Site Meter Reflections on Playboy: Libertarianism as Pandagon misunderstands it

December 29, 2006

Libertarianism as Pandagon misunderstands it

The “liberal” leftists at Pandagon.net call me pseudo-intellectual. I’ll let my readers decide that for themselves, but I have to answer the attacks on libertarianism that Amanda Marcotte and her readers make.

Marcotte paraphrases a sentence of mine from my last post, “Does this ad for Royal Elastics shoes, blacklisted in the summer 2005 Ms., encourage men to kick women in the head?” as, “Is this ad implying there’s something sexy about kicking women in the head?” She seems oblivious to the subjectivity of her affirmative answer to her own question. Some of her commenters give alternate interpretations that make just as much sense, or as little. They may all agree that the ad insults women, but since these people ignore the distinction between an image’s ascribed meanings and its tangible consequences in the real world, the differing interpretations reveal a lack of honest consensus about exactly how it harms women. Ms. certainly finds the ad menacing—as opposed to merely tasteless—or else it wouldn’t praise its readers for lobbying against it. As usual, the ad’s target audience is presumed to be the victim of a Jedi mind trick. Free will, shmee will.

But then, we libertarians hallucinate a bizarre notion of free will according to Marcotte:
The simple-minded libertarian right’s [sic: I’m not on the right wing of a one-dimensional spectrum but the top wing of a two-dimensional spectrum] major fallacy, which is in thinking that only government power counts as power, is evident [in my post]. Social power and economic power may technically exist, but are not worthy of consideration, because they disappear in a poof if you apply “free will”. Similiarly, if the blogger wanted to start writing exclusively in Russian, he could do so this very second by willing it. Some puritanical liberals might say that he’s not writing in Russian because he doesn’t know it, due to social forces (namely, everyone around him speaks English), but that’s balderdash. He is only writing in English and not Russian because he coolly examined his choices and freely chose to write in English. Now, some people say that one could switch languages not by will but by a huge amount of effort [emphasis added] and that it would require collective action, i.e. finding a teacher to teach you Russian, some books written by people on learning Russian, moving to Russia and learning it from the people around you. But that’s crap. There’s no legal ban on you using Russian, so you can speak it right away without help from anyone else just by willing it. To say otherwise is to deny the existence of free will.
So what’s the difference between will and effort? I see them as synonyms in this context; Marcotte sure as hell isn’t describing my idea of free will. How does the effort involved in learning a second language as an adult make it unattainable through free will? Conversely, how does the impossibility of certain acts, like speaking a language one hasn’t learned or flying by flapping one’s arms, disprove free will as commonly understood?

Flawed though it is on its face, her language-learning analogy can prove unintentionally instructive on the differences between thoughtful, principled libertarians and everyone else. Notice that the “collective action” necessary to learn Russian is not presumed to involve government in any way except to protect buyers and sellers of Russian-language instruction from force, fraud, or theft. Well, duh. But if enough Americans saw fluency in Russian as either a moral obligation (like abstaining from marijuana) or an entitlement (like enough money for a child-raising lifestyle), they might rationalize ineffective programs, intrusive laws, and expensive lawsuits to try to teach everybody Russian. And in light of the depressing history of moral panics, the hypothetical example of learning Russian isn’t so preposterous. Libertarians may be just as capable of moral panic as other human beings, but they tend to keep better watch against that tendency than garden-variety leftists or rightists do.

In a textbook case of projection, libertarians are accused of “a certain blindness about how social and interdependent humans actually are.” The lefty campaign against genetically modified organisms doesn’t seem to care about the poverty and starvation it would leave in its wake. But libertarian science reporter Ronald Bailey—the selfish bastard—does the humanitarian job of mapping their road to hell paved with good intentions. To say that big government isn’t the answer is not to say, “Screw the less fortunate.”

I am grateful for the spike in traffic caused by Marcotte’s post, although the attention from that particular venue may keep me from winning the Philosophy Blog War. But with all due modesty—or not—my victory could make me the Jesse Owens of the feminazis. (Don’t anybody bitch to me about Godwin’s Law.) I ask all libertarians to click here to vote for my entry in the current battle, “Did Michael Richards need to apologize?” Thank you.

Related earlier posts:
Playboy can no longer tell friend from foe
File this under “No such thing as bad publicity”

Posted by Brian Sorgatz at 10:18 AM

  • Anonymous the coffee lady left this comment at January 2, 2007 7:51 AM  
    This is an intersting blog and the links to the philosophy posts and the blog of the bean are also a splendid surprise.

    I try not to get into the arguements tendered by most of the websites out there, I just read.

  • Blogger Brian Sorgatz left this comment at January 2, 2007 8:26 AM  
    Thank you for reading, coffee lady. Please keep doing it.

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