Uh-oh
A while back during the last wave of progressive snarking at Pantload’s forthcoming “Liberal Fascism” book, some merciful Cornertard who’d apparently read part of the text diplomatically told Dough-Bob that he thought it was a “paleoconservative” tome. Pantload took this agreeably. Ugh, I thought, that description, from those (non-Buchananite) quarters, and with Dough-Bob taking it like that, can only mean one thing: it’s a long minarchist diatribe along the lines of “food stamps = totalitarianism”.
This seems to me to be more evidence of it. Roy’s right: Pantload here is stupid as all get-out:
What’s refreshing about this is that Yglesias is honestly and correctly admitting that liberals have no problem imposing their morality on others via a powerful and intrusive state. I wish that most liberals were as honest. If liberals want to complain about conservative social engineering, that’s entirely legitimate (when true, of course). But please don’t tell me that your objection is to social engineering per se. Liberals and progressives before them wrote the book on social engineering and even the most comstockish Republicans are pale imitators.
What Pantload, like all minarchists, neglects to account for here is that his prefered default of laissez-faire is also a mechanism of social (-Darwinist) engineering — which is of course informed by a morality which they hope to impose on others. This is what such a society looks like, they know it, and that’s why they want it. I guess it’s “good” to know that David Frum isn’t the only NRO hack who wants to roll back the social contract to the Donner Party level, but then again at least Frum hasn’t yet that I’m aware of called people who disagree “fascists”.
Oh, please, HTML! Jonah Goldberg is not a minarchist. I guess to some extent I am that — though as Hayekian libertarian I’m not going to be seen equating food stamps with totalitarianism. I read that Goldberg passage, and what I take him to mean is things like smoking bans, coerced associations in the name of anti-discrimination laws, and the like.
And failure to pass a law does not constitute social engineering. That kind of argument reminds me of Xians who claim that failure to push their religion in public schools is by default to prefer secular humanism. Now, you may disagree with certain laissez-faire approaches, but calling them “social engineering” collapses all necessary distinctions until the phrase is truly meaningless.
Someone needs to tell Doughboy that government itself is social engineering. Hell, even absolute libertarianism and total anarchy are social engineering. Social engineering is what happens when groups of people accumulate.
Have liberals ever really denied that they are engaged in social engineering? Have conservatives? The only differences seem to be the desired outcomes and the methods of reaching them. It’s a matter of opinion whether it’s more important to have, say, a government that protects the poorest members of society or a market that protects the wealth of the richest.
And since Jonah seems particularly impressed with admissions of the obvious, I’ll give him a freebie here to ooh and aah about: Sometimes — on both ends (or all sides) of the political spectrum — the social engineers overreach. [Clutch pearls, gasp] The main difference seems to be that when the social engineers on the left overreach, we get laws against restaurants serving foie gras; when those on the right overreach, we get women dead from botched illegal abortions.
And one other thing: I have to laugh at the phrase “a powerful and intrusive state,” given the current administration’s penchant for eavesdropping without oversight or accountability on its citizens’ communications.
Mona, love ya but I disagree. You’re ignoring the history of laissez-faire, which was not only justified by Spenserian social-darwinist ideology but also designed with Spencerian ends in mind.
I hate smoking bans, too. But Pantload isn’t talking about things like that. In the context of the linked exchange he has with Yglesias, he mentions the “morality imposed by” the Progressive Era reforms. Obviously his beef then extends to stuff like the Pure Food & Drug Act, child labor laws (I’ve seen him explicitly say he’d defend child labor, though not in this exchange), the FTC, Clayton, etc.
He’s objectively pro-Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire!
OTOH, Mona, you’d probably like the previous post better: there are of course certain government powers that we social dems can loathe with libertarian vehemence.
He’s objectively pro-Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire!
Well, if he is then he’s more extreme then most libertarians I know, and Jonah Goldberg is no libertarian. (I myself am dubious of child labor laws. They were passed after the true need for child labor in the early inudstrual age when people were fleeing rural life, was ending — I mean kids on farms have always done a helluva lot of labor — and passed by people as soon as enough were sufficiently affluent not to need child income. In my strong opinion it should be up to the parents when a child may work.)
If Goldberg is a “social Darwinist,” that still isn’t social engineering. It is not “designed.” It may constitute what they regard as salutary neglect, but it doesn’t affirmatively design anything. (And true social Darwinists vehemently oppose charity.)
Anyway, I don’t regard fire codes in public buildings or laws requiring pure food product as “social engineering”; they are not designed to bring about a preferred means of of interaction among human beings, but merely to keep them alive and injury-free. But you know, a good many “progressives” during the Progressive Era were buttinskys. They joined with Baptist types to bring us beverage alcohol prohibition.
Mona, you’re being too generous with Goldberg. When he rails against the “social engineering” of liberals, he’s specifically addressing the Civil Rights Act of 1964:
By “less traditional,” I reckon that he means that “them darkies are gettin’ too uppity.” I would like to think that I’m reading this wrong, or that I’m putting too ugly a spin on his words, but I don’t think I am.
Goldberg’s thesis appears to be, at least in part, that liberals screwed up the natural order of things by kicking Jim Crow to the curb, and that this is one of The Big Problems with America today.
In my strong opinion it should be up to the parents when a child may work.–
Damn right! No reason that a healthy 6 year old shouldn’t be down in the coal mine, if that’s what the parent wants. Candy money doesn’t grow on trees.
Mona, you are aware that we have American corporations that own overseas factories employing child/slave labor, right?
Doesn’t seem like ethics nor economics is holding them back – must be opportunity.
In my strong opinion it should be up to the parents when a child may work.
Auto-submit? Crazy new technology.
Anyway, Mona…uh, no? I could go with an exemption for family farms but a universal “parents know best”? Have you ever seen an episode of Jerry Springer?
Is a “minarchist” someone who supports a very small king?
I thought it was someone who supported a Spanish-speaking DEA agent for every citizen.
In my strong opinion it should be up to the parents when a child may work.
And once people realize how stupid prostitution laws are, certain parents are going to clean up.
Well, prostitution laws and child labor laws are both on the (g)libertarian no-no list. Combining the two? Well that’s just good, old-fashioned free market individual achievement now innit?
The value of the Goldberg book will be that he’s too stupid to know he thinks entirely in cliches. Thus we really will see in it what the Right really wants, because he won’t know enough to disguise it in anything other than a hilariously inept manner.
And I agree with HTML — whatever the philosophical bases of laissez-faire, its practical consequences are indeed social engineering, as with, say, the Irish famine.
In my strong opinion it should be up to the parents when a child may work.)
Yes, Mona, indeed. Child labor laws don’t prevent parents from deciding when a child may work. Child labor laws do not prevent kids from working on the family farm, doing their household chores, or babysitting for their little sisters.
Child labor laws, however, exist in the sometimes vain hope that there aren’t any employers for whom those precocious kiddies can sew blue jeans in sweatshops, cut their little pinkies off in meat-packing plants, crawl into tunnels where adult coal-miners can’t fit, and inhale fumes from dry-cleaning solvents.
I strongly believe that Lucianne Goldberg should have barred Jonah from working.
I had a job at 15. My parents decided I could and in my state, with their permission, I could and did.
I think maybe Mona’s looking for younger than that.
“I strongly believe that Lucianne Goldberg should have barred Jonah from working.”
Jonah has worked?
My grandfather worked 72 hour weeks in a paper mill in Garfield N.J. when he was 12. Wages were so low that my great-grandfather couldn’t support the family on what he made. My grandfather was paid less than an adult.
Child labor laws are not state meddling in family matters. They are designed to prevent greedy bastards from depressing payrates by firing adults and replacing them with children.
This was an improvement in my grandfather’s situation though. After he lost his wife my great-grandfather couldn’t feed him so he was in several orphanages. After he turned 12 he could work so he could move back home. He might have liked to stay in school through high school or so but the wisdom of the market made that decision for him.
Family values, anyone?
And when food stamps are used at Whole Foods the very foundations of the civilised world quiver. Like Jonah’s jowls
OH NOOOO!@Z!!!!
Philippine President
We need the children to do the jobs that adults don’t want to do…
OH NOOOO!@Z!!!! QUICK SOEMBUDY ALERRT MICHEL MALKIN MAGLAGANG OF FIVE WUT THE PREZ OF HER KONTRY OF BIRTH IS DOOOOOOOING!!!
Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo plans to TOTALLY SURRENDER to the wolrdwyde Mooooozlim Jihaaadists.
AND KOMNISTS toU!!
OH NO NON NONONO NOOOOOOOHZZ!!!
http://tinyurl.com/2m7lnf
http://preview.tinyurl.com/2m7lnf
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/philippine-president-vows-peace-prosperity-in-final-3-years/2007/07/14/1183833848545.html?page=fullpage#
In my strong opinion it should be up to the parents when a child may work.)
So, uhhh…you got any lower limit on there? I started helping my extended family build houses and clear fields when I was 12. Momma and her siblings were helping on the family farm from the time they were able to walk (toting water, carrying empty cotton sacks, etc.). My old man was running numbers at eight. None of us had much to say in the matter at the time, due to different circumstances. I’d say four’s probably too young to have a job, though.
Man. Give kids ample opportunity to be kids, huh? They’ll have the rest of their lives to eek out a sad existence in a soul-destroying, meaningless job, finding joy only in cheap booze, television sports and the quality of their lawns just before dying like they would have had they tried to have fun all their lives.
Anyhow, Jonah Goldberg…he’s no minarchist or libertarian. He’s just a damn fool and, along with Althouse and Malkin and Brooks and far too many others, a walking, talking, bloviating refutation of the Peter Principle. Y’all, I used to work in the journalism field and the fact that wastes of space like Jonah get such plumb gigs while so many other real journalists are getting paid embarrassing wages is one of the reasons I gave that shit up. Just too depressing.
I read that Goldberg passage, and what I take him to mean is things like smoking bans, coerced associations in the name of anti-discrimination laws, and the like.
I’ll take the smoking ban and anti-discrimination laws over abolishing abortion, forcing women to carry fetuses to term, and forcing mothers to be stay-at-homes.
Who’s doing the social engineering again?
I have worked many a time in situations where children are also on the company payroll. I worked for 5 years for an employer where two of my co-workers were 3 or 4 years old.
Was this inthe US? Was it legal? You bet.
The kids were actors in a Broadway show.
Arroyo, 60, said she was confident of reaching a peace deal with the MILF
And you can see a video of that “peace deal” — and lots of other MILF videos — for $3.99 a month on certain websites.
So I’ve heard.
Do folks on the left really complain about social engineering per se, like Jonah says? Or could it be we just think their panty-sniffing, minority-repressing, wealth-and-power-consolidating social engineering plans kind of, you know, suck?
I was just surprised at the MILFs’ abilities to handle the entire Philippine armed forces for decades. Talk about hot jungle action!
‘cept I’m pretty sure Malkin was an “anchor baby”, El Cid, and born in the US.
I agree, but how will we get future Malkins here if the evil surrendercrats in the Philippines are going to give all the pregnatablez wimminz to the jihaaaadists and commie rat bastids to make babies which teh hijaadsits will then later bake?
but the importaint thing about laissez-faire social (-Darwinist) engineering is that they always make sure that the system is rigged to protect themselves for the worst of it. Consequences are for the little people
Libertarian is just another word for “we’ll have a real big police force to maim/kill the working class and poor when they get fed up with all that calorie-free ‘liberty’ and if that don’t work, we’ll retreat to gated housing and let our private security forces keep the riff-raff out.” Libertarians have a level of utopianism that makes Emma Goldman or E.V. Debs look like hard-scrabble pig farmers. Lemme see . . . we’ll take away all labor and social protections, environmental laws, social programs, etc., and magically, the market will create perfecg competition. No monopolies will ever arise, we won’t see a repeat of Gilded Age abuses, and everyone will live happily ever after . . . until people realize they’re being shafted and start organizing and protesting and striking . . .
This is why minarchists, though more realistic than his/her utopian brethren, are butchers at heart. They know that no gubbamint at all means that people will soon revolt, kill them and take their stuff. The minarchist knows this and that is why security and order are “legitimate” state functions. That is, you need cops and troops, not just Pinkertons, to kill the no doubt violent reaction that purer forms of capitalism will inevitably induce. Peterloo, Homestead, it’s all the same. Gotta have something to negate the ancient formula: lamp-post + entrails + aristocrat/bourgeoisie . . .
Mona sez “Anyway, I don’t regard fire codes in public buildings or laws requiring pure food product as “social engineering”; they are not designed to bring about a preferred means of of interaction among human beings, but merely to keep them alive and injury-free.” Umm, fire codes and pure food laws are “designed” by policy-makers to “bring about . . . [referred means of interacting” that help keep people “alive and injury-free.” Those laws regulate conduct. Fire codes, for instance, force builders and property owners to behave—that is, engage in a “preferred means of interaction” with other people (renters, contractors, etc.). After all, constructing buildings, renting or selling them, and living in them is nothing more than highly organized instances of human conduct.
Of course, almost any legislation/regulation basically concerns human conduct—environmental laws do not alter the laws of nature, they simply require humans to act or refrain from acting in certain preferred ways. The only thing laws can really regulate is human conduct. So—and I do not intend to sound insulting—it seems that you have an aesthetic libertarianism. That is, laws you like are OK, but ones you don’t like are bad.
A good question to ask libertarian capitalists is what they would do if lots of us started gathering together, as would be our libertarian right, and assembling as, oh, I dunno, “societies” or “mutual aid groups” or “governments”, in which we democratically voted for taxation policies to fund badly needed common services.
Would someone stop us from doing so? And if so, under what libertarian justification?
And what if it so happened that those of us who wished to band together to sacrifice portions of our private income so that we may jointly live better happened to amount to a majority of the population? Then what?
El Cid wreites: A good question to ask libertarian capitalists is what they would do if lots of us started gathering together, as would be our libertarian right, and assembling as, oh, I dunno, “societies” or “mutual aid groups” or “governments”, in which we democratically voted for taxation policies to fund badly needed common services.
Would someone stop us from doing so? And if so, under what libertarian justification?
And what if it so happened that those of us who wished to band together to sacrifice portions of our private income so that we may jointly live better happened to amount to a majority of the population? Then what?
Nothing can stop you, unless there is an anti-majoritarian prohibition in the Constitution. Majorities can always take from minorities in a democracy — democracy is no panacea unless rights are protected from the will of 51%.
Sigh, I have tag issues only my last graf to El Cid is mine, regardless of italics.
i’ll stop supporting child labor laws as soon as every kid gets to have parents who truly have the child’s best interests in mind.
J. Smith says: Mona sez “Anyway, I don’t regard fire codes in public buildings or laws requiring pure food product as “social engineering”; they are not designed to bring about a preferred means of of interaction among human beings, but merely to keep them alive and injury-free.” Umm, fire codes and pure food laws are “designed” by policy-makers to “bring about . . . [referred means of interacting” that help keep people “alive and injury-free.” Those laws regulate conduct. Fire codes, for instance, force builders and property owners to behave—that is, engage in a “preferred means of interaction” with other people (renters, contractors, etc.). After all, constructing buildings, renting or selling them, and living in them is nothing more than highly organized instances of human conduct.
Sure thing. Then no law is designed to change human interactions. If that is what you believe, you collapse all useful distinctions and all coercion (law) is justified to make folks do what you think right. Anti-homo sodomy laws do nothing more than address “highly organized instances of human conduct,” just like fire codes.
Fixed, Mona. I think.
I’m a majoritarian. But I do worry about the potential tyranny of the majority. That, however, is what the Bill of Rights was for. The problem is that in my experience, libertarians like to pretend that the BoR was constructed to protect the *property* rights of the minority instead of its civil rights.
I depart from most liberals in the sense that I’m pro-2nd Amendment. I also believe the 10th Amendment should be interpreted radically. Blah. To not get deep into it, let me say that I’m as radical as any libertarian when it comes to civil liberties. It’s just when the defense of civil liberties is perverted to really be about the defense of property rights that I go batshit against the defenders.
In my experience, many libertarians prefer the Chinese, Singaporese and mid-1970s Chilean forms of government to the American one post-Progressive Era and especially post-New Deal. Take away their right to smoke pot or have consensual sex with whomever they want or their right to remain free of government surveillance and they hardly bat an eye. Tax them to feed, educate and give medical care to the poor, stop them from polluting, stop them from discriminating against gays, blacks, women, etc., and they have a coniption fit. See here.
Anyway, you’re right that Pantload isn’t a minarchist in practice. But minarchist rhetoric in extremis is what, I think, his book will be about. Also, most minarchists are like Pantload, though I grant that you and Henley are exceptions in this matter.
(This may be even more than unusually incoherent. Sorry. I’m fucked-up right now. 😉 )
HTML writesIn my experience, many libertarians prefer the Chinese, Singaporese and mid-1970s Chilean forms of government to the American one post-Progressive Era and especially post-New Deal.
I know which sub-set of libertarians you mean, but really, those are the guys who are Republicans before they are libertarians. Pty rights are extremely important, but not the only or highest value; to wax all lapsed Catholic; I speak of “seamless garments” when I talk of liberty and rights.
But I also don’t believe we should use law to stop any private actor (again, common carrier exception) from discriminating. Govt cannot stop all anti-Other animus — hell I know black people who would disown a child for marrying a white. Most amusingly, the best example I have in mind agreed with the most anti-black racist at the same job site. Let them.
I always wondered who they got to clean the toilets in Galt’s Gulch.
Govt cannot stop all anti-Other animus
Of course not, but the law isn’t about regulating thoughts and feelings, it’s about regulating actions. The government can’t prevent me from harboring murderous hatred, but it can and should prevent me from acting on it.
Mona: That’s what law does–it regulates conduct for a certain purpose. That purpose may be critiqued as godd or bad on its own merits and the legal regime chosen to address a particular concern may be critiqued as to whether it efficiently and reasonably accomplishes its purpose. But the purpose is relatively simple: regulate conduct to achieve a given end. It’s that simple, and you don’t seem to understand that.
Moreover, I don’t see law as an inherently oppressive. It can be (i.e., Paragraph 175), but it can also be liberating (i.e., 14th Amendment; Voting Rights Act; NLRA, etc.). That’s why democracy is important: to make sure that the laws reflect the interests of the majority. And codified rights, like the Bill of Rights or Charter of Freedoms, exist to make sure that the majority cannot oppress those rights we consider fundamental. Throughout most of history, law has been a tool of the ruling class to enrich itself and oppress the rest of society. One of the most progressive developments of that last 100-200 years is that it can be a tool used to liberate everyone else.