairness, sanctity, loyalty and authority. Liberals "relied on the first three" in Haidt's study, conservatives relied on all six, and libertarians really only used liberty as a guiding light.

Smith has some choice quotes from Ayn Rand that indicate she is not surprised at the findings, especially those involving Rand's view of the fundamental immorality of altruism. (I wrote only once using Rand in the title of the post, and found that doing so attracts argumentative Randians like manure attracts flies -- dropping her name will attract plenty of folks to the comments thread of Smith's article, to be sure...)

The entire article is worth reading because of the nice summary of Haidt's data, but the most interesting part was this:

According to the study, libertarians showed lower than other groups on levels of loving feelings toward their families, friends, romantic partners and generic others...

The libertarian style of thinking can even verge, in extreme cases, on autism.

The University of Cambridge-based psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen, a leading autism researcher, famously has shown that people with autism exhibit two critical features: They test exceptionally low on empathizing scales and exceptionally high on systemizing ones. Empathizing governs social relationships — Are you able to relate to other people? — while systemizing governs understanding and analysis of the outside world. Everyone falls somewhere on the empathizing-systemizing scale.

Libertarians score very low on the empathizing scale and very high on the systemizing scale. In other words, they are highly rational moral thinkers, less emotional than both conservatives and liberals. Two of the leading moral thinkers of Western history — utilitarian Jeremy Bentham and deontologist Immanuel Kant — were also incredibly gifted systemizers but deficient empathizers. Today, Bentham and arguably Kant might be diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome.

Smith notes that some have (unsurprisingly) objected to the conclusions. The final paragraph contains this:

Legal scholar Richard Epstein, Mr. Haidt’s colleague at New York University, agrees, noting that libertarians make a distinction between the political and personal world when responding to such questionnaires.

This is an important point, because it complements something that the lead author of the study said:

Any ideology or philosophy, taken to an extreme, likely resembles some pathology or another...

Free market environmentalism

First, a brief excursus on "Uncommon Knowledge," the webcast program with the episode being linked to in this post:

When, at the end of 1999, William F. Buckley used the turn of the millennium as a convenient point at which to retire from the business of doing his weekly television program, "Firing Line," he included Peter Robinson in the group of guests for the final farewell episodes.

He implicitly handed off the conservative television baton to Robinson, who had a couple of years earlier started his own public television interview/debate program, "Uncommon Knowledge." Robinson, who is otherwise best known for having penned Ronald Reagan's famous "tear down this wall" Berlin speech, besides having the problem of not being WFB, had the problem of dealing with a radically different television scene.

Ironically, it was another PBS program led by a conservative moderator, "The McLaughlin Group," that led the way in making life difficult for the Buckley/Robinson style of television. McLaughlin (himself an obviously well-educated guy) was the first television host with a news and opinion program where viewers were treated to the spectacle of pundits talking -- and later shouting -- over each other. It was grand fun at first, but now that everyone is doing it from CNN to FOX, it has gotten rather tiresome -- but there seems to be little room in the crowded television market for a more leisurely program. For that matter, the handwriting had been on the wall for some time, when Buckley's own program was moved from an hour to a half-hour slot for its last decade on the air.

Robinson, a fellow at the Hoover Institution, revived his Hoover-based program a few years ago in a webcast format, and it is now thriving through the additional distribution medium of National Review Online. All of the archives of the program are worth browsing, but a recent interview with T. J. Rodgers called "The Free-Market Case for Green" is particularly good. Rodgers is a Silicone Valley entrepreneur who is a self-described libertarian, and who purchased a solar power company for $50 million that is now worth $5 billion.

What is refreshing about the discussion is that Rodgers adheres to the Milton Friedman school of thought -- that the business of a corporation is making wealth for its shareholders. Period. Like Friedman, he doesn't believe in corporate philanthropy or other do-good things other than as ways to increase the value of the company through public relations.

He got into the solar power business when he was building a new headquarters for his corporation, and had the option of adding solar power to the buildings. He saw that it had a decent return on investment, but that there was much room for development of the technology that would make it even more profitable. There is demand for power that doesn't pollute, and there is money to be made in meeting that demand -- without resorting to government mandates or subsidies (although he does note that the types of cap-and-trade policies promoted by both Sen. Obama and Sen. McCain can work within the free-market schema.

In the course of the discussion, Rodgers and Robinson talk about everything from the science of global warming to the politics of carbon emissions to the current state and future of various alternative fuels -- including nuclear power. It is a refreshingly cold-eyed view at the subject in a friendly video format. Have a look.

When challenges aren't constructive

Montana Headlines expressed a dim view of Rep. Roger Koopman's grand attempt to remake the Montana GOP in his own image by recruiting Ron Paul supporters to run against GOP incumbents. Sometimes, challengers were inexplicably being recruited to run against GOP incumbents even when there were hard-to-fill legislative race slots in that same county.

In other words, given the chance to unseat Democrats or to try to unseat "moderate" Republicans (who almost anyone else would consider to be pretty conservative,) Koopman's strategy chose the latter.

One wonders if he and his compatriots are afraid of head-on contests with tough Democrats. If their message is so compelling, they should be able to sell it anywhere, anytime, against anybody. At the least, they should leap at the chance to do battle with, well... what would Koopman call them? Half of the Republican Party in Montana is "socialist," according to Koopman, so that must mean that Democrats are, what? Leninists?

Wouldn't Koopman, et. al. ignore the socialists (Republicans) when there are Leninists (Democrats) to do battle with?

We are gratified that the firestorm of complaints directed at Koopman convinced him that he was looking forward to an ignominious primary defeat, causing him to drop out of his own race -- the biter was bitten, it seems. Again, it isn't that there is anything wrong with primary challenges -- that is just a part of working things out within a party. The trouble was that one never got the feeling that Koopman was laying the groundwork for the kind of situation where, if his candidate lost a primary, he would encourage his people to come together with other Republicans to get the Republican primary winner elected. How could Koopman credibly have supported someone he had already labeled a "socialist?"

This was never constructive intra-party dialogue in the making. All of this is very unfortunate, since we believe in having a big-tent party -- which includes having the tent be big enough to include Republicans of Koopman's views. (Again, assuming that they are willing to accept and work with more moderate Republicans toward the common-goal of forming a legislative majority on the right in Helena.)

But as Carol over at Missoulopolis pointed out, the really damaging challenges are not primaries -- that kind of thing sorts itself out by November. Koopman is actually to be commended for advocating a use of the primary process to influence the Montana Republican Party, rather than a third-party route.

No the challenges that are going to be most damaging to the causes of limited government, rule of law, lower taxes, lower spending and less government regulation are rather going to be those where Libertarian or Constitution Party candidates have filed. They can siphon off just enough votes to cost a Republican an election. And we have a number of them, just on the statewide level:

We have Libertarian or Constitution Party candidates for governor, U.S. Congress, Secretary of State, and State Superintendent. The only race where there is enough cushion to not worry about this is in Rehberg's Congressional race. The other races are likely to be close ones.

The rightward third parties have also inexplicably filed in several statewide races that will be close rather than to file against the Max Baucus race, which won't be close, barring a miracle.

Are we to assume that Montana Libertarians are rooting for another 4 years of the current governor, and are we to believe that they believe that we will have a more libertarian version of public education in Montana if the state's schools are overseen by a Democrat for yet another 4 years?

Does Montana's Constitution Party want to promote Linda McCulloch's career, and want her overseeing our state's elections?

Third parties have also filed in some potentially close legislative races -- do they believe that things will be more to their Constitutional and Libertarian liking with a Democratic legislature writing and passing all of the legislation?

Whether that is the intent, it may end up being the effect. It is hard to imagine that libertarian and constitutionally-minded Montanans want this.

Hippies and fundies unite?

The cover story of the July issue of Reason magazine has an interesting title: The Aquarians & the Evangelicals (How left-wing hippies and right-wing fundamentalists created a libertarian America.)

Yes, as per usual with this libertarian magazine that seems to get wackier as the years go by, the article is tucked between a review of mushroom use and a sidebar piece that on the cover is labelled "Defending 'Prostitots,'" (the author explains why third-graders in thongs are just engaging in business as usual, so to speak -- nothing to worry about.)

But with a title like that, it's hard not to pull the issue off the shelf and give the rag a read. Brink Lindsey starts his article with two events held 3 days apart in the spring of 1967 -- the declaration of the "Summer of Love" in Haight-Ashbury and the dedication of Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Lindsey calls each of these events "coming out parties," with 18,000 attending the Tulsa event (4000 were expected) including Oklahoma's most prominent elected officials, and an unspecified attendance at the press conference in San Fransisco for the Aquarians.

Lindsey correctly states that the two events "revealed an America [where] the postwar liberal consensus had shattered."

Vying to take its place were two sides of an enormous false dichotomy, both animated by outbursts of spiritual energy. Those two eruptions of millenarian enthusiasm, the hippies and the evangelical revival, would inspire a left/right division that persists to this day.

Lindsey writes that one set of half-truths were pitted against each other. The left, he writes, was "alive to the new possibilities created by the unprecedented mass affluence of the postwar years" but hostile to what had created the affluence that made the left's counter-culture possible.

By contrast, the right defended the institutions that created the affluence but "shrank from the social dynamism they were unleashing."

One side denounced capitalism but gobbled its fruits; the other cursed the fruits while defending the system that bore them.

What follows is a familiar recounting of the 1960s (perhaps useful for those who don't remember them, but otherwise nondescript) followed by the less-familiar history of the "counter-counterculture" of the evangelical revival.

There are some stylish passages, such as his concluding paragraph about the counterculture and its quasi-spiritual nexus between psychedelic drug use and political radicalism directed toward the civil-rights movement:

Guided into those transcendent realms, many young and impressionable minds were set aflame with visions of radical change. One assault after another on conventional wisdom and authority gained momentum.

Anti-war protesters, feminists, student rebels, environmentalists, and gays all took their turns marching to the solemn strains of "We Shall Overcome"; all portrayed themselves as inheritors of the legacy of Montgomery and Birmingham and Selma.

And the scent of marijuana wafted around all their efforts.

Meanwhile, in spite of the turn of the century beating it had taken, "the old-time religion did not die. In the South, in small towns and rural areas, among the less educated, the flame still burned."

The flame was directly fanned by the counterculture, to be sure, just as Lindsey says. But even more than this, evangelicals (and increasingly, traditionally-minded Christians in mainline Protestant denominations and in the American Catholic Church) watched as the old liberal social, political, journalistic, entertainment, and religious establishment crumbled before the onslaught of that counterculture, waving the white flag at every turn.

This was the same establishment that had banished "fundamentalists" to the backroads of America, and suddenly, that establishment didn't look quite so intimidating anymore.

Other factors also played a role, such as the infusion of oil wealth into families in the Southwest who saw no reason to give up the old-time religion just because they were now millionaires.

In spite of the flourishing of Christian colleges and universities during the decades that ensued, Lindsey has harsh words for evangelicals:

There is no point in mincing words: The stunning advance of evangelicalism marked a dismal intellectual regress in American religion.

...resurgent conservative Protestantism entailed a widespread surrender of believers' critical faculties. The celebration of unreason on the left had met its match on the right.

He gives a little back by acknowledging that evangelicals "summoned up the fortitude to defend a cultural position that was... worth defending." Things like family life, self-restraint, a work ethic and patriotism. He also acknowledges that most leading evangelicals were far from reactionary when it came to race -- their crusades and para-church gatherings were racially integrated long before the official church organizations were.

Lindsey sees the "Jesus Freak" movement as the beginnings of a sort of synthesis, and in the process of telling the story of the very odd Arthur Blessitt, recounts the story that it was Blessitt who led George W. Bush to become "born again" in 1984.

All interesting, but a strained analysis -- the Jesus People movement inexorably moved into mainstream evangelicalism, and had only used the language and look of the counterculture ("getting high on Jesus" and all that sort of thing) as a way of trying to attract converts from that counterculture.

Lindsey misses the fundamentally derivative character of evangelical popular culture in general -- the modern mega-church has taken this process of "Christianizing" pop-culture to an art form.

The final conclusions are equally strained -- Lindsey writes that the revival of traditional Christianity played a crucial role in the reinvigoration of capitalism in America. True enough, but then he goes on to say that this capitalism had an unintended consequence:

[It] brought with it a blooming, buzzing economic and cultural ferment that bore scant resemblance to any nostalgic vision of the good old days.

This was conservatism' curious accomplishment: Marching under the banner of old time religion, it made the world safe for the secular, hedonistic values of Aquarius.

The resulting mix is a victory for (not surprisingly) libertarianism, the only creed that encompasses fully free markets and fully hedonistic morals.

There are a few major flaws in Lindsey's conclusions, starting with the fact that a nation where most Americans labor at least a third of the year to pay their tax bill is hardly libertarian in any sense that the founders of modern libertarianism would recognize.

Lindsey's conclusions are a reflection of modern American libertarianism, which knows a lot about hemp and very little about Hayek. Everything is great because we have a mouthful of mushrooms and third-graders in thongs, but somehow the idea of resistance to the explosive and intrusive growth of government has taken a decisive back seat in libertarian circles.

Lindsey, unlike most libertarians, acknowledges the critical role that traditional thought and culture has played in defending and preserving the economic freedoms that are linked inextricably with our political liberties. But he has no explanation for why the 19th c. liberal tradition (the intellectual forbear of classical economic libertarianism) was unable to preserve the institutions that made that development of liberal (again, in the 19th c. sense) thought possible.

One recalls Paul Elmer More's biting summary of that old self-destructive liberal world: "There is something at once comical and vicious in the spectacle of those men of property who take advantage of their leisure to dream out vast benevolent schemes which would render their own self-satisfied career impossible."

As the old Liberal party in England dissolved before a surging Labour Party, a resurgent Tory/Conservative Party came to the realization that 19th c. liberalism was an anomaly that had only been rendered possible because it was perched atop a steady mass of tradition in that country. Disraeli more than perhaps anyone came to an understanding that those traditions were the possession of all Englishmen -- not just the landed or privileged classes.

Putting this in an American context, libertarians like Lindsey grasp the fact that widespread hedonism is only made possible by widespread affluence, and widespread affluence is only made possible by widespread economic freedoms.

Lindsey seems to be saying to adherents of traditional Christianity, "thanks for saving capitalism -- now hither to the backwoods where you belong!" This will leave him with his synthesis, with economic freedoms and a lack of the burdensome moral restraints of traditional Christianity.

All of this seems vaguely familiar -- a liberal consensus in politics, economics, religion... And just as the old liberal consensus crumbled in a crisis of uncertainty in the face of socialism, one suspects that this new liberal/libertarian consensus will do the same, since the dollar is not the center that holds.

If Lindsey is right, there will be another counterculture hostile to the institutions that create affluence, even though that affluence creates the leisure necessary for such a hedonistic counterculture to arise.

And then, the hillbillies with their old-time religion will need to come riding to capitalism's rescue once again.