The Glade 4.0

One of the most robust finding in political psychology is that liberals tend to explain both poverty and wealth in terms of luck and the influence of social forces while conservatives tend to explain poverty and wealth in terms of effort and individual initiative....What about libertarians? According to Jonathan Haidt and his colleagues, their patterns of moral sentiment and judgment make libertarians look a lot like liberals who care a great deal about liberty and not very much for suffering. Like liberals, libertarians don't put very much emphasis on what Haidt calls the "binding foundations" of the moral sense--obedience to authority, in-group loyalty, and a sensitivity to moralized purity and disgust--which play a large role in conservative moral sentiment and judgment. This makes libertarians look like a lot like especially freedom-loving liberals with slightly hard hearts.

But, having lived most of my adult life among them, experience tells me that when it comes to the explanation of poverty and wealth libertarians are close cousins to conservatives. It's my view that this shared sense of robust agency and individual responsibility for success and failure is the psychological linchpin of "fusionism"--that this commonality in disposition has made the long-time alliance between conservatives and libertarians possible, despite the fact that libertarians are almost identical to liberals in their unconcern for the conservative binding foundations. That's why controversial "social issues" like abortion and gay marriage are generally pushed to the side when libertarians and conservatives get together. As long as they stick to complaining about handouts for poor people sitting on their asses and praising rich people working hard to make civilization possible, libertarians and conservatives get along fine.

*snip*

I find all of this especially interesting because my own drift from right-leaning libertarian to libertarian-leaning liberal has a lot to do with issues around the conditions for robust agency and the role of broad socio-economic forces in establishing those conditions, or not. I've come to accept, for example, that diffuse cultural forces, such as racism or sexism or nationalism or intergenerational poverty, can deprive an individual of her rightful liberty without any single person doing anything to violate her basic rights. This takes me a long way toward standard liberalism. But I find that my gut nevertheless leans right on issues of personal responsibility.

I agree that many people are in dire straits and suffering for absolutely no fault of their own, and that policies ought to be in place to provide meaningful material assistance. Still, I find I want an ethos of effort and individual responsibility to prevail, and I continue to think people who chose their way into trouble need to be told exactly what Welch seems to be telling the OWS folk: we're not going to feel too sorry for you if you made some bad decisions about taking out mortgages and/or student loans, even if everybody you knew was making them too.

In plenty of circumstances in which people are suffering due to no fault of their own, I think they need both material assistance and the conviction that they can improve their lives if they really try. And this is why I have a hard time seeing eye to eye with some progressives. Progressives are sincerely inclined to impersonal, socio-cultural explanations of success and failure, but I think they're also generally of the opinion that an ethos of initiative, hard work, and individual responsibility will impede the political will to offer assistance to those who ought to get it. I'm not sure that they're wrong. After all, those who tend to oppose progressive transfers tend to do so partly on the basis of their disbelief in the faultlessness of the needy. In any case, it seems to me progressives' deep-seated opposition to victim-blaming and by-the-bootstraps perorations helps keep a lot of suffering people from getting the other, non-material part of what they really need: encouragement to meet the social expectation that they will continue supplying effort on their own behalf, even if that hasn't worked out well so far.

*snip*

...And I don't mean to say that acknowledging the power of impersonal social forces over our fates amounts to a commitment to determinism, or skepticism about the importance of trying hard and taking responsibility for yourself. But I think there is some reason to believe that even if our efforts are in fact largely swamped by impersonal forces much larger than we are, it's better not to believe it in our own case, or to try to make other people believe it.

*snip*

...A politics of nothing but individual rights in a world dominated by social forces is a recipe for domination by those sufficiently powerful or organized to shape those forces. I think libertarians and conservatives ought to take this line of thinking more seriously, just as progressives ought to take seriously the possible anti-social, demoralizing effects of a culture too quick to absolve individuals of responsibility for their choices.

I agree that many people are in dire straits and suffering for absolutely no fault of their own, and that policies ought to be in place to provide meaningful material assistance. Still, I find I want an ethos of effort and individual responsibility to prevail

And therein, as The Bard would say, lies the rub. How do you take from people without trivializing effort and how do you give to people without trivializing effort and individual responsibility? If you force charity, then the impression exists that charity will always be there and it becomes a "right."

We my view of it is enlightened self interest.

I don't want to be hassled by pan handlers at intersections, or robbed by people who are desperate and this is all they have figured out to survive. That to me is the cost of civilization and in general it's one I play gladly.

We my view of it is enlightened self interest.

I don't want to be hassled by pan handlers at intersections, or robbed by people who are desperate and this is all they have figured out to survive. That to me is the cost of civilization and in general it's one I play gladly.

Give me 1000 dollars.

Then be a pragmatic user of private charity - its more efficient in delivering goods and services to the needy and thus it will cost you less to meet your goal.

I agree that many people are in dire straits and suffering for absolutely no fault of their own, and that policies ought to be in place to provide meaningful material assistance.

Prove to me that you need it.

We my view of it is enlightened self interest.

I don't want to be hassled by pan handlers at intersections, or robbed by people who are desperate and this is all they have figured out to survive. That to me is the cost of civilization and in general it's one I play gladly.

Why must people make up labels ad infinitum?

Why must people make up labels ad infinitum? Mr. Wilkinson (and apparently yourself, RD) can't seem to show consistency when discussing the labels he chooses for others and himslef. Consevatives, Liberals, Progressives, Libertarians, right-leaning libertarian, libertarian-leaning liberal, conservative-like, standard liberalism...where does it end? It seems to me that using ill-defined, broadly misunderstood descriptors in an attempt to align one group with another group without giving due credit to the underlying positions of the ideologies is just more verbiage thrown at readers (and editors) in an attempt to further one's own belief system (or justify it).

As for the whole Conservative - Libertarian "fusionism", one must understand that the core of Libertarianism is personal responsibility. A Libertarian understands that in order to be responsible for one's decisions, one must be responsible for making those decisions. Any attempt to seperate "fiscal" and "social" in Libertarianism in order to show any sort of "fusionism" is missing the point. I am responsible for my "social" decisions, as well as my "fiscal" decisions.

What is the underlying principle beneath Liberalism? Progressivism? Conservativism? Until you can answer that it's pointless to continue to subdivide and further subdivide ideologies under the same broad heading simply because certain nuances of an individual (or groups) beliefs don't fit into the predetermined box.

Statements like these:
"This makes libertarians look like a lot like especially freedom-loving liberals with slightly hard heart"
"libertarians look a lot like liberals who care a great deal about liberty and not very much for suffering"
Make me think, "WTF does this guy not understand, or better yet, what does he refuse to understand?"

Being a Libertarian isn't about helping, or not helping others, it's not about "hard hearted-ness" or not caring about "suffering". It's about being personally responsible for your decisions, a person chooses to help others (or not), they aren't forced by others to "help". Much like those reports that Conservatives give more (time and money) to charity than Liberals gives lie to the idea that one group "cares" more than the other, just because others say that "this" is how such and such is "supposed" to act, it don't mean ****.

Libertarians and Conservatives get along better than Libertarians and Liberals because the desire held by Conservatives for a smaller fiscally responsible Gov't fits the Libertarian belief that “A government big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to take away everything you have.” Any Liberal desire that might coincide with Libertarian beliefs is addressed by virtue of personal responsibility, or is actually at odds with Libertarianism.

19 Yet she became more and more promiscuous as she recalled the days of her youth, when she was a prostitute in Egypt. 20 There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses.

Libertarians and Conservatives get along better than Libertarians and Liberals because the desire held by Conservatives for a smaller fiscally responsible Gov't fits the Libertarian belief that “A government big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to take away everything you have.”

Do you ask that of the beggers and panhandlers?