A latter-day Fusion … or a war in the soul

My thanks go to Michael R for a link to a Lew Rockwell article written last month by Ira Katz.  Michael wanted in particular to point out a quote in the article by Ortega y Gasset from his classic of 1930, The Revolt of the Masses.

It is not that one ought not to do just what one pleases; it is simply that one cannot do other than what each of us has to do, has to be.  The only way out is to refuse to do what has to be done, but this does not set us free to do something else just because it pleases us.  In this matter we only posses a negative freedom of will.

Without commandments, obliging us to live after a certain fashion, our existence is that of the “unemployed”.  This is the terrible spiritual situation in which the best youth of the world finds itself today.  By dint of feeling itself free, exempt from restrictions, it feels itself empty.  An “unemployed” existence is a worse negation of life than death itself.  Because to live means to have something definite to do – a mission to fulfill – and in the measure in which we avoid setting our life to something, we make it empty.

This was Katz’s opening shot in a bid to reconcile libertarianism and Conservatism, somewhat akin to Frank Meyer’s Fusionism of the 1950’s and 60’s.

Katz’s thesis is perfectly straightforward.  The libertarian in him has to accept that freedom must have limits or life is bestial.  The Conservative has to accept that the State – basically, Federal Government welfare in Katz’s terms - is productive of nothing but ill.  Thus limits to freedom would be conserved by giving autonomy under constitutional law to “smaller jurisdictions”, meaning families, voluntary organizations, towns and states.  He might mean individuals, too but he does not specifically say so.  Anyway, that’s the deal.

In fact, beyond laying out the respective arguments for limits on freedom and local autonomy he doesn’t go into any particulars at all.  And it’s in the first bit of detail that the devil lies.

In Katzworld, that which is given (one’s kin, ethnicity and ethnic ties, for example) and that which is consciously selected (the modus operandum of local and personal autonomy) remain unresolved

and fatally contradictory

.  Contradiction it is which kills the Katz.  For example, in recognition of the need to limit freedom Katz quotes Edmund Burke who famously said:-

Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites, – in proportion as their love to justice is above their rapacity, – in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption …”  Etc, etc - I’m sure you know the rest.

But in fact, Burke’s abiding interest and his goal for government was the rule of law and the preservation of a stable social order.  Nothing mattered more to him.  Yet Katz goes on to claim, “Instability of society, in fact of civilization itself, is due to the pernicious nature of the power of central government that increases as knowledge of the individual decreases.”  And he quotes the redoubtable Hans-Hermann Hoppe: “… what should be clear by now is that most if not all of the moral degeneration and cultural decline – the signs of de-civilization – all around us are the inescapable and unavoidable results of the welfare state and its core institutions …”

Now, Katz is in trouble.  He is rowing full on the crest of the second-wave of libertarian anti-statism, citing force and authority, even claiming that “the limits on personal freedom imposed by society have been under constant attack by government since at least the Lincoln administration …”

So he opposes the state for attacking the limits on freedom that, presumeably, must also be protected against too much libertarianism.  Which is interesting.  Whatever may be said against Too Much Libertarianism it isn’t that it replicates the worst effects of the state.  Furthermore, Katz supports his case for non-governmentally imposed limits to freedom with Burke, a conviction politician with regard to government force in the service of social stability. 

And this is supposed to be a fusion.

Well, it’s a mess.  And it’s a mess because libertarianism is right-liberalism … full stop.  We have ample proof in the sad declension of British Conservatism since 1832 that Conservatism absolutely cannot co-habit with liberalism.  The attempt is bound to fail because Conservatism is NOT a limit on freedom.  Freedom is a limit of a certain kind on Conservatism, and has always been so.  Therefore Conservatives like Burke treat freedom with caution.  They seek to embed it within social stability, which is that natural personal, familial and communal bond of right behaviour which all Conservatives instinctively admire and all liberals instinctively despise.

Let’s return to that quote from Ortega y Gasset.  He is speaking of the limit of human will.  He is speaking of the mechanicity of human consciousness: “… it is simply that one cannot do other than what each of us has to do, has to be.”  He is telling us that we are not strong candidates for autonomy, as liberals of all stripes imagine themselves to be.  A direct attempt at living free, being anti-natural, leads only to emptiness, he says.  And we see enough of that about us today to know him to be right.

Ira Katz will never solve the riddle he has set himself.  Of course, he could give it up and try to better understand the only alternative to liberalism that there is.  He is half-way there already.

Posted by Guessedworker on Tuesday, April 19, 2005 at 06:03 PM in Libertarianism
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