On Libertarianism and the Benedict Option

An interesting discussion of conservatism, libertarianism, and fusionism has been raging of late, and I suppose I ought to weigh in before it runs its course. First, though, read Rod, James, Will, and Lee. Done? Okay, then. Now buckle up.

Here’s the critical observation that gets things going (from Rod):

… the political problem for conservatives like me is that we live in a pluralist democracy where there is and cannot be more than superficial agreement on moral values. How do we integrate ourselves into the pluralist framework? It has been fairly easy for as long as this country has existed, because Christian morals, broadly speaking, have held sway in the public square. But that’s rapidly changing, and conservative/traditionalist Christians are now and going to be a diminishing minority in this country. John Schwenkler, I believe, has suggested that libertarianism is the best hope for traditionalists, insofar as it is compatible with the American framework, and allows trads of all sorts a relative amount of space in which to live out their convictions in community.

Bottom line, though: the Benedict Option is looking to be the only viable solution to a truly conservative/traditionalist social order. If that can only exist in America within a libertarian meta-order, then perhaps we should explore the possibilities of a new fusionism.

This is indeed the sort of thing I think, and I’m grateful to Rod for articulating it so clearly, though in point of fact I’m a bit less inclined than he is to put a lot of weight on the notion that the situation now is much different than it was in the “old days”: even if Americans’ attitudes toward, e.g., sexual mores were significantly different (and more Christian) fifty or a hundred or two hundred years ago than they are now, there were still plenty of other aspects of American culture – e.g. attitudes toward wealth and acquisitiveness; our history of war, slavery, and exploitation; our rootlessness and sense of exceptionalism; etc. – that seem to me to make the Benedict Option a perennially compelling alternative, and not just one that got important when the clock hit 1960. Indeed, it’s worth remarking that it was exactly this kind of spirit – that of the religious minority seeking out a place where faith could be practiced without persecution from government or the broader culture – that led to the settling and founding of America in the first place: the tendency to turn to liberty as a guarantor for community (a libertarian-communitarianism, as I mysteriously put it on my Facebook profile) is, then, about as American as apple pie arugula.

So far, so good. But where from here? Well, for one thing I don’t fully understand what James is getting at when he says this:

… both Benedictinism and libertarianism are fairly anti-political worldviews. Any fusion between them would deepen and widen the disconnect between Americans, their citizenship, and their governments. And note! I don’t just say “their government.” Let’s not kid: Neobenedictines and libertarians can look to a bright cultural future, I wager. But precisely because their successes have been, and will be, so anti-political, they’ll have almost no effect on the size and scope of federal government. And if they see fit to neglect state politics, too, we can all probably say a final goodbye to federalism. Any politically-minded conservative — and I think conservatives of all types need to recognize that we can’t get rid of politics — will probably be troubled by all that.

“Anti-political”? First off, we should note well that the task of agitating for liberty is in a great many cases a very political one: while it might not center on, e.g., tuning in regularly to the canned speechifying of our presidential candidates, there are still plenty of bad laws to be chafed against, and good ones to be proposed in their place. Have libertarians really not had any significant effects on our various governments’ sizes and scopes? Surely they have – and while the roster of genuine libertarian triumphs may be somewhat limited, the reasons for that have surely got more to do with the relative smallness of the libertarian clan and the hugeness of the powers they’re aligned against than with a “neglect” of politics at the federal or state levels. But even on issues like drug legalization and eminent domain, where real legislative or judicial successes have been few and far between, libertarians have helped to shape the public discourse in a way that makes a brighter future seem possible. If that kind of work isn’t political, then I don’t know what is.

The same seems to go for, e.g., the success of neo-Benedictine homeschoolers – many of whom were, you may recall, crazy lefties with no particular religious affiliation – in getting the government out of their living rooms: there were court cases to be won here, and pieces of legislation to be passed, and if making space in the American educational “system” for parents and children who’d rather opt out isn’t a political task, then once again I’m not sure what conception of the political we’re working with here. Do certain political issues seem trite and irrelevant when you regard your primary work as that of protecting your own against the surging barbarians? Surely – but then again nearly everyone selects only a handful of political concerns out of the many that are there for the taking up. That my central preoccupations may have more to do with backyard gardening than the USDA doesn’t show that they’re anti-political; it just shows the level at which I’d rather have my politics operate. Which of course has consequences for how I view the USDA in turn …

This brings me to another point, which is that there’s quite a lot more that deserves to fall under the umbrella of the “political” than the things that pertain directly to elections or policy debates at the federal or state (or even county or local) levels. The family, for one thing, is a political unit, as are churches and schools and neighborhood organizations and sports teams and grocery co-ops. Indeed, as I have argued at length before, even the way we eat is essentially shot through with genuine political significance, and it remains so even if we insist – as I think we should – that we’d rather not have the state meddling in our food system, thank you very much. That we have a tendency to regard as political only things that involve voting or formal debate among legislators is, I think, a great misfortune: and it is a central goal of the Benedict Option to provide a corrective to that.

Which brings me to Will:

Don’t get me wrong, a new fusionism of neo-Benedictines and libertarians could acheive [sic] a great deal in the short term. I merely wish to caution us against the idea that they are philosophically compatible in the long run given the vast difference between their conception of the relationship between the individual and the state. On my reading, neo-Benedictines hold that individuals should regard themselves primarily as members of political communities, properly understood, even if the communities themselves should not regard their members primarily as subjects of political communities. A ‘hard’ libertarian cannot and will not accept that proposition.

Yes. But isn’t the upshot of this just that “hard” libertarians and neo-Benedictine communitarians will tend to form different sorts of (sub-state and -national) political communities, which of course will be unproblematic so long as each is willing to respect the overarching “soft” libertarianism under which both camps have agreed to coexist? Hence while a certain sort of libertarian might be committed to providing free sex, drugs, and Darwin for all while a certain sort of neo-Benedictine might want to eliminate all those things outright, the crucial thing that makes fusion possible is that each allows the other to put those preferences into effect so long as such efforts refrain from employing, in a certain way that admittedly demands quite a lot of further specification, the coercive hand of the state. And this is why you have, for example, things like the remarkable spectacle of libertarians being among the strongest critics of the Texas government in the FLDS fiasco: the hard libertarians get Vegas, the Biblical literalists get their Darwin-denying grade schools, and the rest of us get various things in between. (In America, though, everyone gets their guns.) Philosophical incompatibility on the micro-level doesn’t entail the possibility of every a very long-term fusion at the macro.

It goes without saying that I’m skating very unsystematically over quite a lot of crucial territory here, and in another context I’d like to go more deeply into Lee’s observation about the unfortunately frequent use of “community autonomy” as an excuse for outright oppression. (Short take: the extent to which this is a real problem in any particular case depends on how oppressive the oppression is.) I’d also like to second Lee’s caution against demanding overly “thick” conceptions of the good* – but that just goes to show that I’m not, if you will, a hard neo-Benedictine, and so wise as it may be as a call to philosophical humility it’s not something that I’m prepared to force on anyone other than my kids. I remain hopeful, though, for the prospects of this new new new fusionism, and am glad as always to be a part of the conversation.

* Note well that the “hard” libertarian’s vision of near-absolute freedom as the highest good is itself a thick conception if ever there was one.

Filed under: conservatism, family, government/law, morality, politics, religion