Here is a YouTube of Tom Palmer presenting his new book, with yours truly commenting, at the Cato Institute. David Boaz summarizes part of my comment. Here is my previous post on Tom's new book and the book, Realizing Liberty, is available for purchase on-line, Tom points us to this podcast of him criticizing me; his comment reflects some of the differences in our points of view.
One question in the dialog was to what extent an adherence to liberty — at the level of an entire polity — is likely to be culturally specific. I see pro-liberty ideas as more likely to be Anglo-American than Tom does or at least more northwestern European. It is for this reason, I think, that he favors free immigration whereas I, although very pro-immigration relative to the political debate, favor legal limits in many cases, including the United States, Switzerland, and Iceland.
A second question is to what extent ideas about liberty can be supported without encouraging "the paranoid style" in American politics. Too often advocacy of individual liberty ends up bundled with the paranoid style of reasoning and overly simple good vs. evil narratives. I have yet to see a good explanation for why.
Overall I am more suspicious of "ideology" than is Tom. He sees ideology as having driven many very beneficial social movements, such as the abolition of slavery. I accept that point but still fear that ideological reasoning is likely to end up biased away from an emphasis on abstract concepts. That will mean ideology is often useful for ending very concrete social injustices, but that ideology is unlikely to bring people to a deep understanding of "better economics," especially when the distinction between the seen and unseen is important. The strongest ideologies also tend to be nationalistic.
The last sentence in your second paragraph is unbearably tantalizing.
You say you “favor legal limits in many cases, including the United States, Switzerland, and Iceland.”
Which legal limits do you favor? What makes them more appropriate than the status quo or maximally open immigration? Why do you highlight the U.S., Iceland, and Switzerland as specific instances of countries that need these legal limits?
It’s 3 or 4 years on and I still don’t understand your position on ‘positive’ rights.
I don’t think I’m paranoid, but being lied too so many times by the government has put me in a camp that others call paranoid.
Remember when all the MSM and acadmic historians told us that the official story of the Gulf of Tonkin was 100% true? It turned out to be a lie.
When you read a lot you find dozens more instances like this in jsu the last 50 years. It starts to make you skeptical after a while.
“It isn’t paranoia if they actually are out to get you.”
I do wonder why it is that the cosmos at CATO and the NY Times will not say exactly what they mean when they talk about the “politics of paranoia”.
It seems they mean if you were against the Paulson Plan and various other bailouts you are just paranoid. If you are against all of the various co2 tax schemes then you are paranoid. If you are against the interventionist wars then you are paranoid. If you are critical of the idea that technocrats printing fiat money to fool the population into behaving in certain ways can help lead to a better society then you are paranoid. If you are observant of the fact that literacy rates in the USA have plummeted over the past century and think this has something to do with the onset of a centralized compulsory education policy then you are paranoid.
In other words, have faith in the experts and ignore facts. Logic is not important, arguments are to be shouted down with ad hominems and data is to be destroyed for our own good.
Faith in the intelligentsia is the new definition of science. Questions and skepticism = idealogical dogma. Submission to technocrats =”well educated” . To seek a revolution of existing institutions = paranoia.
Yes Gabe, you are paranoid. It doesn’t follow from all of your points, but being scared of fiat currency is quite paranoid. It also follows from your literacy rate observations and horribly inconsistent rantings that you are not much of an intellectual. I’ll say that my quick findings suggest that literacy rate is decreasing only by looking at certain graphs that are using a stricter standard than once was used. If you can’t see the ugly inconsistencies in your last two paragraphs there, then please seek professional help.
There is no general agreement about what “ideology” means. But it seems to me that on at least some interpretations it is facile to say that we can do without it or that we should distrustful of it per se. If you identify ideology with ignorant ideologies it is bad — necessarily. But I don’t think that is necessary. Nor that it is useful to condemn ideology per se. See my:
http://www.thefreemanonline.org/featured/in-defense-of-ideology/
Good point Mr Rizzo. The demonization of “ideology” is troubling to me. How can we make sense of a complex world without a system of thought. Of course exceptions to any system of thought will arise and should be welcomed as things to learn from, but to attack the very idea of creating a system of thought is anti-intellectual in the extreme.
Educated people try to come up with general rules and principles and philosophies to help them make decisions and judgements in a wide variety of circumstances. Well thought out ideology can be extremely flexible. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating you just copy a ideology wholseale out of a text written by people who claim to be friends with god.
Automotons and retards memorize specific rules, follow them dogmatically and then refer to some greater authority for all situations that don’t meet the specific criteria they memorized. Educated people create their own self modifying ideologies, complete with recursive loops for learning. These systems of thought are critical to quickly sifting through info in this world. If you want to feed the paranoid mindset, then start telling people their own hard won systems of thought are themselves bad for even being thought of….and that a smart person would just refer all important decisions to the authorities.
it seems clear even the idea of liberty is cultural.
Even at the end of a gun?
What if the gun is loaded with bullets?
What if the gun is pointed at you, loaded with bullets, and the safety is off?
What if the gun is pointed at you, loaded with bullets, and the safety is off, and the trigger is pulled?
Is the answer different if the person pulling the trigger is in a “cultural” position of authority?
Or the “cultural” equivalent of “the state”?
In my own little corner of the world I’ve been bouncing ideas off people as to how political discussions in the US seem to have degenerated over the last few decades to these black and white “paranoid style† arguments. I’m at least familiar with the past few decades, I’m sure there have been periods in history not just here but in other democracies that have been similar. I actually feel sorry for young people who think that us vs them couched in black and white arguments is actually political discourse.
Anyway, it seems to me that ideologies seem to start with cogent if somewhat subtle arguments. The people who develop these arguments are obviously very invested in these ideas. These same people and a small cadre of followers in disseminating the ideas find that subtle arguments have to be winnowed away by forming ever more course reasoning that sounds to a reasonable person, who is not paying close attention, as a precise reasoning. The promoters trade away accuracy in favor of precision if for no other reason than most people can track short precise arguments rather than the long opaque arguments of traditional political philosophy. The promoters of ideas find the need to do this in order to have a chance at getting their ideas implemented by an elected government. Unfortunately these coarse, yet precise, arguments don’t track the original arguments if for no other reason that some logical predicates are debatable and keeping precise reasoning while still tracking the original political philosophy means stopping to argue the debatable clauses. Having a huge set of logical predicates, that may reveal holes in the reasoning is risky; having a huge set of predicates definitely tends to put one to sleep, not to mention you have to lay your cards on the table as to what you are using as axioms. So the promoters of the ideas just come to accept the course arguments with their unassailable logical predicates because the reasoning sounds goods and parsimony must mean that have gotten to the core of the matter ïŠ. Before long the electorate has picked up these ideas and course lines of reasoning and this is the basis for political discourse. (Please keep in my I just finished Anne Norton’s “Leo Strauss and the Politics of American Empire† and I am impressionable ïŠ )
Finally, I think there is a way to test this idea, one could take the ideas of say Strauss or Ayn Rand, track their students and the work they produced and the policies that they affected. One would track the work they produced in say Foreign Policy magazine, or the announcements by the fed in the case of Greenspan, and make note of the legislation passed during the time they made policy or were lobbying, as well as debate on the house and senate floors regarding issues they were directly related to policy or lobbying efforts, or pronouncements they made at the fed and then track public reaction in the say the Wall Street Journal and some other popular media out lets. I’m guessing one could see the ideas getting winnowed away into ever more concise and coarse discourse, especially on the congressional floors with the advent of CSPAN.
Whatever has become of the gerundive?
How about HIS criticizing me? Rather tham HIMs doing it?
Of course it could be an elision of a podcast of him while or engaged in ….
Picky, picky – eh?
Forgive my typos above as haste. Some will of course take it to signal crazed paranoia. Whatever. I wrote it in about 5 minutes or I could have come up with even more examples.
One of my favorite ponderings right now is how to know when the market is working for you and when it is working against you. Usually in a corrupt nation the market is working against you, that may be why development and rule of law is so hard. Usually, the markets in America have worked for us, and this is why “paranoia” gets short shrift, but it’s pretty obious to me that there has been a shift and the market is working against those of us who I think properly attribute our prosperity. And the point of ideology is that, what, say 99.9% of people don’t really ponder these things.
“ “Too often advocacy of individual liberty ends up bundled with the paranoid style of reasoning and overly simple good vs. evil narratives. I have yet to see a good explanation for why.”
“Interesting.
Because too often that’s what people accept. “ “
Is a good example of what sounds reasonable, is precise and what is, in the end, a course assertion. It doesn’t offer a way to test or track a method for answering the question of paranoid reasoning and good versus evil narratives over say just simple arguments without thinking they are being persecuted. It jumps straight to a conclusion missing the subtlety of the specific question about the nature of the arguments the evolve.
Looking back at your previous post, there seems to be no place for the large group of self-identified libertarians (Glenn Reynolds, the Volokh crowd and so on) who gave enthusiastic support to the Iraq War, torture, the Patriot Act etc.
Do you regard this group as shmibertarians who have revealed their true (statist) colours, or as fellow travellers who deviate from the correct line on this particular issue but can still be regarded as allies in general?
“I . . . favor legal limits [on immigration] in many cases, including the United States, Switzerland, and Iceland.”
“The strongest ideologies also tend to be nationalistic.”
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