What I’d Like To Hear From @DMataconis

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by Smitty

Over at The Liberty Papers, we have what amounts to an intriguing anti-SoCon rant:

Perhaps my biggest problem with fusionism in its current incarnation, however, is the extent to which it demands that libertarians silence their criticism of their so-called conservative allies in the name of “unity.” Even if one accepts the argument that libertarians and conservatives are on the same side when it comes to economics, there is no denying that there are significant differences between the two sides on many issues. The most obvious, of course, are social issues such as gay marriage, the drug war, pornography, and, for some but not all libertarians, abortion rights. In addition to that, it’s generally the case that libertarians have a far more restrained view of what proper American foreign policy should be than conservatives do, even in today’s era where conservatives suddenly seem to have become anti-war when the war is being led by Barack Obama. Based on those differences alone, the idea that libertarians and conservatives are just two sides of the same coin is clearly false.

It is true that there are some Evangelical absolutists who have their hobby horses.

It’s also true that a more Federalist read of the Constitution doesn’t concern itself with activity below the state level. Absolutely, Amendments 13-15 ended slavery, but what’s occurred due to Progress, and the unratified Second Bill of Rights, is that we’re now One. Big. Honkin’. State. We can all be unhappy that personal sexual and relational matters have to play out in contentious, Procrustean struggles in DC.

And this is precisely the way the Ruling Class prefers things. Keep the proletariat all thumb wrestling over whether the government is in your (lady|man)parts, or in your wallet, while the Federal Reserve-fueled vote-buying schemes continue apace, and liberty dwindles.

I should think Mataconis has enough low animal cunning to sense the game afoot. While I’m a SoCon’s SoCon on a personal level, even the most “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” Evangelicals have got to be honest about the Constitution: it was States delegating powers to a Federal government, not a tool whereby I can enforce my personal taste for post-infant baptism by full immersion on everybody, Christian or otherwise*.

What I’d propose in lieu of the poo flinging is:

  • A focus on areas of agreement on the enumerated powers that we need to drive back toward.
  • A de-emphasis on the personal hobbyhorse issues. Marriage management isn’t a federal task. I don’t need a federal law to know the score on abortion. I’d prefer libertarian indifference prevail toward those states that I could not live in for cultural reasons.
  • A sober realization that our government has become as odious as the British Parliament of the 1700s. We can hang together and prevail in time, or hold the divisive course and hang separately. The Josephus types who’ve already cut their deals will continue to be no help.

And to all of the new Tea Party folks, let me pass on a warning: the two ears, one mouth rule applies. There is much to learn about the sordid realities of our government, as it’s deviated well off course. Relax. Focus the passion on sober, positive deeds that advance the Constitutional ball. Screaming about Barack Obama’s Martian birth certificate and obvious status as a High Priest of Cthulhu is ONLY ABETTING HIM.

I know it seems counter-intuitive, but spend some time studying. The history of How Things Got So Jacked Up is important if you want to help in ways that are actually constructive.

It’s easy to get pissed off, disgusted, drop some F-bombs, and leave. But half the recovery battle is showing up; the other half is staying engaged. Your foe has massive endurance. Our task is to execute Gramsci’s Long March through the Institutions in reverse. Stand by for a multi-decade struggle. Homeschool your children. Teach them right from wrong. Teach them history. Teach them to reject the corrosive Postmodern piffle passing for thought these days.

But don’t expect instant gratification.

*Smoochies to everyone who recoils at my conservative read there. 🙂

66 comments

  1. The fact that Mataconis says the Tea Party is a SoCon movement removes him from the pool of even halfway intelligent speakers on the subject.

    Also, he’s a jerk.

  4. u;That’s why I stopped following him. He’s essentially a troll – an alleged “moderate” who never seems to have any actual disdain for statist and leftist ideals and people. Really just a dishonest leftist posing as something else.

  5. The thing that people like Doug and Bill Quick forget is that the “So-Con” social structures they decry were what produced the spiritual, mental, and cultural climate that the Founders and their ideals came from. If they think they are going to get anything close to the limited government they claim they want without a cultural and moral climate that supports the moral and behavioral norms that allow limited government, they’re bigger fools than I think.

    Oh, and their claim they want limited government is just that: a claim. Let that government silence the “so-cons” they disagree with and they’ll love every jackbooted minute of it.

  6. What’s amusing about these libertarians is that they constantly harp about the supposedly statist aims of social conservatives while ignoring the fact that almost all social engineering is spearheaded by the left. Even in his litany of supposed social conservative sins he lists an issue – marriage – where the leftists and libertarians are the ones advocating for greater government intrusion.

  7. Not a moderate. Just a real libertarian. Like most of them, he doesn’t really draw any distinction between freedom and license, and isn’t always so arduous about protecting the religious rights of those he scorns.

  8. Speaking from someone on the libertarian wing, my problem with the SoCon wing is not that I don’t share their values, I do. I’m even a knuckle-dragger who believes in Creationism.

    My problem is A) politicians simply can’t solve 99% ofthese problems (homosexuality, divorce, out of wedlock births, abortion, etc) and

    B) they’re sinking the conservative movement because a secular country is not going to embrace a political Party that seems joined at the hip to a Church, even if on many ideas they agree (like balanced budgets, low taxes, tough on crime, smaller government, pro-small business, secured border, etc)

    I don’t doubt in the 70’s and 80’s, Social conservatism was part of the reason Nixon and Reagan won 49 states. And segregationists were part of the FDR coalition. It was a long time ago, and the nation has radically changed.

    The conservative movement needs to decide if they want to be the group that screams about Sodom and Gomorrah while we go off the cliff into full blown 3rd world socialism or we can tackle the kinds of problems legislators can solve.

    It seems to me too many conservatives just want to settle scores within their own camps or have the ultimate “I told you so” rather than actually fixing any problems.

  9. Smitty, I think you and I are on the same “SoCon” page on most issues. I’ve never seen you or 99% of the other “SoCon” individuals I’ve met propose or endorse any sort of government imposition of our beliefs by law – which is what we are constantly accused of by both the left and the libertarians.

    As Mataconis notes, true “libertarians have a far more restrained view of what proper American foreign policy” than we do, but an honest libertarian would admit that the foreign policy that has been the official position the Libertarian Party since its birth and is still Ron (and probably Rand) Paul’s would have, had it been implemented after World War II, have us living in Soviet America today.

    We wouldn’t have opposed Soviet aggression or that of their clients in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Africa, or the Americas. The libertarians would not have foreign bases or interventions, including covert actions, if we were not directly attacked first. The Soviets would have rolled over the world before the likes of Mataconis and Paul would have resisted – apparently by taking pot-shots at them as they came up the Mississippi in row boats.

  10. The idea of limited government and individual rights originated with the thinkers conservatives revere, and in the instruments of governance they created like the Constitution.

    Libertarians suppose they can have the freedom without the values. But they overtly oppose many federal powers specifically granted by the Constitution. They don’t really want our Constitution, their ideal is in fact the Articles of Confederation.

  11. I stopped reading the excerpt after the string of garble that looked like the word “fusion” with some sort of redundant suffix. It’s like they can’t comprehend the authors from only a few years ago, so they have to resort to lingo.

    The founders all read Cicero and Plato, and didn’t think it strange at all that those particular authors existed over a thousand years before their time. The vast majority of aspects of the human condition resist the concept of a historical period. We don’t need to manufacture neologisms to define things that are not new under the sun.

    And we don’t need to release and rely on the cool in this new resistance. It isn’t about being angry (it never was), it’s about sending the message that we shall not submit. This is what the mushy cons fail to comprehend. This is why the full panoply of revolution, resistance, retaliation, and reaction is on the table. We can fight on all of those fronts.

    We don’t have a battle where the right is a wall of steel contending with a viral infection representing the left. We’re all in the same petri dish, and the genes behind it all demand only one thing: competition. A little stoicism helps with endurance, but you have to prosecute the war with a will to win.

    The mushies evince no such will. They might be fine in the catering corps, but let’s not pretend they are in the vanguard.

  12. That’s a fine recounting of what the left–and the less studied among the neo-libertarians–would claim about “conservatives.” But it appears to be void of any understanding of what conservative philosophy is about.

    The social cons cannot possibly “sink” the conservative movement, because they are a major element of conservatism. One might just as well claim that Bar-B-Que sauce and collard greens are dragging down that whole “southern cuisine” thing.

    I don’t understand this effort to redefine conservatism. It’s a serious waste of time.

  14. I call such people Libertines. I refuse to call them Libertarians as the philosdophy of givernment of those people will yield a jungle and nothing like liberty. The founders would hold that lot in contempt.

  16. I’ve said this before. We are already past the tipping point and the slide downward is accelerating. Doing things like home schooling and such are only responsible acts, and standing against the left is our duty.
    But, don’t be fooled that this battle will be won by us. there is a solid reason for the Book of Revelation Smitty. It tells us what awaits, and all the signs and red flags are waving in a stiffening breeze. Man has rejected God, so he will be ruled by tyrants. The Tyrant of the ages is waiting just off stage and will make his debut soon. We see the attitudes that make him possible in the recent presidential election.

  19. a political Party that seems joined at the hip to a Church

    And that church would be…?

    Hint: “Christianity” is not a church. The Roman Catholic Church is a church. The United Methodist Church is a church. The Church of Jesus Christ Latter Day Saints is a church.

    If you see a party wedded to a church, you ought to be able to name the church.

  20. Problem with that label is you get over-enthusiastic SoCons that apply it to every libertarian that they can find until the term becomes meaningless. There’s a SoCon editor at RedState that routinely applies it to me, for example.

  22. But they overtly oppose many federal powers specifically granted by the Constitution.

    Which powers would those be, Adjoran? I’ve heard lots of libertarians complain about the federal government extending its power too far, but I can’t recall a single time when I ever heard a libertarian complain about the federal government exercising an actual enumerated power. If you can name one, I’d like to hear it.

  23. We’re never going to have a limited government when the SoCons are pushing things like the War On Some Drugs that the federal government has used as an excuse for 40 years now to exercise all kinds of extra-constitutional powers.

  24. I don’t decry the ‘socon’ social structures, just attempts to bolster their own crumbling facades with legal scaffolding. How many kids over the last 50 years watched their parent’s marriage implode/self destruct said, ‘no thanks’? Gays didn’t do that. My parents raised 6 kids, we barely afforded to raise one (public schools and thrift shop shopping).

  25. Considering how many SoCons I’ve come across that claim themselves that the Tea Party is a SoCon movement (they generally don’t like how I reply to them), I can understand his confusion.

  27. There are two types of libertarians – Libertarians and libertarians.

    -The former are ideologues who follow a system of ideas designed in the sterile laboratories of their own minds. Like all Ideologies, theirs cannot allow for any deviation from the belief system because the whole thing will collapse if any part is proven defective. And they have so much psychologically invested in their Ideology that it’s collapse would bring about a breakdown. Jacob Burckhardt called them ‘the terrible simplifiers’.

    -As for the latter, small ‘l’ type, I think Russell Kirk provided a spot-on definition of them:

    First, a number of the men and women who accept the label “libertarian” are not actually ideological libertarians at all, but simply conservatives under another name. These are people who perceive in the growth of the monolithic state, especially during the past half century, a grim menace to ordered liberty; and of course they are quite right. They wish to emphasize their attachment to personal and civic freedom by employing this 20th century word derived from liberty. With them I have little quarrel – except that by so
    denominating themselves, they seem to countenance a crowd of political fantastics who “license they mean, when they cry liberty.”

    So, while I agree with Smitty that we should try and make common cause with some of them – the libertarians – I think it futile to attempt to do so with the Libertarians. They’re lost in Ideology.

  28. Well-put. Personally I identify as a libertarian, not a Libertarian.

    Ronald Reagan understood the difference, and said as such:

    If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. I think conservatism is really a misnomer just as liberalism is a misnomer for the liberals — if we were back in the days of the Revolution, so-called conservatives today would be the Liberals and the liberals would be the Tories. The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is. Now, I can’t say that I will agree with all the things that the present group who call themselves Libertarians in the sense of a party say, because I think that like in any political movement there are shades, and there are libertarians who are almost over at the point of wanting no government at all or anarchy. I believe there are legitimate government functions. There is a legitimate need in an orderly society for some government to maintain freedom or we will have tyranny by individuals. The strongest man on the block will run the neighborhood. We have government to ensure that we don’t each one of us have to carry a club to defend ourselves. But again, I stand on my statement that I think that libertarianism and conservatism are traveling the same path.

  31. In other words, you think America’s best days are behind her. Myself and Ronald Reagan disagree with you.

  32. RE: Screaming about Barack Obama’s Martian birth certificate

    My approach to this issue is to point out that I had to present a state issued birth certificate to get my pension, that the Obama campaign spent over a million dollars to bring the issue to the Supreme Court where they prevailed making the issue moot and to wonder aloud whether we can afford to trust our public finances to a group that would spend over a million dollars to avoid presenting a document which cost me a few minutes online and a $10 fee to get.

    WRT to party unity. I feel that the only time it really matters is when electing House and Senate leaders. Aside from that, those elected to represent their constituents should feel free to vote their conscience.

  34. “…not a tool whereby I can enforce my personal taste for post-infant baptism by full immersion on everybody, Christian or otherwise*.”

    Loved this!

  35. You’re never going to win anything except what Libertarians have won so far (Hint: “Wish in one hand…”), so stop venting your dormroom BS and decide how much America means to you.

  36. Because de facto legalization has been SO good for LA, San Fran, Detroit, Mexico…

    and everyone knows that making drugs legal is going to make fewer people become addicts, right?

    Besides, our buddy Finn here is volunteering to pay the social costs out of his own pocket! Can’t get more libertarian than that, can you?

  37. I haven’t lived in a dorm room since 1991, genius. And in case you haven’t checked Gallup lately, legalizing marijuana is now a majority view in the United States.

    I suggest you look up asset forfeiture and contemplate what would happen if this particular bit of odiousness got applied to you.

  38. Because Portugal has just been overrun with drug addicts since they decriminalized all drugs in 2000.

    Surprise! The percentage of drug users there has remained constant despite decriminalization. By percentage, more Americans use cocaine than citizens of Portugal use marijuana.

    Can you point to anything positive that the War On Some Drugs has actually accomplished? Bueller?

  39. In the footsteps of Hayek, we need to resurrect the political category of “Whig,” the primary criterion of which, as I understand it, was opposition to the concentration of governmental power in the executive (originally, in the English Crown.) It fits, without having to descend into the whole fis-con/soc-con/libertarian p*ssing match.

  40. That’s why I gave up thinking about libertarian (‘L’ or ‘l’) as signifying anything like my own preference in philosophy. The best label I’ve ever heard for it is Jeffersonian Liberalism, and that’s what I use when people must have a label.

    I differ from Conservatives just enough so that I don’t engage in that silliness of pretending to “tell” (via the comment section on some blog) the major thought leaders in the Conservative movement that they are wrong. It’s amazing to me to see threads at Free Republic devoted to whining that Mark Levin is “no true conservative” or is some form of progressive.

    I differ from Conservatives in only a few key areas, so I accept my difference and move on. These “real conservative” clowns differ from Levin by something measurable only via micrometer, and are ready to put him in stocks.

    But per your comment, Bob, I find I get along with the small ‘l’ libertarians quite well, and also the staunch Social Cons, too.

  42. I don’t see where he said that. We’ve already gone over the cliff is all he was describing, and that’s as true as true gets.

    But the Bush/Obama downfall of America (I know, Bush isn’t in barack’s league, but he dropped the ball on the Constitution, and allowed barack to swoop in) might well be necessary to get to the point where America’s best days can be attained again. Cloward/Piven doesn’t mean the leftists win, it just means they have destroyed something.

    They will find out that they haven’t achieved a damn thing useful to their movement. And in their destruction, they have brought us much closer to the point where it will be seen as necessary to engage them directly. (“Kinetically,” as the Marines like to say.)

    End-timers are really those who simply trust God knows what He is doing. That doesn’t mean they have given up, because people of faith have already passed beyond that pointless concept. They fight to the end because it’s what witness is all about, not because they expect to be there when it’s over and the celebration can begin.

  45. Thanks! It’s a favorite of mine, and I’ve used it more than once to abuse libertarian-haters at RedState.

  46. Very true; it has enriched a lot of trial lawyers, and it’s helped out a lot of politicians who want to Look Tough On Crime. However, I don’t consider those positive accomplishments 🙂

  47. Valid point; usually when I read something that starts with “We’re already past the tipping point” there’s subtext that saying “It’s all gone to hell and we can’t stop it”.

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