Centrism brings balance, and balance is required for sustainable progress
Since the victory of Donald Trump in the 2024 US Presidential election, numerous left-wing commentators have blamed 'centrism' for the defeat of Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party. Given that Harris ran a relatively moderate campaign, and still lost, they reasoned that centrism must be to blame. This is despite the fact that Biden and Obama also ran relatively moderate campaigns, and won. Moreover, in Britain, Labour leader Keir Starmer also won in a landslide on a moderate platform earlier this year, recovering much lost ground from the massive defeat of Jeremy Corbyn's far-left campaign five years earlier. The fact is, centrism still has a very good track record of winning overall.
The biggest problem with popular misconceptions regarding centrism is that there seems to be quite a bit of confusion as to what 'centrism' is actually. My long-standing view is that centrism is a balance of what I call the rational progressive impulse, and organicist conservative philosophy. While these modes of thinking are generally represented by the center-left and the center-right respectively, it is not always the case that left equals progressive, or right equals conservative. Take 'neoliberal' economic policy, arguably the strongest pillar in the three-legged stool of Reaganite neoconservatism. It really is quite radical, in that it does not care about the harms it brings to working families. All it cares about is benefits in economic and productivity terms. This means that its proponents are motivated by the prospect of achieving better things, while not caring too much about the harms their proposed changes could bring. Hence, 'neoliberal' economic policy, although championed mainly by the right before 2016, is actually a form of unfettered progressivism, and like all forms of unfettered progressivism, it has led to chaos, destruction and suffering. A truly centrist perspective would have provided a check on the unrestrained and unbalanced optimism of neoliberalism, and effectively prevented the economic frustrations that ultimately fed into the rise of the populist right.
Besides economic frustrations, cultural concerns, particularly the rise of wokeness, are also providing fuel for the populist right. This represents yet another case of unfettered progressivism that would merit some checks and balances, that organicist conservative philosophy can provide. Woke ideology, rooted in postmodern critical theory, insists that the whole status quo is oppressive and must be dismantled wholesale. This is a good example of insisting on radical change, justified on abstract philosophy alone, the very thing that Burkean conservative philosophy has been warning us about for centuries. If progressives are willing to heed that philosophy, they will opt for a more practical program for reform instead, which would remove one important factor fueling the growth of the populist right. This would actually also be good from a social justice point of view, because we would actually be making progress rather than arguing endlessly, polarizing the public, and ceding more and more ground to the reactionaries in the process.
There are still other areas where the impulse for progress and change needs to be kept in check by organicist conservatism. I even admit that this would apply to libertarianism sometimes. For example, during the summer of 2020, many libertarians became sympathetic to 'defund the police' and other soft on crime policies. As we all know, these policies are now subject to a massive backlash, because of concerns about crime, in basically every major city across the Western world. This result should have been seen from a mile away. The fact is, while in an ideal society, where the people are more enlightened and crime is much less common, we probably should not spend so much on policing, we don't actually live in that society. In our current reality, defunding the police and going soft on crime will definitely mean more crime. The lesson here is that, when making or endorsing policy, we can't just look at what our ideal society, in the abstract, would look like. We also need to consider how the policy will practically play out in the society we actually have. Failing to do this will give fuel to the argument for authoritarianism.
A final important point is that being a centrist does not mean being unprincipled, as people on the far-left often accuse us of being. For example, as a centrist libertarian, my primary principle is freedom. While I'm not going to take it as far as demanding the abolition of driver's licenses like some libertarian immediatists do, I'm certainly going to fight tooth and nail against attempts to take away existing freedoms, and turn society towards a more authoritarian direction, whatever the justification. This is why I'm so opposed to the culture warriors in both the woke left and the populist New Right. I'm not going to compromise with people who want to shove their ideological beliefs down other people's throats at the expense of individual freedom, period.
Doing sociology and philosophy in real time by looking at developments in contemporary Western politics and culture, from a Moral Libertarian perspective. My mission is to stop the authoritarian 'populist' right and the cultural-systemist left from destroying the West.
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Why Centrism is the Best Antidote to the Populist Right | New Centrist View
Divisive Identity Politics Can Never Lead to Progress | The Fault in the Left
In the wake of Donald Trump winning the 2024 US Presidential Election, and winning the majority of young men according to multiple exit polls, there has been a lot of soul searching as to whether the Democrats have a problem with male voters right now. A major point of discussion is whether the divisive us-vs-them identity politics that much of the left has embraced in the past decade is to blame. Frankly, I think it is to blame.
The truth is, you can either have a win-win politics for all, or you can have an identity politics that divides society into oppressor vs oppressed groups, but you can't have both. Postmodern critical theory and the identity politics inspired by such theory is always going to lead the left down the route of divisive identity politics, which is going to alienate many potential supporters. When you swap out old-school inclusive liberalism for the kind of philosophy that labels people as privileged oppressors based on their immutable characteristics, you are bound to lose a lot of support over time. I hope they can really learn this lesson, and get rid of this faulty and harmful philosophy once and for all.
What Would You Do (if not for the Culture Wars)?
I think a good way to get past the tribalism and polarization of today's Western political landscape is simply to constantly ask yourself: what would you do if not for the tribalist culture wars? What would you have decided was the best outcome, if not for what you have heard about the culture wars, the strange ideological theories, the propaganda of political influencers, and so on? What would you support, if you didn't know a thing about politics before today?
Several years ago, I heard someone say that they were opposed to gay marriage, but only because the so-called 'cultural Marxists' were supporting it. Leaving aside the issue of the validity of their assertions, I think thinking about things this way is very wrong. So you decide to oppose something just because you think your enemies support it. You let this consideration overide all your values, and all your decency and compassion as a human being. I think there's something very fundamentally immoral about this. And it doesn't really make sense either. After all, if your enemy drinks water, you wouldn't stop drinking water, right?
The level of polarization and tribalism we now have in Western society is dangerous and unsustainable. If we let this continue, I fear it could lead us to really bad places. It's time to say no to all this.
What a Centrist Libertarian Program Looks Like in Practice
I think it could be more popular than right-libertarianism and left-libertarianism
In recent years, I've come to identify as both a centrist and a libertarian. I've explained numerous times elsewhere why I identify with these labels. But still, some people seem to think it's a contradiction. And it really shouldn't be. I mean, if someone told you that they identified as being on the right and a libertarian, that would make sense to most people. Alternatively, if someone told you that they identified as a leftist and a libertarian, that would still make sense at least to people who are familiar with political philosophy. In other words, right-libertarianism is not only real but also the default mode of libertarianism in the English-speaking West, and left-libertarianism is at least a very real thing that is well understood by many politically engaged people. On the other hand, most people still seem to be unable to imagine what a centrist libertarianism looks like.
To explain centrist libertarianism, I think we should start with left-libertarianism vs right-libertarianism. The differences between left-libertarians and right-libertarians ultimately lie in what they believe to be the biggest barriers to freedom. Traditionally, right-libertarians believe that the government is the biggest barrier to freedom, and left-libertarians believe that capitalism is the biggest barrier to freedom. In recent times, cultural views have also entered the conversation. Here, right-libertarians tend to believe that the 'woke' establishment and its institutions are the most important enemy of freedom, while left-libertarians tend to see the same with religion and traditional values. The clarity of who the 'enemy' is means that both left-libertarians and right-libertarians tend to have quite extreme, and therefore 'immediatist', policy positions, and they believe that if they were allowed to get their way, liberty would be realized almost overnight.
Centrist libertarians are different from both left-libertarians and right-libertarians in that, while we aim for the maximization of freedom like all other libertarians, we understand that the conditions that favor or disfavor freedom are multifactorial. We don't believe that the left or the right exclusively has the answers to what makes a society free. Rather, we empirically observe what conditions are conducive to freedom in practice, and what conditions are harmful to freedom in practice. The set of 'conditions for freedom' that we care about are much larger than the simplistic views of both left-libertarians and right-libertarians. For example, polarization, echo chambers, loss of respect for science and objective truth, and an over-commitment to abstract philosophy are all harmful for freedom. Both left-libertarians and right-libertarians fail to see all this, because they are too obsessed with their own ideology. Centrist libertarianism, in contrast, is much more empirical and practical.
This also means that a centrist libertarianism is necessarily a gradualist libertarianism. When you believe that freedom is multifactorial, and that there is no simple fix that would magically take us to freedom utopia, you understand that the road to more freedom lies in trial and error, give and take, and in both promoting new forms of freedom, as well as safeguarding existing forms of freedom. Like other centrists, we understand that making good, sustainable policy lies in balance and compromise, and aiming for overnight perfection is just a recipe for disaster. This is in contrast to both left-libertarians and right-libertarians, who mostly agree with the broader left and the broader right respectively as to who is the 'enemy', and find almost no room for agreement with the other side. This is what leads to many right-libertarians embracing policy positions very similar to that of the Republican Freedom Caucus, and many left-libertarians embracing wokeness to some extent, even though that ideology is clearly anti-free speech and individual liberty. Of course, we centrists know that both the hard-left and the hard-right are actually not that good for freedom in practice. As centrists, we are able to see the pitfalls inherent in both left-wing and right-wing politics, and their anti-freedom implications.
Centrist libertarianism also differs from pure 'centrism' in an important way. Unlike centrists who are not libertarians, we still insist on prioritizing our general goal of promoting freedom when it comes to what we are willing to support, and the kind of compromises that we are willing to make. For example, a centrist libertarian will not agree to a platform that results in clearly less freedom than the status quo, no matter what benefits its supporters claim it will bring. Also, in hammering out compromises, we will always bring the case for freedom to the table, and argue that a policy of agreeing to disagree and respecting each other's freedom will often be the best form of compromise. Finally, our commitment to freedom means that we will not fall for 'populist' policy platforms that combine social and economic authoritarianism, even if they do superficially combine policies from the left and the right. We want to take the best parts from both sides, not the worst parts.
Creating a False Consensus | Influencers vs. Truth
Beware when 'everyone' moves in lockstep.
Welcome to Influencers vs. Truth, a new series where I examine the strategies often used by political influencers to recruit viewers to their point of view. I think this is needed for three reasons: firstly, online influencers have a range of new strategies that they have been using to convince people of their positions, and these have been much more effective than the old strategies used by TV talking heads and talk radio personalities. Secondly, recent revelations have shined a light on the fact that many online influencers are likely being paid gigantic sums of money to push certain talking points. Finally, the combination of these things has meant that more and more people have been converted to extremist or otherwise unsound positions on a wide range of issues, as a result of the work of influencers aligned with the far-left or the far-right. I'm concerned that this could be a major contributor to the political polarization we are seeing, and the fact that we don't seem to be living in the same universe of objective facts anymore.
In this first installment, I'm going to talk about how influencers create a false sense of consensus, and the dangerous effects this could have. I've been paying attention to the world of online political influencers for about seven years now, and I've seen this in action many, many times. It was during the pandemic, when we were all stuck at home watching too many YouTube videos, that I first became consciously aware of this. I noticed that a certain subset of right-aligned influencers kept taking the same stances on a wide range of topics, including topics regarding the pandemic, as well as regarding things like BLM and the 2020 US Elections. Their lockstep agreement struck me as unusual, even for a group of people aligned with the Republican Party, because there was actually a much wider range of views within the Republican Party itself on these issues in the real world. For example, back in around April 2020, many Republican elected officials held the view that they should focus on sorting out the pandemic first, then campaign hard in the summer, because they expected the pandemic to go away by August back then, but none of the influencers seemed to have any sympathy for this view. Republicans were also split on whether Trump should take up one or more culture war campaigns, but all the influencers were fully in on the culture wars, with no exceptions. It became clear to me that all these influencers were only representing the views of one part of the Republican Party, not even the whole Republican Party, but they were trying to portray these views as the widespread consensus of people who had 'common sense', ignoring all the very real and very valid disagreements that were actually happening in reality.
Once I became aware that these influencers were trying to pretend that the views of one faction of one party were the consensus view, I noticed even more unusual things happening. Like how these influencers would all promote certain books at around the same time, generating a sense of buzz, when such buzz was clearly missing in the real world. I mean, most of the time I couldn't even find the promoted book at my local bookstore. Or how, in early 2021, they all jumped up and down when Dr. Seuss Enterprises decided to stop publishing six titles deemed to have racist content, even though there was almost no real world interest in this piece of obscure news. I mean, it's a stretch even calling it 'cancel culture', because it's not like somebody actually had their career ruined, or was threatened into silence and submission in any way. It was just that six of the less popular Seuss books, out of a catalog of more than sixty, would not be printed anymore. The rest of the world couldn't care less. But the influencers kept trying to manufacture outrage for about a week.
This weird lockstep behavior was happening on more fundamental issues too. For example, by late 2021, they had all turned against the 'classical liberalism' they were championing just one or two years ago, and were singing praises of the new illiberal 'National Conservatism' movement. Somehow, all of them believed, just like myself, that it was important to uphold classical liberal values against wokeness in 2019, and what the West needed was more free speech. However, all of them had a change of heart by 2021, and now saw liberalism itself as responsible for wokeness, and what the West needed was to give up on classical liberalism itself! In a roundabout way, they had all managed to become enemies of the version of themselves from just two years ago!
The first question that came to my mind was, why weren't these people challenged for their nonsense? The answer was clear: they mostly only collaborated with those who moved in lockstep with them. In other words, they were making strange behavior and awkward moves look more natural by doing it together, and holding conversations where they justified each others' talking points. What they were doing was manufacturing a false consensus. In the real world, people were not giving up on classical liberalism en masse during 2021. But somehow, in right-wing influencer world, it seemed like a real shift was really happening, and 'everyone' was getting behind it. The fact that the arguments for classical liberal values that were valid in 2019 would still be valid two years later was ignored by 'everyone', and voices from the outside that could carry this point of view were of course excluded from the show. Later on, it would turn out that all this was a prelude to the launch of a new brand of big government, illiberal culture war politics, with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis's infamous War on Disney as the first big move. The aforementioned influencers would all go on to become DeSantis fans, justifying his every move, even as they seriously infringed upon the value of free speech.
I believe what we saw here was an example of a group of influencers manufacturing the appearance of a consensus, to justify a controversial political program. The goal here was to loosen the viewer's previous commitment to classical liberal values, so that they would not get in the way of the new political program. I think this is very Orwellian indeed.
The Reationary Rabbit Hole of Competitive Outrage | The Fault in the Right
It's very bad news indeed for the future of freedom in the West
Welcome back to The Fault in the Right. Today, I'm going to talk about an increasingly worrying phenomenon: the rise of competitive outrage on the right. This is perhaps one of the things most characteristic of how the populist New Right is different from old-school conservative politics. Think of it as the mirror image of the 'oppression olympics'. Instead of competing to be the most oppressed, however, it seems like many in the populist right like to compete to be the most outraged. We are seeing this phenomenon more and more often in both political influencers and actual politicians making policies. And this has some worrying consequences.
Firstly, competitive outrage always results in whipping up people's emotions, and bringing out the worst in people. It leads to irrationality, tribalism, and even open bigotry and hate towards certain groups. And because you win the game by acting more outraged than other people on your side, and promising ever harsher actions against perceived enemies, there is no circuit breaker here. Nobody can call out others on their own side for going too far, because they would be perceived as 'weak', and also lose the game of competitive outrage by definition. Hence, things can only get angrier, more irrational, more detached from reality, and more outrageous as time goes on.
Many might think that competitive outrage is only something that happens online, among political influencers and users of social media. However, it is clear that this is not the case. Populist right politicians' talking points about immigrants, LGBT people, and 'liberal elites' have been getting darker and more divisive in the past few years. And it has also affected policy making, with ever increasing numbers of anti-LGBT bills being filed every year across America and the West for example. The truth here is, populist right-aligned politicians have to keep filing these bills, even though they are unnecessary because they all look similar to each other, because they have to show that they are outraged, and will respond in a 'strong' way. If they don't do this, they could get primaried and lose their career. Over time, the content of those bills have also gotten more and more outrageous. There is clearly no room for rational thinking, compassion or compromise, even in policy making, when everything is driven by competitive outrage.
The ultimate effect of competitive outrage is likely going to be the total triumph of reactionism in right-of-center politics, and the complete death of organicist conservatism. This is because competitive outrage always ends up favoring the most reactionary points of view, and is always incompatible with the rationality, compromise and moderation required to maintain a viable organicist conservative position. Given that, as I previously analyzed, organicism is important for the maintenance of freedom, while reactionism is fundamentally incompatible with individual liberty, the triumph of reactionism over organicism on the right is going to have very adverse impacts on freedom. Therefore, I believe that, for the sake of defending freedom, we need to take a very firm stance against competitive outrage. Not only should we make sure we are not playing that game ourselves, I think we actually need to call it out whenever we see it, to prevent it from being normalized any further. And we need to keep raising awareness, to make more people aware that this is something that is happening, and is going to have a deleterious effect on freedom if it continues unchecked.
Three Things That Can Reunite Libertarians | Moral Libertarian Talk
Freedom, Peace and Honesty is our Common Ground
Today, I'm going to talk about how we can reunite different types of libertarians across the political spectrum again. Given that the usual attitude of libertarians is that 'only my version of libertarianism is real libertarianism', and that as the saying goes, if you have a room of libertarians there would be as many versions of libertarianism as there are people in the room, how can we hope to get different kinds of libertarians to come together at all? I believe the answer lies in finding, and emphasizing, our common ground. I can think of three areas where the vast majority of libertarians, if not all libertarians, can passionately agree on.
The first thing that can unite all libertarians is a fundamental belief in the importance of freedom. While this might just be stating the obvious, the rising level of authoritarianism in both the left and the right has made the libertarians on both sides increasingly uncomfortable, which could be a catalyst for the formation of a new cross-political spectrum alliance for freedom. If left-libertarians and right-libertarians can come together for the sake of defending freedom, we might even see a real fundamental re-ordering of Western politics along libertarian-authoritarian lines in the future.
The second thing that can unite libertarians is a commitment to peace. Historically, libertarianism has often gained support for taking a principled stance on unnecessary and unjustified wars. I first became sympathetic to libertarian ideas during the 2003 Iraq War, for example. While left-libertarians and right-libertarians disagree on economic issues, they generally agree on non-violence, peace, and opposing unjust wars. What we need to remember is that, if left-libertarians and right-libertarians choose to work with the authoritarians on their own side rather than choose to work with each other, there will never be any hope for world peace. What we also need to remember is that a hopeful commitment to world peace is becoming rarer among other ideologies, which means libertarians are becoming increasingly isolated on this. Neoliberals and neoconservatives generally don't believe that world peace is possible, nor do the National Conservatives of the New Right, if you examine the roots of their ideology. They all seem to think that the forever wars are inevitable, even if for different reasons. Which means libertarians probably have to go it alone to keep the hope of peace alive. This alone, I think, could be enough motivation for at least some left-libertarians and right-libertarians to work together, at least some of the time.
Last but certainly not least, an often overlooked thing that all kinds of libertarians share is a need for honesty. This honesty is actually what makes it difficult for libertarians to form coalitions of convenience in the first place. However, the fact that both the left and the right have become very tribalist, very focused on winning and 'owning' the other side, and have resorted to dishonest tactics and hypocritical positioning to achieve what they want, has gotten libertarians on both sides more and more concerned. This, I think, could be something that could make libertarians of all stripes come together, and realize our fundamental similarities, despite our disagreements. In libertarianism, you will never find the manipulative philosophical sophistry of postmodernism, or the win at all costs mentality of the New Right. True libertarians never 'hide their power level', to borrow an increasingly popular saying. While left-libertarians and right-libertarians could disagree vehemently with each other, at least you can expect that all parties will remain honest and straightforward.
Why the Critical Theory-based Model of Change is Counterproductive | The Fault in the Left
Attempts to remake society to satisfy theoretical needs are often anti-utilitarian
Welcome to The Fault In The Left, a series where I will examine the major faults in today's Western Left. I intend for this series to run parallel to my other series, The Fault In The Right, in order to ensure balanced criticism of both the left and the right.
Today, I will start the series by discussing what I have long believed to be the biggest problem with the Western Left today: the dominance of philosophical theory, and the selective inattention to realities that are not consistent with these theories. It seems that these days, there is a theory on the left for everything: critical race theory and postcolonial theory for issues concerning race, the various forms of feminist theory for gender issues, queer theory for LGBT issues, disability theory for disability issues, and so on. Many of these theories are rooted in postmodernism and critical theory, which I have specifically criticized previously. This time, however, I will focus on the issue of redefining social justice as the fulfillment of the requirements of philosophical theory, and why this model of change is ultimately counterproductive.
Attempts at encouraging the use of 'Latinx' to replace 'Latino' as a neutral, plural noun to refer to Latinos is a good example of what's wrong with the Western Left today. As you would expect, it has been overwhelmingly rejected by the Latino community, because it is both unnecessary and an unnatural imposition. It is unnecessary because, in Romance languages, the masculine form already acts as the neutral when necessary. Indeed, French President Emmanuel Macron made a point of this last year, during a debate about the use of non-gendered terms in French government documents. Macron is certainly no right-wing reactionary, yet he recognizes that it is not a good idea to unnecessarily change the rules of a language radically. In the case of 'Latinx', it is also a very unnatural imposition, because it violates Spanish grammar rules, and can't even be pronounced in Spanish! This means that it is just impossible that it would ever have been adopted organically by Spanish speakers. I have long argued that people are justifiably skeptical towards inorganic change, because it is, by definition, not something that has been well considered by multiple sections of society.
The other problem with theory-based change is that it is often anti-utilitarian, i.e. it leaves society less happy as a result. This is because, unlike changes intended to alleviate suffering or solve specific practical problems, theory-based change tends to require the complete implementation of a radical set of changes across a wide-range of contexts to be considered successful, because this is what would need to happen to make the real world conform to the demands of philosophical theory. Compare gay marriage and the 'gender neutral language' movement, for example. The legalization of gay marriage required only the change of laws specific to marriage, and it generally doesn't impact the lives of those who don't wish to enter into a same-sex marriage. It doesn't demand society-wide radical change. The fact that gay couples get to be happier, and the rest of society isn't affected much, means that the change is justified on utilitarian grounds, because net happiness is increased. On the other hand, if some theory tells us that all language, in all contexts, must be made 'gender neutral' in order to get rid of the 'patriarchal' language, then to fulfill this theory, changes would need to be made everywhere, including in places most people have never thought about. Given that the vast majority of these changes would not result in making anyone happier, but some of the changes would really upset traditionalists, the net effect would be anti-utilitarian. Unlike the legalization of gay marriage, the attempt to impose 'gender neutral language' universally is clearly unjustifiable from a utilitarian point of view.
The left's insistence on imposing changes that are unnecessary, inorganic, and anti-utilitarian to satisfy their philosophical theory has been divisive, and it has led to a backlash to many legitimate causes, that has made rational, productive change more difficult. The frustrations towards activists imposing clearly anti-utilitarian changes has also led to a general increase in reactionary sentiment, which has been harvested by the reactionary populist right to win elections in many places across the West. I think the experience of the past ten years provides a strong and conclusive case that this theory-dominant form of 'progressive' thinking is very counterproductive, and a return to a more practical model of change is in order.
The Politics of Forever Despair vs Constant Outrage
I think that, sooner or later, people are going to realize that the left and the right both have nothing good to offer us. What they offer is basically the politics of forever despair vs the politics of constant outrage.
The problem with the left is that, because of their ideological commitments and philosophical obsessions, nothing is ever going to be good enough for them, or even sort of good. Everything is oppressive, all the time, and remains just as oppressive and bad even after reforms are achieved. This leads to a state of constant despair, and ultimately burnout. This, I think, is why many people who start out as commited left-wing activists when they are young eventually end up withdrawing from politics altogether, or in a few odd cases, defect to the hard right. The left effectively burns up the passions of generation after generation of young people, and yet achieves nothing in the end.
On the other hand, what the right offers is not really better either. The right, especially the populist New Right, likes to get people constantly outraged with no end. The goal of the right seems to be to get people disproportionally outraged towards everything, including things that are really small and insigificant. For the right, every change is always bad, and every move must have a hidden radical agenda. This leaves not much room for rational thinking, or indeed, optimism for the future. To join the ranks of the right is therefore to give up on the hope that a better future is possible, and also to give up on rational thinking, which I think is a very sad thing.
I refuse to have to choose between forever despair and constant outrage. This is why I refuse to choose between left vs right. I think there is a better way, and I think more people are realizing this.
We Need to Develop the Philosophy to Support a Centrist Politics | New Centrist View
The center cannot hold unless we revive its intellectual side
Welcome to New Centrist View, a new series where I will try to contribute to the development of philosophical positions that could support a sustainable centrist politics.
Previously on Moral Libertarian View, I discussed how the Western political landscape is currently divided into four main ideologies, namely constructionism and utilitarianism on the left, and organicism and reactionism on the right. I also discussed why constructionism, the ideology of the postmodern-critical theory far-left, and reactionism, the ideology of the populist New Right, are inherently anti-freedom, while liberal utilitarianism and organicist conservatism are much more compatible with freedom. The key to defending freedom, then, would be to uphold liberal utilitarianism as well as organicist conservatism, which are the core ideologies of the center-left and the center-right respectively. Freedom will hold if the center holds. If the center does not hold, freedom might indeed be less than a generation away from extinction.
It is truly a difficult time to be a centrist right now. Just look at the fact that there are many more far-left and far-right influencers, podcasters, writers and personalities than centrist ones. Most people wouldn't want the thankless task of trying to recover sanity in a world gone mad, when they could be much more popular, and indeed chase after lucrative career opportunities, by choosing one of the extremes and catering exclusively to its supporters. As a centrist, not only are you likely to have a much smaller audience and no income for your hard work, you are also likely to be labelled as a weak, stupid, brainwashed, privileged defender of the status quo. Trust me, I've been called all of these things.
One of the major reasons why centrist politics is in this state is because it lacks a strong philosophical backing. At least in the past seventy years or so, center-left and center-right ideologies have been defined mostly not by intellectual thinkers who think about issues on principle, but by politicians who take politically calculated positions and make unprincipled deals all the time. In contrast, both far-left constructionism and far-right reactionism were marginalized ideologies without much formal political power until recently, and their recent history was thus dominated by thinkers rather than politicians. This, in turn, means that their stances appear to be much more intellectual and principled, at least to certain people. This is a major reason why centrism is seen as unprincipled, perhaps even untenable in the long run, by more and more people. I truly fear that the center cannot hold if we don't develop a robust intellectual tradition to support it again.
Looking at the ideologies we consider moderate or centrist, which is mainly liberal utilitarianism and organicist conservative-reformism, they once were intellectual powerhouses that had to contend with a very different status quo in times past, in order to gain support. For example, once upon a time, the human pursuit of happiness was not considered a legitimate goal, rather, people were expected to obey religious laws as interpreted by the official state church, whether they liked it or not. To argue against this could lead to charges of heresy. Similarly, people were expected to know and accept their place in the very hierarchical order of society. Any disobedience against this hierarchical order could be seen as a sign of rebellion, which was generally punishable by death. Thankfully, we don't live in a society like this anymore, because more liberal ideas about how society should be organized ultimately won out. Since then, however, the development of liberal, utilitarian and organicist philosophy and thinking seems to have slowly come to a stop. Liberal reformism became the status quo, which then became stale and despised. What needs to happen is a renewal on the philosophical, intellectual side. Given that the philosophies which underpin liberal reformism once won the battle of ideas, I'm sure it can happen again, but we really need to work to make it happen.
Given the resurgence of essentially medieval ideas about how society should be organized on the far-right, we really need to revive the arguments our predecessors used to defeat the ancien regime of arbitrary power, and update them for the 21st century. On the other hand, 'progressive' intellectualism has come to be dominated by ideas that are basically revolutionary rather than reformist, and often anarchist-adjacent, which share the common assumption that tradition is inherently oppressive, and challenging and dismantling tradition is necessary for progress. However, history has demonstrated that this is not necessarily true. A liberal reformist program that aims to preserve and respect the spirit of traditions, underpinned by an organicist conservative philosophy, can also effectively advance social justice, and a radical rupture with long-standing norms might not be necessary. It is up to us to make this argument, if only to balance out the excessive and counterproductive radicalism that has become the fashion of the day in many 'progressive' circles.
On Pro-Freedom vs Anti-Freedom Views of Society | Moral Libertarian Talk
We need to argue for utilitarianism and organicism against the anti-freedom ideologies
One thing that I have repeatedly emphasized and explored in recent months is that freedom does not exist in a vacuum. You can't just talk about freedom in a theoretical sense, and expect it to apply well to the real world. Instead, we need to look at what is happening in the real world, and think about how we can advance freedom in the specific context of our society, in the here and now.
Today, I want to build upon my recent observation that there are actually four competing ideologies or philosophies in the Western political landscape right now, and discuss how we can defend and advance the cause of freedom in this particular landscape. Basically, the four ideologies are constructionism and utilitarianism on the 'progressive' or 'left' side, and organicism and reactionism on the 'conservative' or 'right' side. Constructionism is the belief that society is made up of interlocking systems of oppression which are socially constructed, and the dismantling of these social constructs is required for the liberation of women and minorities. Utilitarianism is the belief that policy decisions should be aimed at increasing happiness, or at least reducing suffering, as much as possible. Utilitarian liberalism has a long history, going back to the 19th century British thinkers Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. Organicism is the belief that society, as it exists, is the product of many centuries of lived experience and wisdom, and on this ground it opposes attempts to abruptly and radically change society, especially if it is rooted in abstract philosophy alone. It is the core essence of classical conservative thinking, going back to thinkers like Edmund Burke. Finally, reactionism is the belief that society is fallen, and nothing good can come out of it, so all proposals for change must be rejected, except for proposals to turn back the clock to a previous glorious age. Given that reactionaries think that modern society, with its guarantees of individual freedom, is a fallen state, they have no problem with trampling on long-standing guarantees of freedom to achieve their backwards-looking utopia. So this is a summary of the four ideologies we have. You can read my previous article if you want a more detailed explanation.
Of the four ideologies, constructionism and reactionism are fundamentally illiberal. Constructionism demands that existing society, as a whole, be deconstructed for the sake of what they see as justice for women and minorities. This would include radically changing the language we use, the social norms we have, the way we see historical events, and so on. Given that their demands are put in terms of justice and ending oppression, there can be no compromise with those that don't want it to happen, even if they are the vast majority of the population. Therefore, such a program must be enforceable via undemocratic and illiberal means, including by limiting free speech if necessary. On the other extreme, reactionism fundamentally sees our present society as fallen, which leads to the view that 'rescuing' society back to a previous glorious state should take precedence over respecting the preferences of those currently living in, and shaped by, the 'fallen' society. Therefore, reactionism does not have any respect for freedom, democracy, or indeed anything else that stands in the way of their glorious restoration. There have been no successful 'glorious restorations' yet in the West, but I guess Iran's 20th century Islamic Revolution, or alternatively the fictional utopia of Gilead in The Handmaid's Tale, could give us insights as to what it would look like. It is clear that both constructionism and reactionism are enemies of freedom.
Luckily, the other two ideologies are much more compatible with freedom. Although utilitarianism and liberalism are fundamentally different as one emphasizes maximizing happiness and the other emphasizes maximizing freedom, there has been a strand of liberalism justified on utilitarianism going all the way back to John Stuart Mill, which just shows how liberalism and utilitarianism, and their core ideals of freedom and happiness, usually go hand in hand. After all, you can't really make people happy without respecting their freedom. When one says that gay marriage should be legal because gay couples deserve to be happy too, one is making both a utilitarian and a libertarian argument, for example. On the other hand, organicism strives to protect the long-standing values and institutions we have, because they represent many generations of lived experience and wisdom. At least in the English-speaking West, this would have to include a long tradition of guarantees of basic freedoms, going all the way back to the Magna Carta. Putting it simply, utilitarianism seeks to advance happiness, and in the process often advances freedom, and organicism seeks to protect the freedoms we already have from attacks by authoritarian forces. Therefore, in many ways, utilitarianism and organicism largely overlap with the concepts of 'positive libertarianism' and 'critical libertarianism' that I talked about last time as constituting a 'dialectic of freedom'. This is to say, in our current society and political landscape, 'positive libertarianism' is mostly represented by utilitarians, and 'critical libertarianism' is mostly represented by organicists. This means if we can get utilitarians and organicists to work together in a productive dialogue, we would have the best hope of maintaining and advancing freedom.
In conclusion, the hope for freedom in the West right now, and for the foreseeable future, lies in promoting both utilitarianism and organicism, and especially a productive dialogue between the two, and also in successfully arguing against both constructionism and reactionism, the ideologies promoted by the illiberal-left and the illiberal-right respectively. Going forward, I will be looking at how we can achieve this in further detail, from multiple angles. In particular, I will be looking at the intra-left argument for utilitarianism over constructionism, the intra-right argument for organicism over reactionism, as well as the very important but often overlooked arguments of organicism vs constructionism, and utilitarianism vs reactionism. I think getting to the bottom of all this is essential for building a 21st-century framework to defend and advance freedom.
The Key to Deradicalizing People is to Give Them Hope
The proliferation of extreme political ideologies on both the left and the right is a serious problem. One thing many people don't seem to realize is that the lack of hope is perhaps the most important reason behind this. Many people lack hope in their lives, and the extreme political ideologies give them hope. Of course, it is false hope, but it gives them what they crave in life right now. Therefore, the key to preventing more people from being radicalized is to give people hope in their lives. We really need to think about how to do that. Firstly, we need to get rid of all the fear, and the negativity, from our discourse. Then we need to start thinking about how to inject hope into people's lives. We need to think about what they want from life, and how we can help them achieve it. I think that if people had more hope of achieving meaningful goals in their own lives, political extermism would be much less popular.
On the Dialectic of Freedom: Positive Libertarianism and Critical Libertarianism | Moral Libertarian Talk
This is how to bridge the divide between left-libertarians and right-libertarians
Last time, I talked about the need to build a cross-spectrum alliance of various types of libertarianism, to save the libertarian brand from being devoured by the reactionary right. Traditionally, the difference between left-libertarianism and right-libertarianism was seen as rooted mainly in economic issues, and finding common ground and building bridges on economic matters is surely going to be an important part of our work going forward. However, looking at things from a higher, more philosophical level, I think the main difference between left-leaning libertarians and right-leaning libertarians is the difference between emphasizing what I call 'positive libertarianism' vs what I call 'critical libertarianism'. Let me explain.
What I mean by 'positive libertarianism' is the idea that freedom can and should be positively advanced, and that more freedom also allows society to be improved, because rationality will prevail. This is the core foundational idea of classical liberalism, and it has been behind many major improvements in Western society in the past several centuries. The abolition of slavery, universal suffrage, the civil rights movement, the expansion of free speech norms, the anti-war movement, and the legalization of interracial marriage and gay marriage were all inspired by the positive libertarian spirit.
On the other hand, we do have to acknowledge that not all social change, including changes that have been sold to us as 'progressive', actually lead to more freedom. In the past decade, wokeness was promoted as an idea that would advance social justice, but it clearly leads to a loss of freedom, including most importantly, free speech and freedom of conscience. This is where what I call 'critical libertarianism' comes into play. Critical libertarianism is all about protecting existing, hard won freedoms from being eroded by misguided attempts at change. It seeks to critique all proposals for change, looking at ways they might intentionally or unintentionally undermine freedom. Indeed, I think a lot of classical conservative philosophy could fall under the critical libertarianism umbrella. Edmund Burke, often considered the father of conservatism, came up with his most famous ideas in the face of the authoritarian excesses of the French Revolution. More recently, I think liberal skepticism towards wokeness was another moment where a critical libertarian movement emerged.
While positive libertarianism and critical libertarianism seem like opposing forces, and they are indeed sometimes seen as in alignment with opposing sides of the political spectrum (positive libertarianism being aligned with forces seeking 'progress' and hence left-leaning, critical libertarianism being aligned with 'conservative' forces and hence right-leaning), they actually compliment each other. Both are needed to promote and safeguard freedom. If we only had positive libertarianism, the quest for freedom could be turned into its opposite by misguided steps forward. If we only had critical libertarianism, we could end up becoming so paranoid as to turn reactionary and hence authoritarian. Only an optimal balance of the two will lead to the maintenance and promotion of freedom. It's just like how the balance between a practical progressive impulse and a moderate, rational conservative impulse lead to a healthy and productive reformism.
Once we recognize that positive libertarianism and critical libertarianism are actually both needed for freedom, and can complement each other, we should be able to recognize the same about left-libertarians and right-libertarians. Rather than seeing them as separate, unrelated things, or worse, opposing parties, we should see them as two complementary halves that make up a whole. This should be the basis on which we try to find common ground between left-libertarians and right-libertarians.
Why the Left and the Right both Ultimately Lead to Chaos
The only way to a good and sustainable order is via independent thinking
Welcome back to The Fault in the Right, a series where I explore the logical fallacies and dishonest posturing of right-wing politics, from the perspective of someone who is pro-order, pro-family and understands the value of tradition.
Much has been said about the idea that the Left represents chaos, and the Right represents order. Let's look at the idea that the Left represents chaos first. Historically, this was certainly not true. Nobody would think that FDR represented chaos, even though he was arguably the most left-wing president in American history. President Obama was also significantly to the left of center back in 2008 when he was elected, yet he clearly didn't represent chaos. On the other hand, the 2010s Western left, deeply inspired by postmodern critical theory and anarchist philosophy, did represent chaos. De-platforming speakers was chaos. Trying to deconstruct everything was chaos. Invalidating all tradition and hierarchy was clearly a recipe for chaos. Defunding the police would predictably lead to chaos. Much of what happened during BLM 2020, especially things like CHAZ, were total chaos without any constructive upside whatsoever. Therefore, my conclusion is that, the idea that the Left represents chaos while the Right represents order was an invention of the 2010s, when some parts of the Left regrettably decided to embrace an ideology that led to chaos, and the Right took the self-congratulatory attitude that they were better because they at least stood for order.
However, while order is generally preferable to chaos, all order is not equally good, because there is a difference between ordered liberty and ordered oppression, just as there is a difference between just and unjust order, productive and counterproductive order, adaptive and maladaptive order, and so on. Therefore, we should strive to promote good order, and not just the existence of order itself. The question then becomes, what leads to good order? History shows us that things like rationality, objectivity, honesty, compassion and compromise are conducive to good order, while things like tribalism, deceit, irrationality and hypocrisy lead to bad order. An honest assessment of recent Western right-wing politics would show that it has not been doing very much to promote what leads to good order, while it has been doing much more to promote what leads to bad order. This is why the results of right-wing politics has generally been an unjust and at times oppressive kind of order, rather than the good kind of order. This, in turn, has led many people to not just reject the bad order that has been created by right-wing politics, but even embrace the chaos of the postmodern left, to burn it all down. This, indeed, is the story of Western society and culture for at least the past 60 years. The oppressiveness of right-wing order ultimately leads people to want to burn it all down eventually, which leads to more and more chaos over time. This is why supporting the Right as it exists would only bring about more chaos down the road. An order that is so bad that it leads to a significant number of people preferring chaos is clearly not sustainable. Only a good order is sustainable, especially in the long term.
The question we need to ask here is, why does right-wing politics, as it exists, tend to promote bad order? The answer lies in the incentives, as well as the forces that are part of the Right coalition. Let's talk about the incentives first. Right-wing politics has long marketed itself to voters who are more motivated by fear. This is why the right has run many campaigns on moral panic. However, moral panics lead to heightened emotions, irrationality, tribalism, a loss of objectivity and balance, and a reduced capacity to be compassionate or to seek compromise. Hence, what an election strategist might consider good for their party ends up being harmful for society as whole in the longer run. It's like eating lots of junk food every day. It might feel good for a while, but eventually you feel the health effects. The situation here is frankly getting worse because of the rise of online influencer culture. Right-wing influencers have unleashed coordinated moral panic campaigns that are more emotionally intense than anything the traditional media was ever capable of. The collective bias in their framing of the issues increases exponentially, as they feed off and build upon each others' narratives. I'm worried that this is turning more and more people towards extremist politics as a result.
And then there is the matter of which forces having the power and money within the Right. For example, the religious right's worldview and policies might not be very popular, and most of them probably would not pass a referendum. However, they have a significant amount of power, and represent a substantial proportion of donors, within the political Right. This is why the Right can't drop its religious authoritarians, even as they make it very difficult for the Right to gain support among young people, especially young women. The fact that the Trump campaign started out as clearly not very religious back in 2016, but has gotten more and more religious over time, demonstrates the power the religious right has over the Republican Party. The religious right promotes certain things, like hardline anti-LGBT ideology, that don't lead to good order objectively, because of their theological commitments. The fact that the electorate has increasingly rejected religiously motivated policies has only caused these policy stances to be promoted and enacted via dishonest means, which moves society further away from good order. Another example is the fossil fuel lobby. Again, climate issues are a major reason for the Right being unpopular among young people, and that they still can't fix this by taking climate change seriously just shows the power of the fossil fuel lobby within the Right. The vested interests of the fossil fuel lobby prevents any action to address climate change, which then necessitates the promotion of a climate denialist belief system that flies in the face of objective scientific evidence. This violation of both honesty and objectivity clearly does not serve the cause of good order at all. But then, political power and the interests of big donors sometimes conflict with the requirements of good order, and the Right has shown that they will choose power and money every time.
In conclusion, while the Left has regrettably represented chaos in recent years, you wouldn't find good order on the Right either. You won't find good order on the Right because it ultimately prefers winning elections, being in power, and getting lots of donor money instead. The Right has made the ultimate bargain with the devil, again and again: doing things that are deleterious to good order, in exchange for advancing their own selfish interests. Given that bad order is unsustainable and will ultimately give way to chaos, the Right, then, ultimately promotes chaos too, especially in the long term. Therefore, if you don't want chaos, the only way is to reject both the Left and the Right, and commit to the mental independence required to secure the conditions that are conducive to good order. If more people are willing to choose this path, then we will have a good order. I can't see any other way, to be honest.
Politics is too Black and White These Days
I believe that oversimplifying things, dumbing things down, is a major contributor to the toxicity of our culture and politics. When you oversimplify complex things, you often end up with a picture that unjustifiably paints one side as right and the other side as wrong, when the reality is actually more like both sides are right to some extent, and wrong to some extent. These oversimplified narratives serve the interests of partisan political players, who want people to blindly believe that their own side is right all the time. It leads to polarization, tribalism, and loss of independent thinking. This is why, I believe it's important to acknowledge the complexity that's actually there in a lot of hot button issues. Dumbing things down don't do it justice, and will only lead to more bias, more divisiveness and more polarization. Which is why, whenever I see an issue being deliberately presented in an oversimplistic way, it always raises a red flag for me. If the dumbed down picture is attached to some emotionally charged rhetoric, then it raises even more red flags.
This is How to Save Libertarianism from the Populist Right | Moral Libertarian Talk
We need a broad based coalition of true libertarians that transcends left and right
Ever since the Mises Caucus takeover of the US Libertarian Party and the resulting civil war inside that party, the libertarian brand has been weak and tarnished. This has come at a very unfortunate time, as authoritarian forces are on the rise across the West. Just when we need libertarianism to be strong, she is badly wounded. As I have said before, while I'm not a libertarian immediatist, libertarianism has long been an important part of the Western political landscape, holding the destructive ambitions of self-righteous wannabe authoritarians at bay. A West without libertarianism would likely descend into competing groups of authoritarians with religious zeal fighting over who gets to shove their beliefs down other people's throats. This is why we need to save libertarianism.
Some people have suggested that libertarianism won't die out completely, but it might live on under other labels. I personally can't accept this. I can't agree to give up the name of the movement that played an important role in opposing the authoritarian excesses of the 'War on Terror', opposing the Iraq War, supporting gay marriage and standing for free speech against cancel culture. Some have suggested that libertarians simply join the neoliberals. However, this is unsatisfactory, not just because freedom-loving libertarianism is simply very different from technocratic neoliberalism, but also because we have genuine irreconcilable differences in worldview. Neoliberals have never shared the libertarian passion for non-violence and world peace. Now things are actually getting worse because the neoliberals have decided to welcome into their tent neoconservative hawks who have become refugees from the Trumpified Republican Party. While I have some sympathy towards old-school Republicans being forced out of their party by Trumpism, simply because there is a clear parallel to what is happening to libertarianism, and to the woke skeptical movement I consider myself a part of, this sympathy doesn't extend to willingness to be in the same tent as neocon hawks. After all, opposition to the 2003 Iraq War was how I first got into politics, and my attraction to libertarianism began with its anti-war stance back then. Peace-loving libertarians being forced into a tent with those who have the opposite view is definitely a bridge too far for me.
What we also need to remember here is that the US Libertarian Party, or even the kind of libertarianism it represents, don't actually own the libertarian label. There are civil libertarians, geolibertarians, green libertarians, libertarian socialists, and so on, and since a few years ago, Moral Libertarians. The l-word is everywhere across the political spectrum, and the Mises Caucus can't change that. What we need to do is find the common ground between these different types of libertarians, as well as other people who might love freedom but are not yet using the libertarian label, and bring them together. Together, we are much larger than the reactionaries in the Mises Caucus will ever be.
To get this done, we will need to actively attempt to transcend traditional left-right boundaries. I believe this will actually be a good thing, because for far too long, English-speaking libertarianism has unjustifiably leaned too closely to the right, which is a major reason for the Mises takeover being able to happen in the first place. Detaching libertarianism from the right, and making it a truly left-right cross-spectrum thing, will prevent right-wing reactionaries from devouring the libertarian brand, and also prevent a Mises-style takeover from even being able to happen again in the future.
We should also remember that the original reason why libertarians tend to make alliances with the right was because the right once stood for economic freedom. However, nowadays, the Right loves Trumpist protectionism, and they worship Viktor Orban's Hungary, which is ranked a lowly 72nd on the Heritage Foundation's index of economic freedom. The fact that they want the West to emulate a country with less economic freedom than the US, UK and most other Western countries shows that they don't believe in economic freedom. They only believe in culture wars, which is what Hungarian politics is most known for in the West. Ironically, Scandinavian social democracy, the model most often admired by the English-speaking left, actually offers a lot more economic freedom. Denmark, Sweden and Norway all rank inside the top 10 in the aforementioned index! This just shows that the 20th century idea that the right is better for economic freedom is very outdated indeed. It's time to break free from these old stereotypes.
A Simple Message to Authoritarians of All Stripes
The West has an authoritarian problem right now. Religious right, cancel culture activists and the rest, this is for you
This is a message for all of the authoritarians on both the left and the right, who dream of remaking society by forcing their beliefs on the rest of us. It's not going to happen, and you've lost the plot. Normal people just want to live and let live, to be left alone to live our own lives, and we also want everyone to get along as much as possible. We don't welcome people who seek to shut down people who disagree with them, or shove their beliefs down other people's throats. We won't give an inch to this kind of divisive authoritarianism, whether it is rooted in religion or other utopian beliefs. Normal people are not going to accept authoritarians who've lost the plot, no matter their political affiliations, or what kind of 'ideals' they supposedly hold. We just say no to all of it. That's it.
Can Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) End Polarization and Save Democracy? | Moral Libertarian Talk
The answer might be different in the internet age
Over the past few years, I have talked a lot about various conditions that are good or bad for freedom, and I have always stressed that polarization and tribalism are very bad for freedom. Today, I want to examine whether the implementation of Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) could solve, or at least lessen, the polarization and tribalism we have in the Western political landscape right now. I will not go into what RCV is here, you can look it up if you need to. Basically, it is a method of voting that allows you to choose from multiple options, by ranking the options from, say, 1 to 8, instead of just choosing one option. The theory is that RCV would lessen the polarization because people wouldn't be forced to choose from one of the two big parties anymore.
In the past, I used to think that RCV would not lead to meaningful change in terms of tribalism and polarization. This is because there actually is a country that already uses RCV in both state and federal elections, and has been using RCV for about a century. It's called Australia. However, Australia has a de-facto two-party system, and that has been the case throughout most of Australia's history. Indeed, Australia is arguably more of a two-party country than most other Western countries except America. Up until 2022, all but a handful of the 151 seats in the Australian House of Representatives belonged to either one of the two major parties. There was therefore less space for third parties in Australia than in the UK, Canada and basically every Western European country. It seems that the function of RCV in Australia is to allow people to vote for minor parties without 'wasting their vote', because it would still eventually be channeled into one of the major parties. In fact, the way Australian polls are reported tend to focus on what's called 'two-party preferred', where all the minor party votes are allocated to the major parties, and a final figure where the two major parties add up to 100% is reported. It's kind of like how some American polls only ask about the Democratic and Republican candidates, and force the respondent to choose one of them. If anything, the Australian experience convinced me that RCV reinforces the duopoly, rather than breaking it down.
However, things seem to have changed recently. The 2022 Australian election saw a record number of independents and candidates from minor parties elected. This has been able to happen precisely because people weren't afraid of throwing away their vote by voting for a minor party in the first place, thus RCV was finally functioning in the way we want it to. After that election, multiple analyses also showed that the share of voters not voting for the two major parties has been continually rising for some time. The question here is, given that Australia has had a century of RCV, why is this only happening now? I guess the answer is that we have the internet now. In the past, voters generally got their news from mainstream media only, and would not have been familiar with minor parties in most cases. This was why, even with RCV, a two-party system prevailed. Nowadays, voters could get informed about all their options, which might lead some to vote for a minor party. This is why minor parties, importantly including those that are not clearly aligned with the left or the right, have a good chance of winning something in an RCV system today.
On the other hand, RCV might actually even be necessary to keep the two major parties reasonably moderate, in the age of the internet. A major difference between Australian politics and American politics is that Australia's two major parties, while ideologically similar to their American counterparts, tend to be much more moderate. This is because the Australian parties haven't gradually moved to the extremes like the American parties have in the past 30 years. I think RCV might have had a role in this. In America and other 'first past the post' systems, both major parties have had to move to accommodate elements of their base that have gotten more extreme in the age of the internet. In Australia, however, such elements have generally moved to vote for minor parties instead, while the major parties have largely stood their ground. The major parties aren't too worried about these people moving to minor parties, because their votes actually get returned to the major parties via preferences. This way, the major parties would not have to move to accommodate more extreme policy preferences just to get enough people to be motivated to vote for them.
In conclusion, I think there is very clear evidence that RCV can help reduce the polarization and resulting tribalism that is plaguing politics around the Western world right now. Firstly, RCV allows people to vote for minor parties without fearing that they would 'waste their vote', and this could facilitate the rise of political forces that aren't clearly aligned with the left or the right. Secondly, RCV allows more extreme voters to vote for minor parties that suit their preferences, while not depriving the major parties of their votes. This means that the major parties would not need to move to the extremes just to retain these votes. Together, these two things could go a long way to address the problem of perpetually increasing polarization.
This is How to Take Back the Woke Skeptical Movement | Moral Libertarian Talk
We can still repel the Populist Right's ideological invasion
Over the past two years, I have talked quite a lot about my disappointment with how the 'woke skeptical movement' turned out, the wasted potential, and so on, but it's something I have to talk about again, because I think the situation is actually still salvageable.
Earlier this year, when former President Trump attended the US Libertarian Party conference, and received a hostile reception there, it brought attention to the takeover of the Libertarian Party by the populist right-aligned Mises Caucus over the past few years, and the frustrations of true libertarians towards this development. The Libertarian Party is vulnerable to this because it is a small party supported by a small movement, and it is situated adjacent to a much larger and more well-funded right-wing propaganda machine that has largely moved towards authoritarianism in the Trump era. A lesser discussed fact is that, around the same time, the woke skeptical movement experienced a similar hostile takeover too, even though it is not a formal political party. It seems that the populist-authoritarian New Right is hell bent on taking over and remaking everything it can, which is unsurprising given its ideological commitment towards 'dismantling the Cathedral' and 'regime change' in America and the West.
These days, the unfortunate reality is that many people simply equate woke skepticism with the populist right. You know, for taking a strong stance against wokeness, I have been called right-wing by countless numbers of people. Those of you who know me, who have truly read and understood what I have said, would know that I am not right-wing. Indeed, I have a very negative view of the populist 'New Right', and their hijacking of the woke skeptical movement is among my biggest political frustrations of all time. I'm all about freedom, and the New Right is all about controlling people's lives in an authoritarian way. We're literally incompatible opposites, like fire and water. Of course, with populist right propaganda dominating the woke skeptical brand out there, some people are bound to think that woke skeptical equals right-wing. I mean, some people now think libertarianism equals Trumpism too, for similar reasons. Ridiculous, yes, but the political landscape is, on the whole, ridiculous right now. And it's all because of some dishonest actors.
But firstly, how would the woke skeptical movement have turned out, in my ideal world? My hope was that it would have been the beginning of a culture where people actually looked at issues in a thoroughly rational way, where independent thinking and good faith discussion were encouraged, and where skepticism to established narratives were the norm. The worst aspects of wokeism were slavery to unsound philosophical theory, irrationality, a lack of free speech, conformity with the in-group, tribalism, and seeing everything as a power struggle, which justifies bad faith arguments. The reaction against wokeism would have been the catalyst for the coming together of people who rejected these things, thus forming a community with the opposite kind of culture. Or so I hoped. If this was successful, then the new community wouldn't just be critiquing wokeism, which would be quite limiting anyway. We would critique all sorts of bad ideas in the same way, whether they came from the left or the right. This would also fit nicely with my philosophical commitments as a Moral Libertarian: allowing free speech without the fear of cancellation would be an important part of upholding equal moral agency for every individual, and a truly free and fair marketplace of ideas would allow the best, and most moral, ideas to win out.
My vision was ultimately made impossible by the reactionary-populist New Right, which saw frustration with wokeness as something they could exploit politically. The New Right is basically a reactionary program that wishes to supplant establishment conservative politics, which it sees as 'weak' and useless. It wants to remake society and turn the clock back by decades at least, using highly authoritarian means, inspired by everything from Catholic integralism to Viktor Orban's illiberal democracy model. The New Right saw that frustration with wokeness could be weaponized to make the case for their kind of radical authoritarian program. Thus well-funded right-wing propaganda began coming at the woke skeptical discourse like a hurricane, a force so powerful that we were unprepared to counter it.
The New Right's strategically biased reporting and use of emotionally charged rhetoric distorted the woke skeptical discourse to serve the New Right's own political interests, to promote and justify its worldview, and to build it into a dominant force on the Right. In doing so, they turned woke skepticism from being about rationally critiquing the unsound ideas of postmodern critical theory, to being about moral panics around things like woke corporations, certain LGBT issues and liberal education policies. Failed presidential candidate Ron DeSantis was perhaps the most important figure in this campaign, which is why I've long said that he represents an even bigger problem than Trump. This unprecedented aggressive campaign has actually been very effective, in redefining the content and tone of the woke skeptical discourse. It is why, even in moderate center-left circles that pride themselves on rejecting wokeness but still being liberal, hysteria about drag queens occasionally comes up nowadays, even though it wasn't a thing in most woke skeptical circles prior to 2019. My point is, the right-wing moral panic discourse is so loud, so persistent, and so aggressive that it has reached basically every corner of the woke skeptical landscape. The replacement of rational critique with moral panic has turned woke skepticism into a tribalist, conformist and sometimes irrational movement, ironically the opposite of what it started out as. I certainly wouldn't have supported a movement that looks like this.
The question we need to ask here is, can we still fight back, spit the New Right out, and salvage our original vision? I actually think yes, but we have to be dedicated, brave and strategic. Dedicated because it will be hard work. Brave because we will need to stand up to the new cultural hegemony being forced upon us by the New Right. Strategically, we have to recognize that the New Right are not allies, but intruders with weird beliefs. I think the key here is to encourage even more skepticism. While the woke skeptical movement has been thoroughly skeptical towards wokeism and its various claims, it has failed to be equally skeptical towards the New Right, perhaps because it tried to befriend us and convince us that we're on the same team in the beginning. But subsequent events have shown that we're actually not on the same team. We might both be opposed to wokeness, but it's clearly not for the same reasons. Indeed, we just need to ask the same questions of the New Right as we did towards the woke left. We would then be able to expose the fact that they are just as full of unsound philosophical obsessions, irrationality, hostility towards free speech, conformity with the in-group, tribalism, and bad faith arguments. Literally, just critically examine the very weird ideas of the New Right, and the even weirder phenomenon where previously respectable influencers just accept all of it uncritically. I'm not naming names, but we all know who they are.
Indeed, going forward, I think the key is just to be consistently skeptical. We need to be especially skeptical towards ideas that appear to be too popular, especially in the online context. What I mean by too popular is that too many people uncritically accept it, parrot it, even go crazy over it, despite it clearly not being very sound. Be especially skeptical if all the big name influencers are pushing the same thing at the same time. Wokeness started out exactly like this, and we saw right through the Emperor's New Clothes situation, which we sought to expose. Now it's time to do the same to the baseless rhetoric about woke corporations, the idea that the West should emulate Hungary, the supposed dangers of drag queens, the supposed immorality of IVF, the idea that mixing religion with politics supposedly serves the common good, and the like. Push back, and push back with a lot of skepticism. We won the debate against wokeness because we pushed back with skepticism, and we should do the same to the New Right. And maybe, just maybe, we will get the truly pro-liberty woke skeptical movement of 2018 back.
The Limitations of Nihilistic Tribalist Politics
'Owning' your opponents is empty and boring after a while
I noticed that many people seem to have checked out of the political discourse in the past two years or so. This has been happening especially in the more extreme parts of both the left and the right. What were once popular online hangouts are now virtually dead. Anecdotally, I've heard that many people who used to be passionate leftists or Trumpists just a few years ago seem to have stopped talking about politics altogether. I guess this just shows how extremist, tribalist, 'own' your enemy type politics gets very tired after a while. This is especially true when life isn't very great in general for a lot of people, which is what has been the case in recent years. Especially in tough times like this, only a positive politics will get people hopeful again. The kind of negative politics that peaked around 2020 or so deserves to be in the dustbin of history, and I hope it stays there for good.
Freedom Does Not Exist in a Vacuum
Towards a Broader Moral Libertarian Project
I have always been a great supporter of freedom, and I have long been concerned that the West is losing its freedom. My concerns began in the aftermath of 9/11, when the Bush administration severely curtailed civil liberties in the name of stopping terrorism, violating long-standing guarantees of freedom and privacy in the process, and other governments around the Western world also followed suit. Soon after, the 2003 Iraq War was also justified as part of a wider 'war on terror', and opponents of the war were decried as unpatriotic or worse. The infamous Dixie Chicks incident proved how cancel culture was in full force back then, even though we didn't have that term yet. The next year saw a big moral panic wave over gay marriage driven by the religious right. In the 2004 US Elections, the victory of President Bush and the passage of anti-gay marriage constitutional amendments in many states were explained by the media as due to the rise of 'values voters', which further emboldened the religious right. By 2005, there were attempts to make schools teach 'intelligent design' in biology classes, and this campaign even spread outside America. Meanwhile, while libertarian ideas also gained popularity as a reaction to these instances of authoritarian overreach, they weren't gaining ground quickly enough to push back against the much larger wave of authoritarianism. A big reason was that libertarianism itself was often not very practical. The strict application of the 'non-aggression principle' (NAP) in real life was a tall order indeed. It just couldn't compete with the simple messaging of the authoritarians, which was rooted in the primal emotion of fear.
It was in this context that I first developed the foundational idea for Moral Libertarianism: that every individual should have equal and maximum moral agency. In practice, it would mean every individual having the right to their own moral decisions, as long as it does not compromise another individual's right to the same. Every individual would be guaranteed their own free speech, freedom of conscience and freedom of expression, because these rights do not affect others' expression of the same rights. Every individual would also have freedom of action as long as it did not impinge on the same right for another individual, i.e. your right to swing your fist stops at my face. I think this is very fair, and much better than the religious right trying to shove their beliefs down people's throats, or politicians trying to get people to vote for them by fearmongering and scapegoating minorities and promising to impose authoritarian measures targeting those minorities.
Later on, I would also apply Moral Libertarian thinking to argue against the postmodern-critical theory left, which sees society and culture as an oppressor vs. oppressed landscape defined by groups based on immutable characteristics. I was in fact surprised that the left was equally able to curtail free speech and other individual liberties at first, but that is exactly what started to happen in the mid-2010s. For some time the threat to freedom was coming much more from the left than the right, which was why my writing in that era mainly targeted the left. More recently, the illiberal right has been making a strong comeback, which means that the fight for freedom has effectively become a war on both sides for the first time in my lifetime. All throughout these developments, the Moral Libertarian idea of championing Equal Moral Agency for every individual, and associated ideas developed from this core idea, have been immensely helpful in anchoring my own thinking to a commitment to freedom, even as many others I once respected have strayed to either the authoritarian left or the authoritarian right along the way.
What I also learned in these two decades is that freedom does not exist in a vacuum. As I said before, I have observed many previously pro-freedom individuals stray towards authoritarianism, of both the left-wing and right-wing variety. Some progressives who fought for free speech on the Iraq War in 2003 and against the religious right's anti-gay marriage push in 2004 somehow managed to support de-platforming and cancel culture in the late 2010s. Some self-identified classical liberals who opposed cancel culture and the illiberal left in the 2010s somehow flipped to support the populist reactionary culture warriors in the present, rationalizing Don't Say Gay, drag bans, draconian abortion bans and potential IVF restrictions as somehow necessary to 'fight wokeness'. In each case, I was deeply disappointed, but was also driven to find out what went wrong. What I learned was that freedom does not exist in a vacuum. As those who have been following me for some time would have heard me argue over the past two years, certain things are very bad for freedom, including tribalism, echo chambers, a lack of compassion, moral panics, all-or-none thinking, and an over-commitment to abstract philosophy and theory. Freedom cannot exist in a vacuum, because it needs the opposite of these things to thrive, i.e. true diversity of opinion, an open and fair marketplace of ideas, a culture that encourages compassion, rationality and compromise, and prioritizing the practical resolution of problems over philosophical concerns. Absent a strong commitment to these things, any talk of freedom would soon turn into its opposite.
While I have talked a lot about the necessary conditions for freedom, up until now I have not yet re-integrated them with my Moral Libertarian model. For a long time, I have identified being overly abstract and impractical as the major weakness of classical libertarianism, and in developing Moral Libertarnism, I wished to develop a more practical model of libertarianism. However, in the early years, I was still narrowly focused on how to apply the principle of Equal Moral Agency. While this would be much more practical than trying to apply the NAP, what I have realized is that it still narrowed the scope of freedom too much to be a strong enough practical safeguard for freedom. This is why, going forward, I believe Moral Libertarianism should be broadened to encompass the conditions that appear to be required for freedom to thrive. In this Moral Libertarianism 2.0, the principle of Equal Moral Agency will still be an important reference point to help us decide on moral questions and solutions, but more attention needs to be paid to the overall context too, to ensure that the conditions for freedom are truly met, and maintained in a ongoing sense. This would be well justified, because if the conditions for freedom aren't there, abstract talk about the principle of Equal Moral Agency would be effectively useless too.
The Fault in the Right: Why Worthy Ideals Lead to Bad Politics
The devil is in the detail, or more accurately, in the incentive structure
Welcome to The Fault in the Right, a new series where I will examine where I think the faults lie within the contemporary Western political right, from the perspective of someone who agrees with the arguments of the right, or at least the premise of some of those arguments, at least some of the time. I think this kind of perspective is sorely needed in the media: while there is plenty of criticism of the left from people who are themselves liberals or leftists, most of the criticism of the right out there is from people who vehemently disagree with the worldview of the right, in a fundamental way. A lot of it is therefore either ideological disagreement, or bad faith attacks. Also, while there are some 'Never Trump conservatives' who critique Trump and the MAGA movement, their focus is on the particular differences between Trumpism and the previous iteration of the Republican Party, and they never seem to critique long-standing problems within the right that have also plagued the old establishment. In summary, the left critiques the right as a whole, but in a 'burn it all down' way, while Never Trumpers critique only Trumpism, but avoid talking about problems that plague the rest of the right too. There is a clear gap here that needs to be filled, with something akin to liberal anti-wokeism, but for the right.
On the surface, different iterations of the right have championed different ideals, that I could get on board with on the surface. The right of the 1990s and the 2000s, when I was growing up, championed family values, a healthier media and culture, and a culture of personal responsibility. I could certainly get behind these ideals. However, in practice, it was all about government control and authoritarian measures, which I just couldn't accept. By the time I was in college, the right had descended into championing the Iraq War, the wider 'War on Terror', restricting civil liberties, and banning gay marriage everywhere. Their authoritarian tendencies were on full display. Later on, during the Tea Party era, libertarian ideas became more popular, which I found very encouraging, but then, they had to share a platform with conspiracy theories, which I found very frustrating. Still later on, Trump, for all his faults, did appear to move the right away from both religious authoritarianism and the forever wars, thus resolving the two biggest issues I had with the right a decade earlier. However, the religious right came back with a vengeance soon after, and nowadays Trump himself is saying that we need a religious revival, while all the LGBT outreach that characterized his previous two campaigns seem to have disappeared quietly. It appears that the religious right has won out again under Trump's leadership, and they are even openly demanding that he embrace a national abortion ban. Even in the UK, where under the leadership of former Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron it looked like there was a chance that a new, forward-looking conservatism could take hold, things rapidly turned reactionary after Brexit, and now there are concerns that Nigel Farage and his far-right Reform Party could outperform the Tories and effectively become the biggest opposition to the new Labour government. In short, the right has championed many worthy ideals that the left just won't talk about, but it all seems to end with reactionism and authoritarianism.
Not only is right-wing politics like this, right-wing influencers and public figures also bring this kind of disappointment about in the cultural sphere, because politics is downstream from culture, and they desperately want to influence the culture. I have previously talked a lot about the hijacking of the anti-woke discourse by a small number of well organized and very well-paid influencers. (Judging by their employment in right-wing think tanks and media organizations and/or their Patreon earnings, all of them are definitely much richer than myself). Their coordinated promotion of one-sided, biased narratives have taken anti-wokeism from a very libertarian initial position (most anti-wokeists were free speech activists and/or atheists in the beginning) to a much more reactionary and authoritarian place, over the short space of a few years. This was basically the reason why the Intellectual Dark Web (IDW), which showed so much promise initially, ultimately fell apart within less than three years.
The point is, I don't disagree with what the right is saying, overall, on a broad ideals basis. I do believe that society needs more individual freedom, that a free market economy is the best model for the West, that families are the fundamental building blocks of society, that radical change based on abstract ideas is not a good idea, and that an ordered liberty is the best guarantee of freedom, because when order breaks down, nobody actually has any freedom. However, the devil is in the detail, and in the execution, many right-wing policies are unfair, ineffective, or even downright harmful, in that they make people less happy unnecessarily, or that they lead to deleterious consequences down the road (particularly in the case of climate change). This is not caused by incompetence, but rather by the structural incentives built into the right's composition. For example, with the religious right accounting for such a big part of the right, in terms of voters, politicians and money alike, there is very little room to treat LGBT issues fairly, or to respect the pro-choice argument from a genuine pro-freedom point of view. Also, with the fossil fuel lobby being such a vested interest within the right, there is no room for pro-climate policies. The disconnect between the right's stated ideals and its actual policies give rise to the need for bad faith arguments, like how most LGBT people are 'woke activists' and thus the right's enemy (clearly untrue and unfair), or how climate change is a hoax or at least scientifically unproven (even more untrue). This is why there is a whole industry of right-aligned spin doctors out there. It is also why Millennials, my generation, have grown up with a strong distrust of the right generally, and are not moving right at the same rate as previous generations in our 30s and 40s. Those who want to believe it's only about home ownership are just not willing to face the truth.
I believe the aforementioned problem can only be exposed by someone who is sort of sympathetic to the right's stated aims in many areas, but see through the mismatch between those stated aims and the actual policies embraced by the right. In particular, we need to pick apart the words of the spin doctors who attempt to paper over this mismatch, in the service of vested interests. Just like the anti-woke movement exposed the left's unsound ideological obsessions, we need to expose the right's distorted incentive structure, and the distorted results it produces. And just like with wokeness, only those who actually share some common ground with the right in the first place would be well positioned to expose its faults.
Why Allowing More Freedom is Generally the Morally Better Choice
Individual liberty is justified because morality can be improved
Over the years, I have illustrated why values like free speech, free expression and freedom of conscience are important in multiple ways. However, what I call the 'competitive morality' case for freedom might yet be the most important reason why freedom is important to maintain. Given both the left and the right have become increasingly disrespectful towards long-standing norms that safeguard freedom in recent years, I think this is a message people across the Western world really need to hear right now.
Basically, history has shown us that things can be done better. The way we do things today is much improved compared with back in the middle ages, or even during the industrial revolution, for example. While improvements in material conditions, methods of production and technology are most often celebrated, morality has also been improving over the generations. While things are still far from perfect, morality has overall been objectively improving over the centuries. We don't allow slavery, the torture of prisoners, and duels to the death anymore, for example. Given this history, there is every reason to believe that morality can continue to improve into the future.
The main drivers of improvement are innovation and competition. This is clear to see when we are talking about technology. However, it also applies to matters of morality. If everyone just accepted slavery as part of life, it would never have been abolished. This demonstrates the importance of allowing enough freedom for innovation. On the other hand, if the anti-slavery message wasn't able to compete with those arguing for the then-status quo on an equal footing, it might not have won out, despite being objectively more sound. This demonstrates the importance of maintaining a fair playing field in the marketplace of ideas. Both of the aforementioned objectives would require free speech, free expression and freedom of conscience. It is freedom that both allows innovation, and allows fair competition in the marketplace of ideas. Therefore, ultimately it is freedom that allows morality to improve over time.
Looking at history would confirm this theory. Societies that were more free and open generated more improvements in morality. Even though the freedom to experiment might sometimes lead to errors too, overall speaking, allowing this freedom is worthwhile in the end, especially in light of the resulting improvements being able to benefit many generations to come. This is why, looking at it from a broad picture scale, allowing more freedom is objectively more moral. It is proven by both history and logic. I think we should take this into account when assessing political options, for example when voting. I believe that, generally speaking, supporting choices that are overall orientated towards more freedom, as well as punishing politicians that actively advocate for less freedom, is generally correct as a principle.
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The evidence is solid, despite the loud and desperate denials Recently, there has been a lot of discussion about whether there is a 'wok...
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A shared values approach is what we need going forward In my recent article titled 'There Really is a Woke Right, and it is a Grave Thre...
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The ruling class is behind the grandiose thinking that has caused division and polarization Lately, I have been thinking a lot about why so-...
