Individualism and Civic Virtue

A great virtue of methodological individualism is that it permits one to view social matters free of overly generalized social categories such as race, gender, class or the like. Is methodological individualism itself an ideology of which to be wary? In a certain sense it may be. It is certainly a pointed, theoretical approach to the social sciences. Nevertheless, it is an approach that requires more restraint and caution when applying than most other currents of a more leftist hue, and certainly some of a rightist hue as well.

But besides the critical treatment of identity categories, an even more important contribution lies in the skepticism toward various social organizations, especially ones that have an ideological bone to pick. One of the primary problems when coming to a coherent and honest assessment of modern social dynamics is the persistent tendency to view politics through the prism of the various networks of political lobbying groups and think tanks that exert, to varying degrees, a distorting influence upon the political discourse. Indeed, some of these groups are even responsible for the discourse concerning identity categories itself. The expansive state itself has of course also laid the groundwork for such lobbying efforts.

One of the reasons that the tendency towards a centralized political apparatus geared towards juggling the concerns of various lobbying groups is so pervasive is that it's so easy to implement. Identity variations give individuals bereft of any other common interest or goal a bonding mechanism. (Eric Hoffer's descriptions of the True Believer may also be of considerable insight in unearthing the psychology of interest group participants.) Eventually these associations congeal into political interests seeking broader cultural accomodation which normally involves some sort of privileged status vis-a-vis the state. Eventually these interests come to dominate various administrative bodies, shutting out other concerns.

In an online article, Mike Adams alludes to some of the opportunity costs as they arose on a North Carolina campus:

• ...there was a small fire in one of our dormitories. The RA in charge of evacuating the students was unsure of what to do but he managed and no one was hurt. His uncertainly was due to the fact that there was no training for fire evacuation. Although not taught about fire evacuation procedures the RAs are taught about hate crimes.

Evidenced here is a dynamic that many of the even socially conservative critics of leftist identity politics lobbying are not apt to point out. Energy focused and organized for one purpose is energy focused away from and neglectful of another. An honorable civic culture focused on traditionally laudable acts of kindness and goodwill and etched upon the consciousness of its administrative stewards is replaced with petty kowtowing to disgruntled pressure groups. One's leadership sensibilities are forged to negotiate the embittered demands of self-absorbed cliques instead of developing to engender a spirit of broad-minded public service. The end result cannot help but be a decay of political culture in the long run.

On the Significance of a Non-ideological Approach to Social Commentary

I've written comments on my personal blog about my feelings about the feminist movement. Those comments appeared there and not on this overtly political blog because to a large extent, the approach that one takes to social issues is deeply informed by personal experience. The feminist penchant "the personal is political" is quite aptly inverted. In social issues, the political is very personal.

On principle, libertarians disagree with state intervention into social life as I have noted briefly on this blog before. However, there is another epistemic dimension to the libertarian approach to social issues that deserves elaboration as well. For just as the stultifying uniformity of the state is the enemy of the dynamism of civil society in political matters, so ideology is the enemy of conrete personal experience in matters of social knowledge. One may even go as far as to say that ideology is the expression of statism in the realm of epistemology.

The tale of political correctness on college campuses and its various bleedings into the broader public discourse has been widely told ad nauseum. Classical readings of Shakespeare are chucked for analyses of Hamlet's supposed Oedipal complex or Shakespeare's own class position in 16th century England. It is quite easy to make literary criticism that is based on a prefigured ideological paradigm, and there has been no shortage of 20th century American "intellectuals" that have come out of the woodwork to do so. One of the main reasons this seems problematic is that it reduces the complexity or even mystery of social life to an easily applicable formula. Moveover, it runs the risk of shutting out what we know we really know about social life because it does not conform to the adopted ideological schema. When compelled to conform to this schema and restrained from acting on what we otherwise know, we move down the road to authoritarianism.

Hence, as I move forward with this blog and attempt to tackle cultural issues, it will be important to take account of the assumptions with which I examine said issues. Simply fitting events into a narrative about gender or class oppression will not do. There must be a thoughtful and even sometimes superficial arbitrary approach to opining on social phenomena, and an admission that it is an expression of personal disposition as much or even in compliment with a conception of The Good for society.

The Problem with the Union

How viable is the United States as a unified political entity in the long term? Many take a perverse pleasure in the notion that the United States is careening towards an inevitable demise. Much of the type this is simply rooted in juvenile imagination and the propensity therein to ask big "what if?" questions about the political world. If I am personally guilty of the same, I apologize in advance, because I do intend this to be serious analysis.

The type of exercise in which I am about to engage will have the tendency to be received as more right-leaning than perhaps I have been attempting to present myself thus far. Yes, I have said that a state-enforced "family values" agenda is incompatible with libertarian politics. I have advocated significant parts of the notably socially liberal platform of the Democratic Freedom Caucus. Nevertheless, the overall point to take away from these positions is that, however objectionable certain activities may be to socially conservative instincts, the state apparatus of social control that ensures the enforcement of social norms is worse. The description of the modern state as the "welfare-warfare state" is meant to imply that the numerous institutions of government power cannot be easily separated from one another, and that power delegated to the government for one purpose has a tendency shift rather quickly to the assumption of power for another purpose. All delegations of power to the government are deleterious of civil society and should be opposed, even those that nominally seek to bolster the institutions of civil society.

In fact, a current of libertarian-Democratic thinking has its roots in a quite conservative period of the party's history. Cleveland and the so-called "Bourbon Democrats" whole-heartedly supported a laissez-faire economic program. Kelley Ross, a libertarian philosopher, has even gone as far as to credit Cleveland with having governed nearer to libertarian principles than either Reagan or Coolidge.

But Cleveland, it is well-known, presided over a party that had become identified in those days with the Dixiecrats. Looking further back in history, the southern United States had prior to the Civil War been generally opposed to tariffs that would raise the cost of their imports to assist fledgling northern industries, coincidently taking the libertarian position on trade. Many principled libertarians also defend the right of secession. Indeed, several some libertarians have been identified with the "Copperhead Democrat" position on southern secession. There is a case that Lincoln's war to save the Union also centralized power into the hands of the Federal Government to an unprecedented degree and was not worth executing since it ran roughshod over the right of self-determination for which secession stood. I am in agreement with these historical Democratic positions.

It will almost certainly be objected in certain quarters that the real purpose of secession was the right to own slaves. That was in fact the immediate issue of primary concern to the seceding states. But was it in the interests of protecting the institution of slavery to secede? At best, it would have put the Confederacy in the same position as pre-revolutionary Haiti. In the absence of the protections of the institution that the Union had afforded, the South would have likely experienced a prolonged period of slave rebellions, likely culminating in revolution and exile for whatever slave masters survived. The American South would likely have eventually become the continental hub for a broader Afro-Carribean regional culture. Even if this scenario would not have come to pass, we know from the experience of Brazil (which received 5-6 times the number of slaves from the Atlantic slave trade as British North America) that slavery eventually petered out as a system anyhow (in 1888 in Brazil).

I bring this all up to add a twist on the older Copperhead position. Not only should the South have seceded, but significant parts of the North should have parted ways as well. The Union is and always has been a patchwork of regional folkways and engaged in shifting alliances amongst (and against) one another. What the Civil War should have illustrated (and arguably did) is that no greater pretense of unity can exist between these folkways without some measure of tyrannical imperial power imposing it. In the interest of preserving liberty, a consistent libertarian should advocate devolution to independent rule by these various folkways.
What are the folkways of which I speak? David Hackett Fischer identified four of them in his massive tome, Albion's Seed, but I will not go into great detail about that here. As a practical matter, however, devolution of power to the states is probably the simplest way to undertake the project. One might naturally expect splits in states where significant conflicting folkways were present. A good model for this is the state of West Virginia. Virginia had always been divided between the Cavalier plantation owners of the tidewater areas and the Scots-Irish mountain yeoman of the interior. Attempts were even made during the American Revolution to petition the Continental Congress to establish a 14th state in roughly the present-day area of West Virginia. These petitions were thwarted by eastern land speculators with economic interests in the region, but separation for the region was clearly a long time coming.
The United States has long been recognized to contain regional political subcultures, many of which coincide with areas of linguistic diversity (http://www.evolpub.com/Americandialects/AmDialMap.html).

These simply go beyond the older North-South distinction. There is a distinction between the Upcountry South and the Coastal South, for instance. The North is broken into even more regions. The Upper Midwestern dialect, for instance, is associated with the areas in which most 19th century Nordic immigrants settled.

The linguistic diversity peters out in the West. This is noteworthy. The same region possessing a broad linguistic uniformity happens to include the same states that have notoriously high levels of Federal government ownership of land (http://strangemaps.files.wordpress.com/2008/06/map-owns_the_west.jpg). The folk cultures had reached the natural limitations of their expansion, a little west of the Mississippi. The self-initiated movements of the people with their own semi-agrarian lifestyle into new frontiers was gone. In its place we have direct Federal administration of conquered land.

Anglo-Americans thus likely have little long-term interest in most of the Western US. If there is a Euro-American ethnocultural core of the the current US, it is in the Northeastern and Midwestern states and the Upcountry South. But even with in the form there are distinctive regions: Greater New York City, New England, the Great Lakes Basin, the Upper Midwest Germanic States, and the Midland (which itself could probably be divided). Devolving power to the states along with splits and realignments within states along some of the lines implied herein is probably necessary to ensure managable libertarian polity. Murrary Rothbard pointed out that a significant part of the sociology of American party/national politics has been characterized by various ethnoreligious factions sparing to impose their version of a just polity on the others. Perhaps we should try a new notion of sovereignty instead.

Note on Social Issues

Libertarians are frequently described as liberal on social issues and conservative on economic issues. This formulation contains a grain of truth, but it does not get to the heart of the matter. In many instances, social and economic issues are intertwined. Is affirmative action, for instance, about correcting racism (a social issue) or setting state-established employment practices (an economic issue)? Is ending drug prohibition about ceasing social censure of recreational drug users (social) or freeing the market for now-illegal drugs from state restriction (economic)? A libertarian would find himself on the right with respect to the former issue, and on the left with respect to the latter.



An underlying principle that guides libertarian political prescriptions is that the state's role in society should be minimized to whatever extent possible. A consistent libertarian should be just as concerned about the Right's attempts to foist a state-backed "family values" agenda as he is about the Left's attempts pursue the myriad identity politics agendas through state action. The principle of liberty pursued by a libertarian is not concerned with contemporary categories of left and right. It is only concerned with rolling back the state.