The Obsessions of the Illiberal Left and the Illiberal Right | Lib Lib Report

The Illiberal Left is about deconstruction, and the Illiberal Right is about literalism.

Welcome to the Lib Lib Report, i.e. the Liberal Libertarian Report, where we talk about news and current affairs from a liberal libertarian point of view. We aim for a practical pro-liberty politics encouraging things like free speech and free thought in the here and now, while looking for more libertarian solutions moving towards the future.

Recently, I have been talking about how the illiberal left and the illiberal right are similar in many ways, including their blind faith in utopian fantasies, and the influence of critical theory on both movements. Today, however, I am going to look at a key difference between the illiberal left and the illiberal right. I think it is because of this difference that the two can't ever be united.

From what I see, the biggest difference between the illiberal left and the illiberal right is what they are most obsessed about. The illiberal left is obsessed with deconstruction. For the illiberal left, every part of the status quo, every structure and every institution, is a product of oppressive power relations, and needs to be deconstructed to bring about liberation. The illiberal left is illiberal because they believe the freedoms guaranteed by liberalism are part of the oppressive structure to maintain the status quo, to prevent the dismantling of the status quo. I believe this view is illustrated most clearly in Herbert Marcuse's infamous essay Repressive Tolerance, where he essentially says that liberalism's universal tolerance leads to the upholding of the repressive and oppressive status quo, and that a truly liberating tolerance must be selectively intolerant to some ideas, i.e. illiberal at least some of the time. Hence, the basic logic of the illiberal left looks like this: the freedoms guaranteed by liberalism make the liberated utopia they desire impossible to achieve, so they must be knocked down.

Meanwhile, the illiberal right is obsessed with literalism, as in the literal reading of statements and rules, and the rigid obedience to such rules. We all know that conservative Christianity often insists on a literal reading of the Bible. However, this worldview is not limited to religion. Conservative legal academics and judges approach the law with the same literalism, for example. I think some conservatives' attitudes on LGBT issues also stem from their worldview that everything should function according to rigid rules, and their discomfort about LGBT rights could stem from their discomfort about what are clearly exceptions to the rule. For the authoritarian right, liberalism is bad because it allows people the freedom of conscience to interpret the rules of life, and to potentially break the rules some regard as sacred. When they speak of the 'common good', it is really the society-wide obedience to the sacred rules that they have in mind. Which, of course, is not what many of us would consider to be the common good.

A recent concern is that the illiberal right could start using judicial literalism to read down legal rights to liberty, so that the government could have more scope to legislate morality. This is in fact my biggest concern about the recent leaked US Supreme Court opinion on abortion and Roe v. Wade. This is not about whether Roe itself was the correct legal decision or not, but rather, the logic used to overturn Roe in the opinion. From what I understand, the logic is that, since the right to privacy is not explicitly stated in the US constitution, there is no rule that it must be respected by governments, at least not to the extent implied in Roe. Many people are concerned that this could set a precedent to roll back other rights, and I agree with them. The authoritarian right clearly intends to take a very narrow, literalist view on the guarantees to liberty in Western liberal democracies. Under their worldview, government action could be justified as long as it does not literally violate the word of the constitution. There is no respect for the broader spirit of liberty at all. For the authoritarian right, only the literal words of the law matter, the broader values of liberty don't. I guess this is why they think they can transform the West to resemble illiberal democracies like Hungary, while still being true to the traditions of the West.

In conclusion, while the illiberal left and the illiberal right are similarly unrealistic, utopian, disrespectful to others' freedoms, and influenced by critical theory, their ultimate objective is different, and this is why they can't really unite to form a firm anti-liberal bloc. The illiberal left's objective is to dismantle the status quo, while the illiberal right's objective is to remake society into one that is rigidly bound by black and white rules that are often religiously inspired. These two goals are clearly incompatible with each other. I think certain personality traits, e.g. perfectionism and black and white thinking, could predispose a person towards both goals, and I think this could explain why there are so many people who switch from the illiberal left to the illiberal right, and vice versa. But one can only be committed to either goal at one time. Therefore, while illiberal people can and do switch camps, the two camps can't ever be combined into one.

A Libertarian Argument for the Pro-Choice Position | Lib Lib Report

It doesn't even depend on your moral views on abortion itself.

Welcome to the Lib Lib Report, i.e. the Liberal Libertarian Report, where we talk about news and current affairs from a liberal libertarian point of view. We aim for a practical pro-liberty politics encouraging things like free speech and free thought in the here and now, while looking for more libertarian solutions moving towards the future.

The leak of a US Supreme Court draft opinion suggesting the overturn of Roe v. Wade earlier this month has reignited the long standing debate between pro-choice libertarians and pro-life libertarians. At the heart of the matter is whether the proper libertarian position regarding abortion should be pro-choice or pro-life. I want to talk about my thoughts on this matter, and how this might inform the liberal libertarian orientation in politics in the here and now. Before we start, I have to make it clear that what I'm going to talk about does not directly concern the legal merits of Roe itself, or the leaked opinion. It is about pro-life vs pro-choice positions in libertarianism, and the arguments are equally applicable in other situations. I must also say that I don't pretend to speak for other libertarians, and these are just my own thoughts. As they say, if there are ten libertarians in the room, there is likely going to be ten different positions taken on an issue. And this diversity is certainly something I welcome.

Let's start with this story about a friend of mine. She is a religious person, and she certainly believes that abortion is morally equivalent to taking an innocent life. But then, she has never been a fan of getting the government involved in this issue. Given that the most vocal pro-life activists often like to equate abortion with murder, and hence equate legal abortion with the absurd position of legalizing murder, my friend has never been one to voice her opinions in public, because she was worried that they might ask her something like 'so you think murder should be legal?' My friend used to think that her views were deeply unpopular until this month, when the heated debate over Roe v. Wade revealed that there were indeed plenty of people who shared her views. Apparently, even among those who believe abortion is morally equivalent to taking an innocent life, they don't necessarily have to equate it with murder, at least legally speaking.

To understand this, I think we should step back and take a look at the larger picture. The argument of the staunchest pro-life activists basically goes like this: given abortion is morally equivalent to murder in their view, how can it be acceptable that murder is generally punishable by the maximum penalty available, while abortion is legally allowed? However, the assumption of that argument is that the government's role in society is that of moral enforcer, and it should always punish behavior that is immoral. This view is basically rooted in the social contract of the pre-Enlightenment West, where everyone lived by and agreed to moral values that were determined by the authorities, which was generally the church, based on religious tradition and scripture. The problem with this model was that everyone had to agree to be bound by the the laws of Christianity in the first place, and also the authority of the church in interpreting the religious law. This was not that much of a problem in pre-Enlightenment times, given that the vast majority of people in Europe were Christians, and they also closely obeyed the decisions of the church hierarchy in matters of faith.

The Enlightenment challenged the absolute authority of the church, and this was where things changed. As I liked to say, liberalism is basically rooted in freedom of religion. Liberalism represented a new social contract, one that was necessary to maintain the peace, in a Western world that no longer universally accepted the supremacy of a unified religious authority. Given that morality was deeply tied to religion, the end of religious agreement would, at least to some extent, also mean the end of moral agreement on many issues. This made the old social contract where the government was society's enforcer of morality unacceptable, and indeed oppressive, to a significant number of people in society. The horrible religious conflicts in Europe back then demonstrated this point very well. Hence, liberalism arose to give Western society a different social contract: one where the government plays no role in determining and enforcing standards of morality, but instead functions to guarantee that every citizen has an equal right to live life according to their own moral conscience, as long as other citizens' rights to do the same is equally respected. Of course, social change is slow, and this idea, while already long firmly embedded into the legal traditions and institutions of the Western world, is still yet to be fully implemented, or to fully supplant pre-Enlightenment cultural views. Hence, even today, both the authoritarian Left and the authoritarian Right continue to demand that governments legislate for the common good, or react swiftly to moral panics of all kinds, without much regard for the requirements of the liberal social contract. This, I believe, is where a lot of the unnecessary culture war style political conflicts come from. Libertarianism is basically a movement to end this state of confusion, and move the Enlightenment's ideals forward to their logical conclusion, by fully realizing the implementation of the liberal social contract in the Western world.

It follows that, in a fully libertarianized society, with a fully liberal social contract, the government simply can't legislate against something because people find it morally wrong. They can only legislate to ensure the equal standing of parties to the social contract. Murder would still be illegal because it violates the rights of another party to the social contract. Abortion, however, would be different. Countries cannot practically consider fetuses to be citizens with full rights of citizenship. For practical reasons, citizenship can only begin at birth. There is a reason that our documents have our date of birth, not our date of fertilization. Even when abortion was illegal, fetuses were not considered citizens. Therefore, fetuses cannot be considered parties to the social contract. This means that abortion cannot be considered a violation of the rights of a party to the social contract, and cannot be outlawed on these grounds. It can only be considered a matter of morality, which under a libertarian social contract, the government should have no ability to legislate over. Therefore, abortion and murder are indeed very different, no matter what your moral views on abortion are. From this, it can also be concluded that the correct libertarian position on the matter of abortion is the pro-choice position. Again, this doesn't even have to depend on your moral views on abortion itself.

Of course, here on the Lib Lib Report, we are not libertarian immediatists. While we want to move society towards the libertarian destination in the long run, we recognize that this is not where we are at right now, which is why we practice a more pragmatic liberalism in the here and now. We recognize that the current social contract of Western liberal democracy is not yet the libertarian one, and calls to legislate based on morality and the common good are not universally considered illegitimate in the West at this time. However, given that we are Liberal Libertarians, with a libertarian destination for society in mind, I think we should aim to move towards, and not away from, that destination as much as possible, in the policy positions we support. Especially given that abortion has already been legal in America and most other Western democracies for decades, to outlaw abortion now would be to take a big leap backwards, away from the libertarian destination, something that is simply not acceptable for those of us committed to taking society towards the libertarian destination. This, I think, is a very good justification for taking the pro-choice position in the politics of the here and now.

The Justice Argument Against Critical Theory | Lib Lib Report

Welcome to the Lib Lib Report, i.e. the Liberal Libertarian Report, where we talk about news and current affairs from a liberal libertarian point of view. We aim for a practical pro-liberty politics encouraging things like free speech and free thought in the here and now, while looking for more libertarian solutions moving towards the future.

In this episode, I want to talk about how we can more effectively argue against critical theory, while holding the ground of justice. The arguments I will make here can apply to critical race theory or any other form of critical theory. Therefore, I am going to use the neutral descriptors 'group A' and 'group B' to make my argument.

To do this, we really need to dissect the core argument of critical theory opponents. Basically, the form of the argument is like this: the average outcomes of group A and group B are different. If you believe that the people in group A and group B are equally capable, then you must acknowledge that it is discrimination and oppression, including historical oppression, that has caused the difference. To not acknowledge that means that you either don't care about oppression, or worse, you don't actually believe that group A and group B are equal.

However, there is a major flaw with this argument. Even if we acknowledge historical disadvantages as important contributors to the inequality we observe, it doesn't mean we should conclude that all of group A is privileged over group B, and the right way to address oppression is to pit group B against group A. For example, the better average outcomes in group A could be due to a minority of people from group A having had access to certain advantages that people in group B couldn't access. However, the majority of people in group A also didn't have access to these advantages. Moreover, while people in group B might have experienced a specific form of historical injustice, many in group A might have experienced other forms of historical injustice. Therefore, to label the whole group A as 'privileged' would be unfair, and to enact policies based on this view would be against justice. The fact is, if people in group B deserve redress for their historical oppression, so do many people in group A!

This doesn't mean we can't do anything about historical injustice. While I do acknowledge the importance of acknowledging historical circumstances, it would generally be unfair to consider people in groups or pseudo-classes according to immutable characteristics when we are doing that. Instead, we need to make the playing field as equal as possible for everyone. This is best done using universally applied policies. For example, a universal basic income (UBI) scheme would provide an economic safety net for everyone, and allow people the space to pursue opportunities in life. This would help in leveling the playing field for everyone disadvantaged by historical circumstances, regardless of race, gender or other immutable characteristics. It would help cancel out the historical injustice people suffer, regardless of demographics.