Libertarianism Against Cultural Conservatism: A Refresher

Thoughtful apostasy is beautiful to behold. A person who understands and embraces a view forwards and backwards notices subtle inconsistencies, either internal (the view’s claims clash with each other) or external (the view’s claims clash with the facts). The more he investigates these inconsistencies, the more real and damning they seem. Finally, his intellectual conscience requires him to not only recant, but explain before the whole world precisely why the view he used to hold dear is actually wrong.

Alas, thoughtful apostasy is vanishingly rare. Not only do most humans dogmatically stick to whatever Big Picture views they embraced when they were 15-25 years old. A large majority of humans who do apostatize do so negligently. Instead of pinpointing subtle inconsistencies in their initial view, they emote. If they even bother to explain their prior intellectual errors, they attack a straw man version of what they used to think, using arguments that they previously would have dismissed as unfair and obtuse.

But perhaps thoughtful apostasy is rare because the rationalist bar is so high. Fortunately, I know how to lower the bar: switch from free response to multiple choice. Tone it down from “Tell us exactly where you went wrong and why,” to “Here is a list of positions you probably used to hold, ordered from least controversial to most controversial. At what point did you go wrong?”

Ten years ago, I performed this exercise for libertarians who apostatized on the welfare state. As I explained at the time:

When libertarians start describing Danish “flexicurity” with deep admiration, however, I don’t just doubt their libertarian commitment. More importantly, I wonder why they changed their minds. And to be honest, the more I listen to them, the more I wonder. The most enlightening path, I think, is to restate what I see as the standard libertarian case against the welfare state, and find out exactly where they demur.

In recent years, I’ve had the same experience with libertarians becoming culturally conservative. While immigration is almost always the wedge issue, once libertarians turn against immigration, they commonly move on to a bunch of other culturally conservative views. And once again, the more I listen to them, the more I wonder why they changed their minds. To move forward, I’m going to restate what I see as the standard libertarian case against cultural conservatism, and find out exactly where they demur.

Soft-Core Case

1. While freedom of speech and the press don’t reliably reach the truth, freedom is the best feasible way for humanity to find and spread the truth.

2. This isn’t just wishful thinking. Despite all the nonsense that flourishes today, nonsense was much more prevalent and monolithic before the rise of freedom of speech and the press, and remains much more prevalent and monolithic in modern countries that suppress speech and the press.

3. While we can imagine an epistocratic dictatorship where government censors and otherwise suppresses nonsense to help truth flourish, this has basically never happened. Actually-existing censorship means that one form of nonsense crushes both truth and rival forms of nonsense.

4. The same goes for cultural freedom more generally — the freedom to practice whatever religion you want, love who you want, have sex with who you want, have as many kids as you want, choose what occupation you want, and so on, subject to the constraint that you refrain from literal violence. While such cultural freedom causes a lot of grief, especially when people freak out their parents, it’s the best feasible way for humanity to cope with human heterogeneity and creativity.

5. Again, this isn’t just wishful thinking. Due to deep-seated human conformism, most people use cultural freedom cautiously. A large majority just balances their peers’ norms against their parents’ traditions. Using government to suppress non-conformists is usually more trouble than it’s worth. And while non-conformists are often aggravating and unpleasant, they are also the source of almost all cultural progress. Virtually everyone — including your own parents — would hate to live just like their parents did.

6. Turning 18 or 21 does not magically turn people into responsible adults. Given freedom, people often predictably harm themselves and their families with drunkenness, drug use, impulsive sex, gambling, and more. But all things considered, paternalistic laws against such behavior are still usually a bad idea. Paternalism creates black markets, leading to both violence and adulteration. And the laws are extremely arbitrary. It’s illegal to snort one line of cocaine, but legal to marry a convicted murderer? It’s illegal to run a casino, but legal to run a church of Satanism? Almost no one wants to ban alcohol, which plausibly does more social harm than all other irresponsible behaviors combined.

7. While you might think that granting cultural freedom to people from foreign cultures would be exceptionally dangerous, history really does prove otherwise. The United States in particular has a long history of accepting immigrants from countries that were, at the time, backwards and authoritarian, especially Eastern Europe, Southern Europe, and East Asia. Despite contemporary paranoia, the first generation of immigrants from these backwards, authoritarian countries assimilated enough to become productive members of society. More importantly and amazingly, their kids assimilated strongly enough to “pass” for “regular Americans.”

8. It is thanks to past immigration that the United States is the world’s richest country. This is clearly true for total GDP. But it is almost surely true for per-capita GDP as well. The U.S. has the world’s highest per-capita GDP of any country with a population over 10M, and our long history of immigrant-driven innovation and entrepreneurship is plainly a big part of our recipe for success.

Medium-Core Case

1. Making exceptions to freedom of speech, the press, and cultural freedom in extreme cases is generally not the end of the world or even “the death of freedom.” But unless adults cross the line of literal violence, making exceptions is usually a bad idea. For three main reasons:

   1. Extreme cases are very rare, so even the gross benefits are largely symbolic. If you used the law to stamp out Leninism, Satanism, or polygamy, the gross gains would be trivial.

   2. Legal line-drawing is highly arbitrary, so letting government make exceptions “in extreme cases” often has negative gross benefits. Woke persecution of belief in IQ, colorblindness, and meritocracy are just recent examples of a general pattern of arbitrary persecution. (And yes, this was legal persecution, not just cultural norms).

   3. There really is a severe slippery slope. Even if the initial list of exceptions is perfect, it won’t stay perfect for long.

2. While irresponsible behavior can lead to actual violent crime, this is rare. The sensible response is to harshly punish actual crime, rather than persecuting everyone who engages in some irresponsible behavior. And by the way, almost everyone engages in some irresponsible behavior.

3. Even when irresponsible behavior is closely linked to actual crime, focusing on actual crime is highly effective, so there’s little benefit of criminalizing mere “disorder.” If the homeless really are massively stealing shopping carts and bikes, jail them for stealing shopping carts and bikes. They’re not hard to catch red-handed.

4. Immigrants can be well below average and still far better than nothing. This is true economically: A low-IQ janitor can still be a valuable member of society. And it’s true culturally: An immigrant with revolting habits or beliefs can still be a valuable neighbor, worker, or even friend.

5. Making exceptions to the principle of free migration is a bad idea for the same reasons as making exceptions to freedom of speech, the press, and cultural freedom is a bad idea.

   1. Extreme cases are rare.

   2. Legal line-drawing is highly arbitrary, so letting government make exceptions “in extreme cases” often has negative gross benefits.

   3. The slippery slope.

6. Massive cultural changes happen even if there is zero immigration. Think about the cultural chasm between you and your grandparents. Would they have been justified in using government to make their descendants keep living as they lived?

Hard-Core Case

1. People have a right to say what they want, write what they want, and believe what they want, even if it is false and harmful to society.

2. My body, my choice. Adults have a right to do what they want with their own bodies and lives, even if it is clearly harmful and severely distresses their families.

3. Dogmatic? In the real world, exceptions to “my body, my choice” are deeply arbitrary, so almost everyone supports extreme versions of this principle in some ways. Do you support the individual right to choose a terrible romantic partner? Do you deny that a sufficiently terrible romantic partner will ruin your life? Then why do you want to crack down on casual drug users? (BTW, it wouldn’t be hard to legalize drugs except for serious abusers. You could require a license to buy intoxicants, and revoke it for bad behavior).

4. Even if an immigrant group has unfavorable characteristics, large subsets of natives are clearly worse. Most obviously, virtually no immigrant nationality has worse crime rates than native-born blacks. If that’s a terrible reason to denaturalize native-born blacks, why is it a good reason to refuse immigration from any nation?

5. If government has no right to stop or slow cultural change, it has no right to stop or slow cultural change from immigration. If your culture can’t compete without government protection, it shouldn’t get a bail-out. That said, the winner of global cultural competition is clearly Western culture in general, and American culture in particular. So while authoritarian regimes have a lot to fear from cultural competition, we can and should just expect to keep winning. We don’t just assimilate immigrants; we’re rapidly pre-assimilating the world.

Order here.