Feeling Thinner

Among modifiers to the descriptor "libertarian," the distinction between "thin" and "thick" libertarians seems to have made itself a permanent part of the vocabulary.

I consider myself a "thin" libertarian (and hey, my weight dipped below 230 pounds recently, so it could happen!), and lately I've ended up in several protracted discussions on the meaning and import of the thin/thick dichotomy with some of the "thick" libertarians I work with at the Center for a Stateless Society. After those discussions, it feels like a worthwhile task to publicly set down my own views on the subject.

Advance disclaimer: These are my own views, and they're actually not meant to be argumentative per se. I understand that words mean things. I also understand that sometimes a word will mean different things to different people and that that's okay. The "marketplace of ideas" tends to result in some definitions becoming more or less popular and having more or less staying power. So this post is really descriptive of what I think and why I think it, and not intended to say that what someone else thinks is wrong.

I'm not going to write a long essay on thickness itself. Charles Johnson (the real Charles Johnson, aka Rad Geek, not that chartreuse sports object guy) has already done so. Instead, what I'm going to do is describe my version of libertarianism, which is very thin, and then explain how I think "thickness" relates to it.

So, plain and simple, I define libertarianism solely in terms of the non-aggression principle. I've seen that principle stated in various forms and formats, but the version enunciated by protagonist John Galt in Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged will do for purposes of this conversation:

Whatever may be open to disagreement, there is one act of evil that may not, the act that no man may commit against others and no man may sanction or forgive. So long as men desire to live together, no man may initiate -- do you hear me? no man may start -- the use of physical force against others.

There are a lot of ways to get to the non-aggression principle (the Wikipedia article above lists six).

There are also reasonable arguments as to how it applies to this or that situation (and the existence of argument and counter-argument on any given application tends to refer to different understandings either of the facts or of underlying definitions/holdings that precede the principle itself).

But when I refer to a "libertarian," I mean someone who either uses the non-aggression principle as the starting point and non-negotiable criterion for analyzing and resolving political (and interpersonal -- see below about that) conflicts and claims (a "pure" or "strict" or "conscientious" libertarian), or someone whose approach to analyzing and resolving such claims tends -- probably asymptotically -- toward non-aggression (someone who, probably viscerally, "leans libertarian" but who for whatever reason is "working the problem backwards").

To me, that's the beginning and end of libertarianism.

But keep in mind, I do not expect libertarianism to answer every question.

The non-aggression principle doesn't tell me whether to prefer vanilla ice cream or pistachio. It doesn't tell me whether homosexuality is just part of the normal range of human behavior or an aberration. It doesn't tell me whether I should take a cosmopolitan attitude toward personal interactions or avoid cocktail parties where I might meet people of other races, religions, etc.

All it tells me is that I don't get to initiate force: I don't get to force you to eat pistachio ice cream, or to buy ice cream for me. I don't get to throw you in jail for being romantically/sexually attracted to the "wrong" sex. I don't get to tell the person throwing the cocktail party that he can't have a mixed guest list of black and white, Protestant or Catholic, etc.

Now, to "thickness."

The first thing I'm going to do is write off "entailment thickness" as not being "thickness" at all. "Entailment thickness" involves opposing the initiation of force even if the entity initiating force is not the state. In my view, "entailment thickness" is just, well, libertarianism. Yes, most libertarians publicly express their support for libertarianism in the realm of politics, but they would also hold that the non-aggression principle prohibits beating your spouse, mugging passersby, etc. As Johnson puts it in the article linked above, "in the end, it is dubious how far thickness in entailment really counts as a form of 'thickness' at all, since at bottom it amounts only to the claim that libertarians really ought to be committed to libertarianism all the time."

The other forms of thickness Johnson describes -- conjunction, application, grounds, strategic and and consequential thickness -- I do not consider to be essential to, or part of the definition of, libertarianism, because they neither follow necessarily from, nor are required by, the non-aggression principle.

Rather I consider such "thicknesses" to be accessories or add-ons to libertarianism. And just like if you are a person, you are a person whether you are wearing a tie-dye, shorts and a beret or a double-breasted suit and homburg, if you are a libertarian you are a libertarian whether or not you adopt any particular "thick" prescriptions at all.

Now, as it happens, I adopt a number of "thick" prescriptions, and those prescriptions happen to mostly match the "thickness" of most of my comrades at C4SS. The difference between us is that they consider their thicknesses to be part of their libertarianism, while I consider my thicknesses to be a collections of things that are compatible with, but do not constitute part of,  my libertarianism.

One reason for that is that "thickness" can go in various directions.

As an example -- which kicked off the latest email round-robin on "thickness" -- check out this essay, copied from Italy's Canada's Ludwig von Mises Institute site (NOT affiliated with the LvMI most Americans are familiar with!) to the author's personal blog.

The essay, whether you agree with its general point or not, is libertarian. That is, it eschews the initiation of force, instead calling for shunning and public disapproval of a behavior. It is a "thick" paleo essay. The author has added his preference for a specific standard of public behavior to his libertarianism. That preference is "conjunction thickness." Johnson again:

[W]e might consider the extent to which there are social or cultural commitments that libertarians ought to adopt because they are worth adopting for their own sakes, independent of libertarian considerations. For example, it may be worthwhile for libertarians to all be kind to their children, because (among other things) being kind to your children is a worthwhile thing to do in its own right. You might call this "thickness in conjunction," since the only relationship it asserts between libertarianism and some other social commitment (here, kindness to children), is that you ought to accept the one (for whatever reason), and also, as it happens, you ought to accept the other (for reasons that are independent of libertarianism).

The author of the piece would prefer, for principled but not specifically libertarian reasons, to live in a society where Miley Cyrus doesn't "twerk" Robin Thicke in public. He thinks that the whole incident was sick and wrong. But since the "twerking" wasn't an initiation of force, he doesn't seek to e.g. put Cyrus in stocks and have a letter branded on her forehead; that would be anti-libertarian. Instead, he recommends that she be "slut-shamed" and "shunned."

There are "thick libertarians" of other stripes who, for principled but not specifically libertarian reasons, oppose "slut-shaming," and probably some who actively approve of Cyrus's performance. Those "thick libertarians" are libertarians because they oppose initiating force against Cyrus, not because they oppose shaming or shunning her, or because they think "twerking" is cool.

I have my own thoughts on Miley Cyrus and "twerking," but don't feel the need to share them. My purpose in bringing up the incident and the blog post is to illustrate that different kinds of "thicknesses" produce radically different opinions ... but that the people expressing such "thicknesses" can all be libertarians.

One analogy I used in the email discussion was to cattle. Libertarians displaying different kinds of "thickness" are not, in my opinion, analogous to different breeds of cattle -- Hereford, Angus, etc. Rather they are analogous to a cow wearing a tricorn hat, a cow wearing a tutu, and so forth. That is, their thicknesses are optional  and variable characteristics which have no bearing at all on the cows' identities as cattle.

Among my interlocutors/debate counterparts on this whole thing are Professor Roderick Long, head of the Molinari Institute/C4SS. I have not reproduced his arguments in this piece for two reasons: First, the post is getting too long, and second, I am not sure I grasp his arguments well enough to reproduce them in a way that doesn't distort them. I hope he'll show up to make those arguments in comments.

So anyway, there you have it -- my post on thin vs. thick libertarianism.

Whose Credibility?

Quoth the resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue:

The international community's credibility is on the line. And America's and Congress'[s] credibility is on the line because we give lip service to the notion that these international norms are important ...

Um, no.

Barack Obama put his own credibility, and no one else's (except perhaps that of his subordinates in the administration who are expected to parrot him) on the line when he started flapping his gums about "red lines" and so forth.

He knew, or should have known, damn well (being a former "constitutional law professor") that the power to declare war is vested in Congress, not the president.

He forged the check. Now he's trying to embarrass the real account holders into not stopping payment on it.

I'm Shocked -- Shocked!

That GOP House leaders John Boehner and Eric Cantor are supporting US president Barack Obama's proposal for US military intervention in Syria.

It's easy to figure out why the usual suspects -- John McCain and Lindsay Graham in the Senate being the two most obvious examples -- are all for it. They've never met a Military-Industrial Complex Welfare Act they didn't like.

But in this matter you can count on even those politicians usually most predisposed to fight against anything Obama wants to assume the position and take one for the team.

The team being Congress, of course.

We're coming up on the 40th anniversary of final passage of the War Powers Resolution, over Richard Nixon's veto.

The executive branch's position on the Resolution is that it's an unconstitutional curb on the president's power.

Congress's position should have been that the president doesn't get to go to war without a congressional declaration of war, as clearly called for in the US Constitution. But Congress doesn't like the Constitution much, either, and wants to be able to go to war without calling it war ... but only if they, not the president, say so. Thus the resolution.

For 40 years now, presidents and congresses have played a recurring game of chicken in which Congress always swerves:

A president wants to go to war. He either asks Congress, knowing they will give him what he wants ... or he just goes ahead and does it, knowing they will retroactively approve (or at least grudgingly fund) his adventure rather than take the political risk of trying to impeach him and remove him from office.

This time, the president is trying to fake Congress out -- pledging to ask permission (because he wouldn't want the Brits to out-democracy the US), while simultaneously having the White House push the line that he really doesn't have to ask permission. Which leaves open the possibility that if they say "no," he'll just do it anyway.

So, the GOP's "leaders" are cutting the VW Microbus's wheel hard toward the shoulder and yelling at the back-benchers to shut up and quit shifting their weight toward the center line. Because if Congress says no and Obama goes all Eric Cartman on them, we've got ourselves a "constitutional crisis."

My prediction -- made elsewhere around the blogosphere and repeated here -- is that if the vote looks like it might not go Obama's way, another "incident" will be drummed up which requires "immediate (before Congress can vote) military response," which will create pressure on fence-sitters to "back the president ... the debate must stop at the water's edge ... after all, we're at war here!"

In fact, I'm more than half way convinced that an attempt to create such an incident occurred this morning when Israel "test-fired" a missile in the eastern Mediterranean. Whatever it was, it wasn't a "test" of a missile. It was either a test of Syria's incoming missile detection capabilities (Syria's Russian allies detected the launch; so far as I can tell the Assad regime itself has been silent on whether or not its own forces did), or it was an attempt to goad Assad into a response that could be used a la  the Gulf of Tonkin non-incident.