Conservative-Libertarian Alliance Watch
Brian Doherty | July 21, 2007, 11:32pm
Catching up on some of the past few months magazines, I found this in National Review's "The Week" section, page 6 of the May 28 issue. (This is the unsigned front of the book section, written in official magazine voice.)
From the "Ooo, what a giveaway!" department. (It's alas not online for free.) Context: discussing common misreadings of St. Reagan:
Nor can Reagan be usefully emulated by simply aping his slogans--which are in any case themselves misunderstood. Everyone remembers that Reagan, in his first inaugural address, said that government is not the solution; everyone forgets his modifier, "in this present crisis." We no longer face double-digit inflation, 70 percent tax rates, or an enemy that could wipe out the human race. We need to apply old principles to new circumstances, to think anew....
Here's another Reagan slogan, often forgotten but not too hard to understand. He said it in an interview with reason magazine in our July 1975 issue: "I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism."
LarryA | July 22, 2007, 3:23pm | #
Wouldn't be a good fit for you as libertarianism is a right wing ideology.
The truth is, you cannot say if it is "right" or "left" wing, it has elements of both.
Actually, it is neither.
Classic “left wing” liberalism holds that government should pass laws to change the way society operates to foster “progress.” Universal healthcare, universal employment, equal wages, etc.
Classic “right wing” conservatism holds that government should pass laws to keep society from changing. Industry protection, maintain class differences, enforce traditional morality, etc.
Libertarianism holds that government should be tightly restrained to keep it from passing laws, and thus let society evolve on its own.
For an example of the difference consider the
Pink Pistols, an organization of GLBT gun owners.
Liberals want to pass laws taking their guns away.
Conservatives want to pass laws keeping them from acting gay.
Libertarians want to do away with laws against firearms and sexual orientation and live and let live.
Libertarianism is "ultra-right" in American political terms as it advocates individual rights and absolute minimal government.
“Ultra right” conservatism traditionally, and particularly in the U.S. today, is far from a “minimal government” ideology. Particularly the “Christian right” wants a religious government modeled around the Spanish Catholic government (but evangelical instead of popish) complete with inquisition. No relation whatsoever to the libertarian model.
This is not my personal view, it is supported by communitarian writers...
Consider the source.
SIV, your assertion that Stalin and Hitler are the same ideologically would have flown 40 years ago when historians still accepted the "totalitarian" view of Hitler and Stalin. They now recognize there were important differences between them and in fact, they were opposites ideologically. Their methods may have borne some similarities, but what they wanted to achieve was quite different.
There are only two forms of government. Either the government has power over the people and eventually treats them like peasants, or individual people have power over the government and force it to treat them like citizens. In the first form government exists to benefit government and the few who run it. In the second form government exists to protect individual rights.
Hitler and Stalin ran governments of the first sort. Differences between them run on the order of one wanted to eliminate Jews, Catholics, and homosexuals; while the other wanted to eliminate Ukrainians, Christians, and homosexuals.
Ashish George | July 23, 2007, 1:24am | #
"I found evidence that the American med students on Granada were under duress. However, I also found as much evidence that they were not. So the question seems to be inconclusive."
Okay, so you stated that the invasion of Grenada was defensible by libertarian criteria either without bothering to research whether it really was until I called bullshit or without taking care to phrase your position as a clear hypothetical despite knowing that the evidence was mixed. Lovely.
"What? Selective?? They're to the point! Those are distinctly Leftist positions which disprove your bizarre contention that Nazism was not species of leftism. That's why you discount them. But I'm guessing that you were ignorant of them until I pointed them out."
Those certainly were positions of the left. But just because Group X has some positions that the left shares that does not mean Group X is on the left.
"That doesn't make your case. The Soviets and their lefty allies had many views that were profoundly illiberal, including anti-Jewish racism and an embrace of militarism. Also, many Leftists, including the Commies and the Nazis shared harsh anti-free speech positions."
The relevant question is what positions defined these groups. I'll concede that the Soviets--who, unlike the Nazis, everyone can agree really were perverse extremists of the left--were defined in part by militarism as well. But the welfare state positions the Nazis espoused were not their core identity. Thus the intense opposition from the SPD and the KPD.
The Nazis' core identity was devoted to defending traditional German values (as they saw them), an expansive nationalism, and anti-Bolshevism.
"That there was opposition from parties on German left does not provide any disproof of the Nazi's leftist ideology. That leftist ideology is manifest in their positions."
I have offered the following points: (1) The NSDAP drew more support from the German right than the German left and (2) The parties of the German left fought passionately to keep the NSDAP from gaining power and ruling with an iron fist. The truth of these claims is well-documented.
If you are trying to demonstrate that the Nazi ideology was primarily leftist, you have to offer reasons why your hypothesis is more likely to be true given these facts than not. Aside from citing stated Nazi positions, you have failed to do so. These positions alone are insufficient to the task because--wonder of wonders!--regimes often have stated goals and motives quite different from their long-term plans.
So, for example, under Nazi rule was it in fact the case that "the state be charged first with providing the opportunity for a livelihood and way of life for the citizens"? Did Hitler and company really intend to make this the regime's guiding principle in the long-term any more than the Soviets intended to achieve true egalitarianism in the long-term?
If you follow the link ktc2 offered at 7:10, you can find quotations from Hitler and his colleagues linking their actions to Christianity ("I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord"). So I guess we can conclude that Nazism was a Christian political movement, huh? I would say probably not, but by your anemic reasoning we can. All we need is for someone to say "I believe and intend to practice X" and that person suddenly is an actual believer and practitioner of X.
The burden of proof is on you. You are the one offering a thesis which contradicts what most historians would say. Either you have the evidence or you don't. So far, you don't.
Ashish George | July 23, 2007, 4:04pm | #
"Read more carefully. I didn't know at first that the evidence vis a vis the med students was mixed. I found out and then revealed to you what I found, even though it militated against my statement on the Granada matter. I'm always intellectually honest, and in this case you try to use it against me. Kinda desperate, aren't you?"
From my last post:
"Okay, so you stated that the invasion of Grenada was defensible by libertarian criteria either without bothering to research whether it really was until I called bullshit or..."
I think I read you just fine. The fact that you cited the government's stated justification for invading Grenada without really knowing its validity reflects your desperation, not mine. You clearly want to preside over a conservative-libertarian marriage, the facts be damned.
"Did the Sino-Soviet rift mean that either one of them were less on the left? Of course not, but that's the implication of your silly 'idealogical identification by opposition' methodology that you've tried to employ concerning the Nazis."
Bad counterexample. There is evidence from what people said and did at the time that the Sino-Soviet rift was motivated at least as much by tensions along the Sino-Soviet border as by doctrinal quarrels.
"There are several politico-military points of conflict between the U.S.S.R. and the C.P.R. that focus on the nationalistic rather than the ideological character of the rift, even though lip service is paid by both states to the precepts of Marxism-Leninism, with the Chinese adding the names of Stalin and Mao Tsetung to their list of Communist theoreticians.
One of the conflicts has to do with the international boundary between the U.S.S.R. and the C.P.R., which stretches for a distance of over 4000 miles from Afghanistan and the Pamir Range to Vladivostok and the Sea of Japan. The Chinese have accused the Russians of provoking over 5000 border incidents along this desolate line in just one year.2 In turn, the Soviet government in a declaration of 21 September 1963 accused the Chinese of violating the Soviet frontier an equal number of times and of even carrying out 'attempts at 'occupation' of certain small sections of Soviet territory.'3 The rugged terrain, lack of a natural boundary, and the low density of population make this border particularly conducive to violations, both intentional and unintentional."
http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/aureview/1967/may-jun/vaslef.html
See how that works? You offer a thesis and I offer evidence from the period to support or contradict that thesis. It's called good historical practice.
Now, many posts after saying the Social Democrats and communists saw the Nazis as "rival gangs of thugs" on the left, can you use good historical practice to support that claim or will it remain speculation?
"Now who's advocacies are way closer to the Nazi's, Hillary's or Ron Paul's? The answer to that question is as clear as it is that you've been wrong in this debate."
I see Jonah Goldberg's book will have at least one buyer.
I'll second brian's point that this is an argument about semantics more than anything else, but he is also right that you are wrong to simplistically identify the left with statism and the right with individual freedom. The positions Ron Paul takes would be out of place on the right (remember how Giuliani got cheered when he attacked Paul at the SC debate?).
Of course, unlike you, I'm not trying to identify libertarian views with the left or the right, although I do think the issues of the Bush era have found made liberals and libertarians come together on the issues brian listed.
And as Brink Lindsey pointed out:
"But an honest survey of the past half-century shows a much better match between libertarian means and progressive ends. Most obviously, many of the great libertarian breakthroughs of the era--the fall of Jim Crow, the end of censorship, the legalization of abortion, the liberalization of divorce laws, the increased protection of the rights of the accused, the reopening of immigration--were championed by the political left."
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=6800
