At My Real Job

Shazbot4 in reply to Shazbot4 says:

No dishonesty.

Everyone can get their views out.

1. Was Buckley a libertarian?

2. Was Otto wrong to imply he wasn’t a libertarian because he wasn’t in line with Rothbard (or Rand) or any other extremist libertarian?

It seems to me that if you answer yes to 1., you can’t answer no to 2. without logical contradiction. (Or vice versa.) Buckley either was or wasn’t a libertarian. He’s not some kind of Schrodinger’s cat ideologically.

It seems to me that James wants to say that Otto was wrong to say he wasn’t a libertarian. That’s fine. (Though I disagree.) Just don’t say she was right to do so and I’m not right to say the same thing.

I’m still not sure if Jason wants to answer “yes” to both questions or “No” to both. But you can’t answer “yes” to “one” and no to the other.

That’s all I’m arguing here. I’ve argued that libertarianism, properly defined, excludes people who hold less extreme views than Rothbard and Nozick. You (James) disagree, IIRC, arguing that how a person self-ascribes as libertarian or not is relevant to whether they are.

(Personally, I think whether you self- ascribe can’t be used as a criterion for determining whether the tern properly applies to you, because that would be circular. “I am a libertarian because I say I am. But should I say I am a libertarian? Well, I do say I am. On and on.)Report

Shazbot4 in reply to Shazbot4 says:

“Examining postwar conservative intellectual history, Kim Phillips-Fein writes: The most influential synthesis of the subject remains George H. Nash’s The Conservative Intellectual Tradition since 1945…. He argued that postwar conservatism brought together three powerful and partially contradictory intellectual currents that previously had largely been independent of each other: libertarianism, traditionalism, and anticommunism. Each particular strain of thought had predecessors earlier in the twentieth (and even nineteenth) centuries, but they were joined in their distinctive postwar formulation through the leadership of William F. Buckley Jr…. Buckley founded National Review in 1955, serving as editor-in-chief until 1990.[37][38] During that time, National Review became the standard-bearer of American Conservatism, promoting the fusion of traditional conservatives and libertarians…. Buckley would distinguish between so-called “lowercase c” and “Capital C” conservatives, the latter being true conservatives: fiscally conservative and socially Conservative/Libertarian or libertarian-leaning.[105][106]”

That’s all from Wikipedia entry on Buckley.

After Rothbard died, Buckley wrote this:

“It was a great pity, but his problem ought not to be thought of as tracing to the seamless integrity of libertarian principles. In Murray’s case, much of what drove him was a contrarian spirit, the deranging scrupulosity that caused him to disdain such as Herbert Hoover, Ronald Reagan, Milton Friedman, and — yes — Newt Gingrich,”

Buckley believed in Fusionism, which accepted laissez-faire markets as necessarily good, i.e. it accepts the libertarian approach to fiscal issues, but accepted violations of libertarianism in the social sphere, especially with respect to abortion. Buckley accepted libertarian principles, but by accepting other principles too, he accepted a modified, more moderate ideology that shouldn’t be called libertarianism.

Again, this acceptance of principles in addition to libertarian principles means that Buckley was not a libertarian. In general, if you accept principles that would modify (and moderate) the more pure, extremist forms of libertarianism (associated with Rothbard and Nozick and others), then you should not be called a libertarian. “Libertarianism” is a form of extremism. (BTW, extremist is not a derisive term. Plato was an extremist. Martin Luther King was an avowed extremist.)

Otto and I agree on this.

If you disagree, Jason, then what criteria do you use to determine who is a libertarian that excludes the libertarian-leaning fusionists and libertarian-leaning liberals, that should be excluded?Report

Shazbot4 in reply to Shazbot4 says:

To complicate matters.

James is always telling me that I should let libertarians decide who is a libertarian and who isn’t.

But Buckley often called himself a libertarian.

From Jacob Sullum at Reason.com:

“As for substance, Buckley often called himself a libertarian; the subtitle of Happy Days Were Here Again, his 1993 collection of columns and articles, was “Reflections of a Libertarian Journalist.”

So he is a libertarian right? Just a moderate one?

It seems to me that he has as much of a claim to being a libertarian as James or Jason. Buckley accepts libertarian principles, but he accepts some exceptions that extremists like Nozick and Rothbard don’t accept. (James accepts that there should be some exceptions to create equality of opportunity, which is not a strictly libertarian principle, IIRC.)

So he is a libertarian, right?Report

Shazbot5 in reply to Shazbot4 says:

If Buckley isn’t a libertarian, then you aren’t either James.

And enough with the bullying and rhetoric. I’m behaving nicely, not swearing and calling you dishonest, and you should play nice, too.Report

Shazbot5 in reply to Shazbot4 says:

Is dismissing Buckley as not a libertarian despite his respect for libertarian principles, his self-ascription as a libertarian, his desrie to dismantle the entire New Deal and replace it with markets, his position against the war on drugs, bev not a “no true Scotsmen” fallacy, just because Buckley was a.) pro-life, and b.) thought that the were pragmatic, empirical reasons for not overturning traditional institutions too quickly?Report