Daniel Underwood
Anybody catch Daniel's column last Friday in the technician? I ran into Daniel the other day, and we shared emails. I sent him the following plug and clarification of the whole liberal conservative labelling issue. It runs as follows and provides some insight into my screen name and blog title.
I've got a book (short, 130 pgs. written at a 6th grade reading level) for you called "Are You Liberal, Conservative, or Confused?" by Richard Maybury. www.bluestockingpress.com, but I'll lend you mine, if you like.
A few selections in response to Friday's column:
Liberals believe you should have privacy in your social conduct, but not in your economic conduct. Conservatives grant privacy in your economic conduct but not in your social conduct. Thr right wants to use force to stamp out immorality. The left wants to use it to stamp out inequality of wealth. A Moderate compromises. Borrowing from both left and right, he wishes to control both your economic conduct and your social conduct. Moderates will allow you more economic freedom than liberals and more social freedom than conservatives but they want to keep a close eye on both areas. They don't like privacy. Both Republicans and Democrats are closer to Moderates than either extreme Liberals (socialists), or extreme Conservatives (fascists). This is where they perceive the bulk of the votes to be. The other Middle View is Juris Naturalism. Juris Naturalists are the opposite of Moderates, they combine the left's desire for liberty in social affairs and the right's desire for liberty in economic affairs. Juris naturalism never is found on the Left to Right spectrum of political ideals. This is because the spectrum contains no place for it. From far left to far right its all statist. Juris naturalists are terrified of political power, and consider it the most evil drug ever discovered.
Nathan
posted by Nathanael D Snow @ 10:55 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
Right. Juris Naturalism is very close to Libertarianism. Maybury (and I) prefer not to use this term because it is too often misused by people who don't understand it, and it is too similar to other well known labels that refer to something different: Liberalism, and Civil Libertarianism. (CL's may not believe in property rights.)
Finally, I personally shy away from the Libertarian label because it is godless. JN believes in common law because it most closely reflects Natural Law, which is considered to be a Higher Law. The Libertarian approaches I have observed do not employ legal philosophy enough but tend to emphasize economic arguements. The weakness here is that economic philosophies are intricately dependant upon legal and ethical frameworks. Libertarians do not agree with each other enough about these to form strong policies.
It's like reading Epstein and Rand and saying that since their conclusions are the same about property rights we can just start there and develop our economic philosophy. The epistimology is too important to neglect and has unintended consequences. I think Hayek's epistimology is off and has ethical consequences I can't ascribe to.
This may be a senior thesis, and I am eager to delve into the ramifications more, but I would say that any economic philosophy dependant upon Kantian epistimology is unworkable, and unnecessary for ariving at the proper protections of liberty.
Nathan
The Nolan Chart is excellent. I had never heard it called that, and perhaps Maybury owes Nolan some credit, because he uses the rhomboid version of this diagram in his book.
Also JN would tend to be more dovish while I find Libertarianism to be protectionist and hawkish.
Nathan
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