More IATF RFC

Kling follows up and, among other things, defends the link between libertarians and "conservatives" by arguing that the Left is "religiously" worse than the Right. I'd say he's right about the Left's ideological religiosity, but wrong that it is worse than the Right's. As long as placating the Republican base means visiting Bob Jones University and paying respects to the likes of Falwell, Robertson, and Dobson, the GOP can never really be the party of liberty.

The term "social engineering" is often used sneeringly by "conservatives" to dismiss "liberal" programs aimed at, say, ending poverty. But "engineering" really just refers to a teleological enterprise, i.e. trying to shape or build a structure (or other artifact) with a specific goal or vision in mind, and this can be accomplished by proscriptions as well as prescriptions. What are prohibitions against all manner of individual choices, such as with whom we may enter into life partner relationships, and what sort of chemicals win intake in private, if not "social engineering?" Maybe we don't see these restrictions as such because we are accustomed to them, but those sorts of limits are certainly designed to make our society "better" by constraining our individual choices. Just because something is traditional doesn't make it right. Like Kling and his "liberal" friends, I myself lead a pretty traditional or "conservative" lifestyle, but living conservatively either brings its own rewards or it doesn't. If it does (and I find that it does), then the government need not enforce it; if it does not, then government sanction is unjustified and counterproductive.

In proving my libertarian bona fides, let me take just a moment to vent at the Left again. Just as Kling decries how the GOP Right has betrayed small government conservatives in the arena of fiscal responsibility, so to has the Democratic Left stomped all over small government ideals in the domain of personal liberty. Just to cite a couple of examples, they want to essentially expand the drug war to include tobacco, and they also seem hell-bent on legislating the foods we are allowed to purchase and eat. And there are at least a couple of dimensions to these prohibitionist impulses. One of their big justifications is that because society is on the hook for medical expenses incurred by poor lifestyle choices, society is thereby empowered to prohibit those choices. This is, indeed, Hayek's road to serfdom in spades, look no further. If the government is daddy when it's time to pay the bills, then you have to live by daddy's rules… But while fiscal responsibility is the enabling tool for government expansion in this scheme, it is hardly the ultimate impetus; the driving force of the Left's vision of the nanny state is plain old unadulterated Puritanism. Junk food and tobacco simply do not fit into the moral standards of today's so-called "progressives," and they are going to take them from you by force, if need be.

No, I cannot abide the Right's Bible-thumping moralizing, but I can only occasionally barely tolerate the Left's preachy paternalism—just long enough to vote for divided government, which I did. Principled non-voting increasingly looks like my preferred approach, in general, with a vote for the Democrats if divided government is at stake.