Cato Unbound

We Don't Agree on What We Ought to Do

Thu, 23 May 2013 07:02:00 PDT

Jeremy Kolassa

In his response essay, Jordan Ballor argues as follows:

What these differing conceptions of liberty amount to, in my view, is this: one views liberty, particularly political liberty, as an important and yet limited good, while the other views liberty as an end in itself, in fact the highest end of human life itself. The former view of political liberty is primarily that it is an instrumental good that is a necessary condition for the realization of even greater goods in other spheres, like the family, the church, voluntary associations, markets, and so on. The latter view holds liberty in the political realm to be, in some significant sense, the highest expression of human good and a codification of the freedom of choice as a good as such. To put it bluntly, one views liberty as the freedom to do what we ought, while the other views liberty as the freedom to do what we want.

There are two serious problems with this viewpoint.

The first is that Mr. Ballor is making an error when he assumes that libertarians do not have an interest in “greater goods in other spheres.” This criticism comes up frequently, with the assumption that libertarians say “It’s liberty or civil society, one or the other.” But this is most emphatically not true. Libertarianism is about the choice between voluntary and non-voluntary. It’s about liberty vs. coercion.

It is not about social vs. isolated. Indeed, most libertarians recognize the power of civil society and hope to strengthen it as a bulwark against government excess. Arnold Kling, when he wrote his essay on “civil societarianism,” was of this view.

The second problem is found in the phrase “views liberty as the freedom to do what we ought.” I then have to ask: who decides what we ought to do? The church? There are a thousand and one different churches, each with a slightly different view of what we ought to do. Voluntary organizations? Each one has their own code of ethics and its own agenda. I can go on and on but in the interest of brevity will stop here.

The problem is that we don’t really agree on what we ought to do. In fact, that’s why politics exists in the first place: because people have different concepts of what the good life is and what we ought to do, and usually they use government to promote their view. The raucous disagreements between left and right on issues such as sexual liberation, immigration, race relations, gender equality, and Kevin Sorbo vs. Matt Damon show that there is really no consensus on what we ought to do at all.

By contrast, by putting liberty first politically, we simply recognize the obvious: that people have different views of the good life, and we let them pursue those views through peaceful means. There is some ought to do within libertarianism, but it’s rather minor: don’t kill, don’t steal, don’t kidnap, don’t censor, and the like. It is merely recognizing other humans as ends in themselves, not as the means to an end. That’s a necessity for modern society.

Given a choice between a view that said we need liberty to do the things that we ought to do, and then gave a list of those things—and another view that gave us liberty because liberty is a value, and let us choose what things we think we ought to do on our own, I would chose the latter unhesitatingly. Yes, I would put liberty as the goal, because without liberty, without the ability to choose for oneself what the good life is, life itself is pointless.

Liberalism and the Individualist Worldview

Wed, 22 May 2013 12:36:00 PDT

Clark Ruper

One of the common arguments I hear in favor of fusionism, although not one made in this series so far, is that conservatives and libertarians are natural allies. In theory we are united by valuing the individual in the political order, as opposed to the communists, socialists, progressives, etc. who are all various forms of collectivists. While libertarians and conservatives may disagree on the extent to which the state should support and control important social institutions, at least we are not collectivists, and in that we can find common ground.

However, as I pointed out previously, this alignment is a byproduct of historical coincidence. Libertarians and conservatives formed a fusionist alliance that made sense in the context of the 1960s. Communism posed an existential thread abroad and central economic planning was widely accepted within the New Deal Consensus at home. Fusionism made sense then, but times have changed.

With those dynamics gone, is there still a deeper connection between the conservative and libertarian positions? Can we still unite around respect for the individual? I stumbled upon a series of psychological studies that provide counter evidence to that claim that conservatives are the natural allies of individualists. I do not offer them here as hard evidence to prove my case; after all, they are just a handful of studies, but they are interesting and potentially informative to our conversation.

The studies focus on how we view ourselves as individuals, exploring whether there is a difference in how people in different social contexts build conceptions of themselves. The conclusions are that yes, people do conceptualize the self differently, especially those of us in the western industrialized regions of the world. The researchers used the acronym WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) to identify unique demographic characteristics of people who hold a robustly individualist worldview. Apparently we WEIRD people tend to be much more analytic and focus on objects themselves as opposed to the contextual relationship between objects. The purpose of these studies was to see if results from psychological studies of western nations could be extrapolated to other populations, which apparently is unwise because WEIRD people are a tiny minority on earth.

Later a group of researchers at the University of Virginia wondered if these findings applied within countries as well. Are there various combinations of WEIRD people within countries, using the United States and China as test cases? They put together a series of word and shape association tests to see if the subjects thought more analytically or holistically (read more about the process here). The study produced some interesting results, but I will focus on the political implications. Boston University researcher Connor Wood summed up the results at Patheos.com (a global resource on religion with a section focused on the relationship between science and religion):

The students also completed questionnaires that asked about social and political ideology. As expected, students who indicated they were more conservative also tended to pair words on the basis of their functional relationships, while more liberal Chinese students relied on abstract categories – exactly the same pattern as in the WEIRD world…

Across these studies, interestingly, analytical and holistic thinking was strongly associated only with social ideology – economic conservatism or liberalism was mostly unrelated. What’s more, libertarians – who typically side with conservatives in elections – were more similar to liberals, strongly preferring analytical cognitive patterns. Talhelm and the other researchers argued that this was because libertarians and social liberals are very similar when it comes to one important dimension of social life: they tend toward individualism, and distrust the authority of tradition. Social conservatives, on the other hand, tend to value tradition and to see themselves primarily as members of groups.

Again, I offer this not as conclusive proof but as an interesting discussion point. It does however reinforce my belief that libertarians have more in common with liberals that most modern political commentators would imagine. Historically, libertarians and modern liberals share an ideological ancestry, both tracing our roots to the classical liberal tradition of Locke, Hume, Smith, Mill, and others. In the 19^th century, the classical liberals triumphed by advocating the primacy of the individual against the status quo of monarchy, mercantilism, aristocracy, theology, slavery, and the like. While the progressive movement stole our liberal terminology in the early 20^th century, modern liberals and libertarians today still share that same valuation of the individual in society. This is most easily seen today in the issue of marriage equality, where social conservatives try to use the power of the state to control marriage because it is an important social institution, while liberals and libertarians focus on the importance of marriage in the lives of all individuals. It is the same core conflict between a holistic worldview that emphasizes tradition against a more analytic worldview that prioritizes the individual.

I will repeat a point from my previous essay because it is easy to get carried away in these conversations: I am not arguing against libertarians working with conservatives on the issues we agree on. There is plenty of important work to be done in those areas. What I am arguing for, and what the cited studies support, is that there are equally valuable opportunities to work with liberal communities. We share qualities not just in terms of policy but in deep psychological similarities.

There may be ways to draw similarities between conservatives and libertarians, but I do not see anything that could draw some deep individualistic connection between the two camps. Conservatism by its very nature has no fixed definition; it shifts over time depending on context. Conservatism is fundamentally a matter of valuing tradition and institutions, and the conservative political alignment will shift depending on what those institutions are. In the 19^th century classical liberals and libertarians were the enemies of conservatives defending the status quo. Murray Rothbard made this point in a direct letter to Frank Meyer, defining a historical conservative as: “Someone who identifies himself with the historical Conservative parties of the 19th Century in Europe. In that case, it means to identify oneself with authoritarianism and hatred of individual liberty and laissez-faire capitalism. The Prussian Conservative Party was formed to block emancipation of the serfs, and to maintain protective tariffs; the Conservative Party in England imposed Corn Laws and Factory Acts, and crushed Ireland.”

If we take a longer view of history, we may very well find ourselves looking back at fusionism 100 years from now as a quaint historical accident. There is nothing about conservatism that fundamentally aligns it with the libertarian values of individualism, freedom, equality before the law, free exchange, and peace. The libertarian movement should continue to grow beyond the recent historical anomaly that is fusionism. We have just as much to gain by working with the left as with the right. We have the unique ability to place ourselves in the radical center of political discourse, reaching out to both sides equally, pulling young people from both to build our uniquely libertarian movement and a freer future for all.

Are Historical Arguments Un-Libertarian?

Tue, 21 May 2013 07:09:00 PDT

Jordan Ballor

Clark Ruper provides an excellent overview of the recent history of fusionism and includes an argument about the historical significance of the opportunity to advance liberty among the young today: “We are witnessing the maturation of the most libertarian generation in recent memory.” Jacque Otto grounds much of her reflection on the Christian moral tradition.

I’d like to juxtapose some of this historical sensibility with a claim Jeremy Kolassa makes in his attempts to distinguish conservatism and libertarianism. Kolassa writes that “libertarianism is about liberty, specifically individual liberty. Conservatism, on the other hand, is about conserving as much of the past as possible, and having as little change as possible. Libertarians are excited about the future and the changes that await us, in technology, society, culture, and in many different fields. Conservatives, on the other hand, just shudder. Libertarians love freedom. Conservatives love tradition.”

What should we make of attempts by libertarians to find some historical grounding for their views? Consider as just one example, Rothbard’s An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought and specific claims about the seventeenth-century School of Salamanca. And of course Lord Acton has been dubbed the “historian of liberty.”

Are such historical arguments a form of appeal to “tradition” that are by definition (Kolassa’s at least) more conservative than libertarian?

A Strategy for the Brand Management of Libertarianism

Mon, 20 May 2013 07:35:00 PDT

Jacqueline Otto

It would be abhorrent and wrong to strip away the ideological identity of libertarians and force them to comply with a dominant conservative agenda. Even in the name of presenting “one complete and harmonious whole,” to use Jeremy Kolassa’s critical words. Which is exactly why that is neither the type of fusionism I support nor the one for which I argued in my previous essay. Clark Ruper does an excellent job of articulating the history of fusionism from the 1960 to the present, and I agree with his diagnosis of why that model of fusionism does not work today.

That is why I proposed that “the way forward for fusionism is to celebrate the moral superiority of free markets and limited government and do a better job of making those moral arguments to religious conservatives.” This seems like the “ad hoc coalitions on certain issues” that Kolassa says he could support. This approach specifically celebrates free markets and appeals to the skills at which libertarians have proven to excel—teaching free market economics to young people.

I repeat that I do not know the place of fusionism in all areas, social issues chief among them. When I earlier made that point, I was agreeing that fusionism need not be what Ruper calls “a formal alliance,” as it was understood to be in the past. Operating under the assumption that I was making the opposite case, Kolassa seems to be countering by arguing for a type of libertarian purism in which the tenets of libertarianism are already determined, and you are not welcome to consider yourself a libertarian unless you pledge fidelity to all of the points of faith.

In my experience, there is still a vibrant discussion going on amongst libertarians, Objectivists, and other free-market capitalists on the very social issues that Kolassa brings into the debate. There is no reason, other than the sectarianism mentioned by Jordan Ballor, to argue that one cannot believe in free market capitalism if they do not agree with the Cato Institute, or Ayn Rand, or whoever else is your chosen ideological standard bearer on issues of gay marriage, drug legalization, civil liberties, feminism, foreign policy, or immigration.

More so than the libertarian purists, I believe that libertarians can and should find areas of commonality with other ideologies. I argued at length that an important area for this is in reaching out to the religious conservatives and making a case for the benefits that free market capitalism affords the poor.

While I agree with Kolassa and Ruper that if we discover areas of commonality with the left, we should exploit them, I would caution those looking for these areas to temper their exuberance. As I wrote previously, a difference in worldview divides conservatives and libertarians on one side and liberals on the other. Conservatives and libertarians have ideologies based on learning the lessons of history and improving and perfecting our attempts at governing a free people, whereas liberals do not believe we “stand on the shoulders of giants.” Any areas of commonality with them would be isolated and auxiliary, not leading to any long-term partnership.

Kolassa took particular issue with the assertion that conservatives and libertarians share an ideological ancestry. He writes, “as the name suggests, libertarianism is about liberty, specifically individual liberty. Conservatism, on the other hand, is about conserving as much of the past as possible, and having as little change as possible.” This definition of conservatism is in stark juxtaposition to what conservatism actually is, which is to learn from the mistakes of the past and prevent them in the future. A rather optimistic and forward-looking approach if properly understood.

Ruper concludes, “my argument is for building our own libertarian movement with our own institutions, centered on a youthful and forward-looking libertarian brand.” Interestingly, Kolassa also mentions the need for “a fully independent brand” for libertarianism. One of the most fascinating insights I have learned in studying marketing is that an effective brand is not only distinct and recognizable, but permeating. An effective brand becomes a subconscious element of a person’s life because the brand represents the entire social context with which that person identifies. A successful brand strategy for libertarianism requires a constant flow of the ideas of freedom into a person’s life, where it is not abrasive, but rather something that can—through persistence—be absorbed into a person’s ideology.

Russell Roberts, now of the Hoover Institution, and one of the greatest modern communicators of free market economics, is said to have called this phenomenon “drops on rocks” in a speech to the Koch Associates Program: One drop on a rock won’t do anything. Two drops on a rock won’t do anything. One thousand drops on a rock still won’t do anything, but millions and millions of tiny drops on a rock will eventually split the rock. If we want to make the world more free, we have to understand that even our best efforts are like drops on the rocks of people’s lives.

Our goal should be to create as many drops as possible to make a brand for libertarianism that will permeate society so effectively that we see massive political change in the direction of freedom. This cannot be accomplished by libertarian purism. It must be accomplished by fusionism, even if only in limited areas, by those who share a forward-looking ideology.

Avoiding Confusionism: Liberty and Civil Society

Mon, 13 May 2013 06:35:00 PDT

Jordan Ballor

It’s my honor to round out the initial panel of essays on the worthy topic of libertarian and conservative fusionism today. We have, I believe, in the first three pieces by Jacqueline Otto, Jeremy Kolassa, and Clark Ruper, excellent representations of both the centripetal and the centrifugal forces at play in the fusionist project, which ultimately turn on different conceptions of liberty itself. Ruper’s essay in particular helpfully contextualizes the historical backgrounds for the contemporary fusionist debate. Otto articulates in impressive fashion the moral, and specifically religious, and even more specifically Christian, foundations for the free society. Too many simply dismiss fusionism as chimerical because they view the relationship between religion and liberty as antithetical rather than complementary, and Otto makes a convincing case for their principled connection.

Kolassa, by contrast, is inclined to juxtapose traditional religious morality with liberty. A main task of libertarianism, he says, is “to combat the social conservatism that is dooming the free market.” Ruper makes a similar assessment with regard to demographic trends: “the libertarian elements of conservatism remain popular; the rest has become toxic to young people.” Kolassa paints in broad strokes what “conservatives” and “libertarians” are like and are for and against; his view strikes me as overly simplistic. Neither conservatism nor libertarianism is monolithic, and so it is instructive to see what Kolassa sees as the real key or center of each and judge accordingly. Thus, writes Kolassa, “the individual’s right to rule his or her own life” is “what liberty is about.” By contrast, “conservatives are really just the other side of the progressive coin. Both put the community in charge.”

These characterizations bring to mind Russell Kirk’s dismissal of libertarians as “chirping sectaries.” I do not think Kolassa’s perspective ought to be dismissed, but it is important to recognize that both conservatives and libertarians have their sectaries. To some extent, both Kirk and Kolassa show a penchant for lumping together diverse groups and perspectives under an umbrella like “conservative” or “libertarian” to dismiss the other viewpoint as simply bad. So if libertarianism has its “chirping sectaries,” then conservatism does too. Neither strike me as a fruitful starting point for dialogue, much less the construction of a political project.

Rather than jumping in to debate concrete policy proposals or particular issues that may separate conservatives from libertarians, let’s step back and examine a bit more carefully what points of principle may or may not divide us. Space does not permit a full explication of the philosophical and intellectual foundations of conservatism and libertarianism and their overlap and divergence, so an assertion of the difference will have to suffice. The essays from Otto on the one side and Kolassa and Ruper on the other display two different conceptions of liberty itself. If these views are irreconcilable, then it is hard to see how fusionism can be stable for any significant period of time.

What these differing conceptions of liberty amount to, in my view, is this: one views liberty, particularly political liberty, as an important and yet limited good, while the other views liberty as an end in itself, in fact the highest end of human life itself. The former view of political liberty is primarily that it is an instrumental good that is a necessary condition for the realization of even greater goods in other spheres, like the family, the church, voluntary associations, markets, and so on. The latter view holds liberty in the political realm to be, in some significant sense, the highest expression of human good and a codification of the freedom of choice as a good as such. To put it bluntly, one views liberty as the freedom to do what we ought, while the other views liberty as the freedom to do what we want.

The dynamics between the two perspectives might be helpfully extrapolated from a quote from Lord Acton, who said, “Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.” Now if politics were in fact the highest end of human existence, then it would follow that liberty is humankind’s highest end. So a great deal turns on our understanding of that little modifier political as well as our understanding of the term liberty.

And here, I think, we run into a helpful way of discerning the difference between the two views of liberty. One emphasizes the limits and the instrumental value of the political as such. It is a view of liberty that particularly emphasizes the limits of government. This can be contrasted with a kind of libertarianism that places liberty at the center not merely of a political philosophy but indeed at the principled core of an entire world-and-life view. This version of liberty as humanity’s highest end sans modifiers is on display in something like Kolassa’s criticism of Otto’s focus on economics, “as if that were the be-all and end-all of libertarianism. But it is only a part, not the whole.” Indeed, for Kolassa, it seems libertarianism is a comprehensive or totalizing ideology with implications not simply for political order but for all of life.

With the brief space left for this initial foray, and with the caveat that a great deal of what I have already said needs to be unpacked and critically examined in greater detail, I will conclude by moving from the diagnostic to the prescriptive.

First, we need to move beyond monolithic caricatures of what “conservatism” and especially “libertarianism” represent. The series of videos by Nigel Ashford on “Schools of Thought in Classical Liberalism” is a good place to start to get a sense of the varieties of what is labeled “libertarianism.” The coherence of these schools is to me an open question, and if it is the case that libertarianism as such is not unified, it seems unrealistic to expect there to be coherent fusion of conservatism and libertarianism. The Bleeding Heart Libertarians, for instance, who aim at the unity of “free markets and social justice,” seem to me to be a particularly intriguing phenomenon in discussions related to fusionism.

Next, while I have cited Kolassa’s claim that conservatism and progressivism are mirror images, flip sides of the same statist coin, I’d like to propose that there’s a real sense in which atomistic or even “rugged” individualism and statist collectivism are actually two sides of the same coin. A core principle for many libertarians, the view that there is nothing between the individual and the state, has arguably done more to permit, if not promote, tyranny, and to undermine true liberty, than pragmatic reliance on state power in pursuit of a particular social agenda.

This returns us to the question of the political and its limits. There is no more effective and indeed principled way to limit the reach of government than to focus not on government but rather on one another. When we turn our eyes away from government and towards our neighbor, we radically limit the scope of political power. We are no longer individuals bound together solely by our relationship to the government. We are, instead, bound to one another, and these associations in turn mediate the influence of government in our lives. When the political is the primary lens through which we view reality, then the victory of statism is inevitable.

We should begin with the importance of non-governmental institutions, including but not limited to the market, as sources of vitality, authority, and liberty. This perspective has much in common with what the economist Arnold Kling has described as “civil societarianism” in contrast to the exaltation of “the independent individual.” A significant older stream of classical liberalism emphasizes the importance of civil society as constituted by mediating structures that limit the government and its influence upon individuals. These institutions are a middle ground not only between the individual and the state, but also between the individualism of an Ayn Rand and the collectivism of a Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Lord Acton’s definition of liberty as the highest political end was connected with his view that the government’s role in protecting and promoting liberty was “for security in the pursuit of the highest objects of civil society, and of private life.”

It’s a view that has also been associated with figures like Alexis de Tocqueville and is consonant, I believe, in large part with conservatives who emphasize the importance of the free market and the liberal order. On this thick view of society—including individuals, institutions of civil society, as well as government—free markets and democracies greatly depend upon virtues and structures that they do not produce themselves. Free societies are dependent upon more than the proper order of economic and political institutions. There is more to life than is captured in the dichotomy between the market and the state on the one hand, or between the individual and the state on the other. Here we might consider thinkers like Michael Novak, Gertrude Himmelfarb, and more recently Yuval Levin.

It’s worth considering, too, the example and wisdom of Edmund Burke, who accepted Adam Smith’s economics as his own, and at the same time held to the vital significance of mediating institutions, his “little platoons,” for the free society. In such a way, conservatives and libertarians may well be able to come to agreement on particular and narrow questions of economics and public policy, and we should seek such opportunities for co-belligerence and cross-fertilization wherever possible. However, I am dubious that there is a possibility to substantively fuse together two different views of liberty, the relationship between the individual and the state, and the importance of politics, without falling into an incoherent “confusionism.”

The Death of Fusionism

Fri, 10 May 2013 05:54:00 PDT

Clark Ruper

Jacqueline Otto argues that there are issues and demographics that are ripe targets for cooperative work between conservatives and libertarians. These may bring a message of free markets and individual liberty to a wider audience, especially the religious. I concede that point as readily as I point out the opportunities for cooperation between libertarians and liberals on many issues.

However, the issue at hand is not cooperation between two groups but fusionism, an explicit alliance that has been the dominant strategy for libertarians over the past fifty years. While libertarians have been placed generally on the right in recent history, fusionism is ultimately a losing strategy because an explicit alliance closes us off from prime audiences on the left, center, and elsewhere on the political spectrum. A few words on the history and nature of fusionism will be informative for this discussion.

The term fusionism was popularized in the early 1960s by William F. Buckley and Frank S. Meyer of the National Review. These were the early days of both the conservative and libertarian movements as we now know them. Both were growing in the context of and in response to the Cold War consensus, in which both major political parties and most public intellectuals believed that the New Deal had fixed the problems of capitalism and that the government should manage a mixed economy. Anyone outside of this worldview was something of a radical, and a lonely radical at that.

To make a long and more complicated story short, Meyer and Buckley worked to combine these small but growing forces into a broad conservative movement. Evidence can be seen in Buckley’s assistance in creating Young Americans for Freedom, an explicitly fusionist organization – as can be seen in its founding Sharon Statement. Meyer sought to give philosophical justification to this alliance with his 1962 work In Defense of Freedom, where he claimed that liberty is essential to the pursuit of virtue, and that virtue is necessary for the maintenance of social order. He saw harmony between the libertarian and conservative positions.

The alliance had three main branches, which can be thought of as the legs of a stool. One leg featured the traditionalist conservatives influenced by the teachings of Russell Kirk and primarily his 1953 book The Conservative Mind. Kirk advocated a Burkean conservatism, emphasizing respect and adherence to religious, cultural, and political traditions.

Composing the second leg were the anti-communists, led by organizations such as the John Birch Society, which was created to reveal communist conspiracies to overthrow the government. While most Americans opposed communism, the fervent anti-communists tended to argue for stronger fighting against communist ideas at home and for actively destroying the USSR abroad. They were the strongest numerically of the other partners in fusionism.

The third leg was made up of classical liberals, later to take the name libertarians, and drew influence from a number of economists and philosophers. Inspirations for this group included Ludwig von Mises, F.A. Hayek, Milton Friedman, and Ayn Rand to name a few (as Otto mentioned, there are very few noted free market economists who are not libertarians). In general they advocated for extreme limits to governmental power and maximization of individual liberty. While they lacked in numbers they brought the strongest intellectual components to the alliance.

I make time for this historical tangent because it is important for understanding where we are today. Over time some libertarians dismissed fusionism to chart their own course. Ayn Rand and Murray Rothbard come to mind. In the 1970s the Libertarian Party was formed; in the 1980s the Cato Institute grew into a successful and respected think tank; and libertarianism increasingly became a self-aware and sustaining movement. Still, with exceptions fusionism was the dominant strategy for libertarians for the past fifty years. While I take issue with fusionism today, it makes sense that libertarians embraced in the latter half of the 20th century.

Let’s return to the present, where the dynamics have shifted dramatically. Communism, an existential threat to the United States and to freedom everywhere, gave a common enemy to conservatives and libertarians. It has almost entirely crumbled under its own weight and inefficiency. Where once libertarians and conservatives could debate intelligently on the pages of National Review, now the traditionalists are all but forgotten, replaced by pandering to social conservatives who see heroes in the likes of Rick Santorum. Once we could unite behind Barry Goldwater, but for years now those on the right have taken their marching orders from the imperialist big government neoconservatives under George W. Bush and the puppet master Karl Rove. The fusionist stool is irreparably broken. Fusionism is dead, and conservatives killed it.

While the conservatives have spent the past 20 years destroying their credibility with moderates and young people, the libertarian movement has been gaining traction. We now have our own institutions ranging from think tanks and academic centers to student groups and grassroots networks. There is a line from Jacqueline’s essay which I find particularly inaccurate: “the survival of the free market is at stake; as we watch the overall trend of my generation veering left, I fear the war for liberty may be lost while we on the right skirmish over degrees of freedom.” This is just wrong. Young people are not moving “left.” They are just moving away from conservatism. Stephen Moore recently cited a study by the conservative Young America’s Foundation in the Wall Street Journal, saying “One important finding is that it’s no longer cool to be conservative on college campuses. For example, the term ‘conservative’ is a turnoff to the young, viewed favorably by 28% and unfavorably by 32%, though terms like ‘free markets,’ ‘entrepreneurship,’ and ‘limited government’ are viewed positively.” What this study shows is that the libertarian elements of conservatism remain popular; the rest has become toxic to young people.

While youth are turned off by conservatism, the student movement for liberty has grown at a rapid pace. Spurred on by the electrifying Ron Paul campaigns as well as dissatisfaction with the Bush-Obama big government continuum, college students are not just embracing libertarian ideas but taking up the cause of spreading them on campus. The first Students For Liberty Conference in 2008 featured 100 people. This past February’s International SFL Conference showcased over 1400.

Beyond these shifting dynamics and demographics, it is worth stating with emphasis that libertarians are not “on the right,” and it is harmful for us to think so. Our ideas are accepted across the traditional spectrum and inform elements of any political philosophy. From gay marriage to the drug war to the failure of social security to a respect for individualism and entrepreneurship, Americans hold pro-liberty positions. What makes libertarians unique is that while others may hold these beliefs casually, we advocate them absolutely. We are not left or right, but occupy the radical center of political discourse.

David Boaz of the Cato Institute made a very insightful comment at the 2013 International SFL Conference that explains why young libertarians are so concerned about social issues and as such are moving away from conservative fusionism:

The Republican party reacted very negatively when black people started demanding their civil rights. And now republicans wonder why black people do not want to vote for them. The Republican Party reacted very negatively when women started demanding the right to have careers and be involved in politics and economic life. And now republicans are reacting really really negatively to gay people demanding simple legal equality. Equality under the law. So my advice if there are any republicans watching is: don’t do the things today that will cause you 20 years from now to say “how come gay people won’t vote for us?

This is a fundamental problem for the conservative movement, and why libertarians would do well to put distance between our two camps. Libertarians should not remain silent on social issues or allow ourselves to be placed “on the right,” for that is a losing brand saddled with intolerance and hypocrisy. A close fusionist alliance with the right closes libertarians off from moderates and social liberals who are prime targets for our ideas. Where are the most exciting libertarian victories being won right now? In marriage equality and drug legalization. We should focus on those issues just as much if not more than economic freedom.

We are witnessing the maturation of the most libertarian generation in recent memory. There was a time when we needed conservatives for numbers and for institutional support. But now we have our own libertarian institutions and our numbers are growing every day.

This is not an argument against working with a political party, or against reaching out to different groups, or against identifying as a conservative-libertarian, progressive-libertarian, or any other type. The possible permutations of libertarianism are numerous, and that is a very good thing. It is the diversity of our movement that gives it strength. My argument is against a formal alliance of conservatism and libertarianism, against saying “the liberty movement is a branch of the conservative movement.” My argument is for building our own libertarian movement with our own institutions, centered on a youthful and forward-looking libertarian brand.

An Unequal Treaty

Tue, 07 May 2013 10:31:00 PDT

Jeremy Kolassa

Fusion. It sounds like such a great thing, the coming together of two or more different elements into one complete and harmonious whole. But don’t let the word fool you. The past several years, decades even, of fusionism between libertarians and conservatives has been anything but that. This fusion can best be described as an unequal treaty, with conservatives in control, while libertarians are told to sit down, be quiet, and just support whatever conservatives are pushing at the moment. That we are even having this discussion shows how far libertarianism has come, and how unworkable the current situation is.

While libertarians and conservatives may share some ideas in common, they come from fundamentally different philosophical foundations. In my mind, these foundations are, indeed, incompatible. As the name suggests, libertarianism is about liberty, specifically individual liberty. Conservatism, on the other hand, is about conserving as much of the past as possible, and having as little change as possible. Libertarians are excited about the future and the changes that await us, in technology, society, culture, and in many different fields. Conservatives, on the other hand, just shudder. Libertarians love freedom. Conservatives love tradition. These are not philosophies that we should expect to work well together.

In her opening essay, Jacqueline Otto makes several points about where libertarians and conservatives converge. But notice the elephant in the room: social issues. At no point in her essay does she write about gay marriage, drug legalization, civil liberties, feminism, or even foreign policy or immigration. These are serious issues, but ones where libertarians and conservatives frequently disagree. Instead, Otto writes solely about economics, as if that were the be-all and end-all of libertarianism. But it is only a part, not the whole.

Let us take an especially contentious issue, gay marriage. Libertarians are in favor of letting gay and lesbian couples enjoy the same legal benefits and recognition as heterosexual couples. Conservatives, on the other hand, have been against this and for relegating them to a second-class status, or just flat out not recognizing them at all.

For libertarians, this is a question of the individual’s right to rule his or her own life. That is, after all, what liberty is about. For a conservative, society to a great extent rules a person’s life. It is not always a question what the individual wants, but of what is right for the community. The community, in turn, is built on centuries-old traditions. Allowing gay marriage would break these traditions, which is why most conservatives are denouncing it as rampant immorality. Viewed in this light, conservatives are really just the other side of the progressive coin. Both put the community in charge.

When we end the Pledge of Allegiance, we do so with the words “Liberty and Justice for All,” not “Liberty and Justice for only those people we like.” Libertarians believe in the former, but conservatives mostly believe in the latter. That’s not something that can just be papered over. As I shall explain further on, being associated with it also greatly hampers the liberty movement.

And what about economics? Surely we can agree with conservatives there. But let’s be honest, Jonah Goldberg was incorrect in saying that Friedman, Hayek, et. al were the Mount Rushmore of conservative economics. Conservative economics is more aptly described by the term “trickle down”: By giving tax breaks and subsidies to corporations and those at the top, the wealth will flow downward and lift the boats of those at the bottom. But that is not increasing freedom or limiting government, it is merely tilting society in the direction of one group rather than another.

That’s not libertarian. A libertarian economic policy would be to eliminate all the subsidies given to businesses, give the tax breaks to everybody, and knock down the barriers that prevent newcomers from setting up businesses. Libertarianism is universalist, not top-down.

This highlights the major difference between “libertarian” and “conservative” economics. Libertarians are pro-capitalism. Conservatives are pro-business. While they sound similar, these ideas are emphatically not the same and never could be. Through the means of creative destruction, capitalism frequently tears down and destroys established businesses. Conservatism, however, in its quest to maintain the status quo, steps in to prevent this. The best example? 2007. If conservatives were truly pro-market, they would have never passed TARP, but they did and bailed out the banks. That’s a conservative, not a libertarian, economic policy.

All these things hamper libertarians when we try to explain liberty to Americans and expand the movement. People notice and remember them, and because we also like free markets, they regrettably associate free markets with these policies. And that smells like hypocrisy. It only makes our job of defending the free market so much harder.

Because of this unequal treaty, the American people commonly don’t realize that libertarians were against the war in Iraq, against the USA-PATRIOT Act, against the Department of Homeland Security, against the bailouts, and against the big-government big-spending ways of the conservative administration of George W. Bush. Only lately, with the rise of libertarians such as Ron and Rand Paul, Mike Lee, and Jeff Flake, have we been able to reach out and actually talk to people.

I concur with Otto that we need to act to save the free market today. However, I disagree with her on the reason why we’re in danger. It is not because of infighting or not presenting a united front. It is precisely because we have presented a united front that we’re in trouble. It’s because, with this unequal treaty between our two camps, libertarians have had no voice to combat the social conservatism that is dooming the free market. As long as libertarians are tied to conservatism’s backward social policies and pro-business defense of status quo, we’re not going to make headway with the American people–the same people who will then march blithely into a socialist doom.

If we’re going to save the free market and establish a truly limited government in America, libertarians need to come out from the conservatives’ shadow. We need to end the unequal treaty and emerge as a fully independent brand, on an equal footing. We need to make a case for liberty without caveats. Liberty for all, even those people I might not like so much. Such a consistent stance will win over Americans that the inconsistent conservative one hasn’t. We should no longer tolerate just being patted on the head by conservatives and told to be quiet. We’ve done that for years, and it has not gotten us any more liberty.

Before I conclude, I wish to make two quick points. First, when I speak of fusionism, I am political party–neutral. Specifically, I am Republican Party–neutral. I am focusing on political ideologies, on left and right, not on institutions or parties; to me, the party is a political tool. Having libertarians take over the Republican Party and work within it to effect change may–or may not–be the most effective strategy in politics. I do not know. That’s something for political consultants, campaign strategists, and the talking heads on TV to figure out.

Second, I should point out, lest one thinks that libertarians and conservatives should break permanently and become enemies, that I am not against ad hoc coalitions on certain issues. If there is an issue on which conservatives and libertarians largely agree, we should work together on it. But conversely, if there is something that libertarians and liberals agree on, we should work with together with them on it. Previously, this was anathema. Libertarians were never to work with “the other side,” even though we shared much in common with it. But this shortchanges us and hampers the cause of liberty by denying another avenue we can use to promote it. We should and must become political opportunists, working with anyone who agrees with us on the issue of the day. We will never agree with all the people all the time, but we do agree with some of the people most of the time–it just depends on who those “some” are.

Fusionism has long been presented as an equal alliance between partners, one that is strong and necessary to advance freedom. But it has not been equal, and it has not advanced freedom. The way forward seems clear to me: libertarians must stand on their own. Only by presenting an independent, consistent vision of liberty will finally win.

The State of the Debate

Mon, 06 May 2013 07:16:00 PDT

Jacqueline Otto

There is a grey area between the well defined conservative and libertarian movements. Those of us building our ideological frameworks between the two have found it becoming increasingly crowded. Even though many of us on the Right describe ourselves as “conservative/libertarian-ish,” when we do we are often viewed as either squishy libertarians or overly hard-nosed conservatives, and we are viewed askance from either side.

It is difficult to articulate the relationship between conservatism and libertarianism and where we in between should fit. Many imagine a sliding scale of political ideologies, with totalitarianism on the far left, anarchy on the far right, and mainstream party positions delicately placed near the center. In this model, libertarianism sits to the right of conservatism, almost as an afterthought. Many political scientists think that separate scales are needed for social and fiscal issues, such as the famous Nolan Chart, which lends a more prominent placement for libertarianism.

These efforts, while helpful to some, are far too rigid for reality. The ideological spectrum, like a watercolor painting of ideas, bleeds around the edges. There are no thick black lines that surround the beliefs of libertarianism and conservatism, or that demarcate where an individual falls. There is plenty of room for variation within this bright spectrum, and the practice of keeping separate encampments for libertarianism and conservatism ignores that we are both camped on the same side of the war of ideas.

Our task would be easier if there were a more generally accepted term for those of us in the philosophical grey areas between conservatism and libertarianism. “Fusionism” has been suggested, with the adherents being “fusionists.” Of course, anything can be “fused,” but in this case we mean the mixing of conservatism and libertarianism.

This endeavor is our ideological inheritance, handed down to us by leaders on the right of the twentieth century—specifically by William F. Buckley. While libertarians do not readily accept Buckley’s leadership because of his rejection of Ayn Rand’s and Murray Rothbard’s unyieldingness, he was a prominent advocate for fusionism. In his beliefs and behavior, he showed that building a winning movement means practicing addition, not subtraction.

Fusionism requires an understanding of where the real ideological schism lies. Conservative commentator Jonah Goldberg defines the real political demarcation as one between those who have learned the lessons of history and those who have not.

The biggest disagreement between conservatives and liberals is about whether or not we stand on the shoulders of giants. Conservatives believe that we do, and that the process of trial and error known as civilization has worked out a lot of errors. Arrogantly, some now fail to appreciate this fact.

In the August/September 2010 edition of Reason magazine, Goldberg notes that “at the intellectual level… economic libertarianism remains largely synonymous with economic conservatism. The Mount Rushmore of libertarian economics—Hayek, Friedman, Mises, Hazlitt, et al—quite simply is the Mount Rushmore of conservative economics.”

I strongly agree with the opinion of Buckley and Goldberg that a long-view strategy for the Right requires a more open relationship between libertarians and conservatives. I understand that this is an argument of utility; such arguments I myself have criticized. However, the survival of the free market is at stake; as we watch the overall trend of my generation veering left, I fear the war for liberty may be lost while we on the right skirmish over degrees of freedom.

However, the differences between libertarians and conservatives are already well defined, and redefining them is not the purpose of this discussion. Instead, what I propose is that the way forward for fusionism is to celebrate the moral superiority of free markets and limited government and do a better job of making those moral arguments to religious conservatives.

This task will not be an easy one, as those who are both religious and libertarian-leaning face strong cultural and ideological headwinds in our religious and political communities.

Religious institutions’ opposition to libertarianism is not new. The debate over Ayn Rand in particular, the high priestess of the Church of Mammon, has been relentless within the faith community. Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism is inherently atheistic, and the debate persists over whether her limited-government and free-market beliefs can be extricated from Objectivism as a whole.

It is not just Rand who bristles the faithful. The entire laissez faire approach to culture problems does not comfort those teaching the social gospel. A religious organization on the left once papered Washington, DC with a warning that “God is Watching,” implying that eternal damnation should be a consideration in the debate over the debt crisis. These religious liberals believe that all people of faith should be on board with their mission of using the government for God’s purposes, and they are actively seeking to win over religious conservatives to their cause as well.

Of course, opposition to fusionism does not just come from religious conservatives. Many libertarians, in the vein of Ayn Rand, believe that religious faith and libertarianism are inherently antithetical. The crux for them seems to be that if you can accept an all-powerful God as the answer to life’s existential questions, it is a natural consequence to accept an all-powerful government as the answer to society’s intrinsic problems.

Those who would consider themselves religious and libertarian find themselves challenged by both associations. But this is wrong on both counts. Unlike Objectivism specifically, there is nothing about libertarianism more broadly that is inherently atheistic. Also, there are very real moral arguments in favor of limited government and free markets that are appealing to most faith traditions. The fact that these arguments are not being made more vigorously is a shame.

While I cannot speak for all religious traditions, I can convey the significance of liberty to a follower of Jesus Christ and briefly outline a moral argument for fusionism.

Even as a lay person, the call to liberty and voluntary service to society are inescapable for Christians. Christianity starts with the individual, celebrates the individual’s inherent dignity and opportunity for salvation, and grows outwardly into community and kingdom. One of the end goals of Christianity is freedom; a consistent theme of the New Testament is that “it is for freedom that Christ has set us free” (Galatians 5:1). As a result, the level of orders of earthly authority flow from individual governance to the authority of the state, with the individual as the highest level of government and the state the lowest.

Christianity is voluntary because social engagement, while an imperative of our Christian faith, is the course by which we develop individual virtue. Any social obligation put forth in the New Testament is voluntary. There are no calls for governments or even church leaders to force servitude, only encouragement to voluntarily serve others. The Apostle Paul said repeatedly, “though I am free and belong to no one, I have made myself a slave to everyone” (1 Corinthians 9:19) and “You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love.” (Galatians 5:13).

Capitalism, defined as free markets and limited government, is then compatible with Christian faith as it heightens personal responsibility in a manner that fosters morality within individuals. The father of free markets, Adam Smith, wrote in The Theory of Moral Sentiments that these morals include honesty, self-discipline, diligence, and trustworthiness.

This is what Jonah Goldberg referenced when he said, “the real threat to America is [Aldous] Huxley’s vision of Brave New World. When government gives people their every desire it creates hollow men, or as [English Christian apologist] C. S. Lewis called them, men without chests.”

The warning of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World is that the government can control people by giving them their every desire and removing from them any private sense of social responsibility. This mirrors what C.S. Lewis wrote in his social commentary The Abolition of Man: “in a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.”

Lewis speaks at length to the consequences of the atrophy of the “chest,” where moral principles including “valour and good faith and justice” are fostered. The building of these virtues is essentially important for Christians, for if our chests become irreversibly emaciated, we will lose our morals and we will lose our identity as free individuals.

These and many other themes in Christianity are echoed in other religious traditions which are very favorable to libertarianism. An example of what fusionism would look like between libertarians and religious conservatives is in the benefits that capitalism affords the poor. Presenting solutions to seek the eradication of poverty is an important place to begin because it is the singular issue which can most effectively deracinate the current political holdings of the religious Left.

The message needs to be clear that good intentions are never enough. Many who are motivated to help the poor are often persuaded to support government antipoverty programs because they are a very visible endeavor. We must not be satisfied with simply making a show of helping the poor. The case needs to be made that while you feel like you are helping the poor, statistics show that the poor might actually be helped.

A study from the Goldwater Institute looked at ten years of Census Bureau data (1990-2000) and compared the change in poverty rates in all 50 states. The results, even adjusted for immigration and economic catastrophe, showed that states with large poverty programs actually increased poverty over that time, whereas the states with the lowest levels of taxation and government spending drastically decreased poverty. The study’s author, Matthew Ladner, sums up the results saying, “although there are doubtlessly some who benefit from high state government spending, the poor do not seem to be among them.”

The study’s proposed solution is to stop passing legislation out of good intentions. Ladner says that “the failure of many government programs to reduce poverty should instill policymakers with a sense of humility. The causes of poverty have proven to be complex, and the ability of government programs to affect them has been limited.”

Indeed, the causes of poverty are complex, which is something that religious conservatives inherently understand. In the Christian tradition, the demographics usually mentioned when discussing the poor are the “widows, the fatherless, and the stranger.” What made these groups poor was their lack of individual rights. Depending on the specific situation, they likely did not have property rights or legal standing. They often did not have the option to enter the job market or the opportunity to be entrepreneurial.

Throughout history, the denial of these rights has resulted in material poverty and defined what it really meant to be poor.

Economist Art Carden, Assistant Professor of Economics at Samford University, often articulates this desire to properly understand and accurately address the problem of poverty. “I want to see poor people made richer,” he has said. “A lot of ways that people go about doing that are wrong. I want to move people past simply meaning well, get them past thinking of benevolence only as hand-outs.”

Carden also recommended reading When Helping Hurts by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert, a book that delves deeply into understanding the complicated nature of poverty.

One of the authors, Brian Fikkert of the Chalmers Center for Economic Development at Covenant College, argues that we are all poor. The Christian argument is that all men have broken relationships with God, with themselves, with others and with creation. The concept of a broken relationship with others is important to the discussion of poverty alleviation.

Another book recommended by Carden is Generous Justice. In it, the well-known Manhattanite Presbyterian pastor Timothy Keller points out that “helping ‘all people’ is not optional, it is a command. We must help, because doing so is key to the healing of our relationship with others.”

For those who are concerned with helping the poor, there is no validation in pursuing policies that on the surface appear to alleviate poverty, but that in the end do not. Anything that delegates the responsibility to help the poor to others or to government programs denies individual responsibility. Our direct help is what builds relationships with others; it is what prevents us from becoming Lewis’ hollow men.

This is best done through market interactions. The system of free markets and limited government not only has the best track record of alleviating poverty, but also of building personal relationships and improving individual virtue.

Large government programs have unfortunately provided a never-ending stream of data that demonstrates that well-intentioned legislation often has negative unintended consequences. We do not get credit for good intentions when we are headed down the path that is paved by them.

Such a path is unacceptable for people of faith, and specifically for religious conservatives. This is an area ripe for potential fusionism between libertarians and religious conservatives. While libertarians may believe in capitalism for different, more Randian reasons, the opportunity to reach out to religious conservatives must not be missed. We need not come to our free market convictions by the same path to agree on the superiority of capitalism.

The role of government in poverty alleviation is an issue that clearly unites and distinguishes conservative and libertarian fusionism from the left. Although I do not presume to know the place for fusionism in all areas (social issues chief among them), I am convinced that there is much more common ground for us to claim. It will be much harder to have this discussion if libertarians and religious conservatives continue down separate paths. By beginning with the issue of the negative effects of big government on the poor, we will clarify and sharpen our nuanced positions. As a result, we will provide solutions that are clearly distinguishable from the status quo.

Many religious liberals are actively marketing to religious conservatives (and in many ways winning them over) by appealing to their faith. If libertarians do not pursue fusionism with religious conservatives, we may find in time that liberals have succeeded in branding liberalism as the only religiously acceptable political ideology.

If that is the case, there would be no coalition on the Right. How then will there be enough of us to defend freedom?

Welcome to the New Cato Unbound

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 18:55:00 PDT

The Editors

Welcome to the newly redesigned Cato Unbound. Here you’ll find all the original content from the first issue up to the current, delivered in a sleek, clean, easy-to-use design.

Some things, of course, are worth keeping – like the in-depth conversations, the challenging topics, and the wide range of invited authors. We hope to bring you many more of those at the new Cato Unbound. We also invite you to join the conversation on Twitter and Facebook.

A Further Response to Raymond J. La Raja

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 10:39:00 PDT

Fred L. Smith Jr.

I’m appreciative that Raymond J. La Raja has written a second commentary on this topic – so I’ll respond (hopefully with greater clarity) to the points he raised in his April 19 comment.

My intent in my original and second posting was not to argue that “business… cease lobbying like they are a business and start advocating like an ideological group.” Rather, I was arguing that in today’s mixed economy (about half private, about half political) business might have neglected profitable entrepreneurial opportunities in the political sphere that are actually wealth-creating rather than wealth-redistributing. I gave one example: the successful effort of the freight rail sector to gain economic liberalization.

That effort was in one sense incremental. Freight rail is but one element within the transportation sector and an even smaller element of the overall economy. However, for the firms involved in this sector, the changes were far from incremental. For the first time in decades, railroads could offer variant price/quality packages — innovations that required great improvements in rail operating efficiencies but that also yielded great value to the automobile and other industries. Many forms of government intervention in the economy (but certainly not all) are sectorial rather than economy-wide. I agree with La Raja that taking on these economy-wide regulations will be far more difficult.

La Raja says that I’ve underestimated “the success of free market promoters,” but I disagree. I do, of course, agree that in the War of Ideas (the debate within the intellectual class) classical liberal ideas have made gains. Rather, as I’ve noted in an another piece, I think Hayek’s point that “ideas have consequences” fails to stress that his analysis applies to bad ideas too. Hayek said little about how ideas become policy. I argue that that narratives must be crafted and disseminated that would legitimize the policies stemming from those ideas to the diverse values of our heterogeneous citizenry. (Thoughts on how this might be achieved are discussed in a paper by The Yale Law School Project on Cultural Cognition.)

To date, I believe that process has been mastered far better by those favoring a larger role for government than by classical liberals. As evidence, I note that for the last 130 years, with some mild and temporary reversals, government has steadily increased its dominance of the economy. The Constitution was (and is) a wonderful document with many checks and balances but it has certainly not proven adequate to restrain the growth of government. So, “stasis” is scarcely the term I’d use to describe the political trends of the last century.

La Raja correctly sees my focus on narratives, narratives, narratives! Democratic market economies require that policies gain a degree of support from the citizenry. They must be seen as morally acceptable as well as economically beneficial. He is right again that too many free market advocates “write with a limited conceptual palette.” This fact is beginning to be realized, as Deidre McCloskey’s work on bourgeois virtues and society shows.

He doubts that a counter-reformation for economic liberty is likely to succeed—a theme he developed in his earlier contribution. We differ on several points, as my last post noted, but revisiting some of those points is perhaps worthwhile.

The Media: La Raja earlier noted that a massive financial investment to liberalize the economy would likely trigger a flurry of media stories and that such an effort would backfire and be seen as an attempt to “buy Congress.” Yes, he’s right, but only if it were done that clumsily (and given the quality of past business and conservative attempts to influence policy it well might be), but the public choice concept of “Baptists and Bootleggers” addresses this point. My claim was that it might be possible to craft an alliance of entrepreneurial businessmen who could exercise their wealth-creating skills more effectively in a liberalized world and intellectuals who would be able to craft narratives that might legitimize such reforms. Those favoring the growth of the state have been successful using such tactics to overcome the status quo. Is it impossible that classical liberals might do the same? Still, the cautions given by La Raja are certainly appropriate.

One minor point: La Raja suggests that voters may or may not be rationally ignorant but certainly are “risk averse.” Markets create “winners and losers.” I would agree in part, but America remains (at least compared to Old Europe) far more optimistic about innovation. There was no significant opposition to freight rail liberalization. Moreover, this favorable view of innovation reflects a more positive view of “creative destruction” and a realization that all innovations introduce new risks but can also reduce older risks. We’re in a risk/risk world, and I do think that Americans are more aware of that reality than La Raja suggests.