Economy, morality, libertarianism, part more.

Much thanks to Ross for his kind words about my film writing, although recognition for good conservative movie blogging is probably akin to being noted as one of the hottest female players at a Dungeons and Dragons tournament—it's not exactly a high competition field.

Before I respond to the rest of his post, I’ll also say that my comments were primarily aimed at Franke-Ruta; I dragged Ross in to show that smart, sensible conservatives could also be found paying lip service to the idea that, like matches, playing with economic libertarianism can be dangerous.

In many ways, I think Ross and I agree (which is not all that surprising, actually). He starts by saying that “Economic growth is good for society, and economic stagnation is bad, and the best ticket to economic growth is a reasonably libertarian economic system.” So far so good (although my version of the statement might excise the word “reasonably”).

But I do have some quibbles. He makes the argument that libertarian trends like globalization have been better for higher-skilled Americans than lower-skilled, and that wages have fallen for those without college degrees. There’s no debating either of these points as fact, but I think they still miss the larger point, which is that low-skilled workers may have been helped less than the higher-skilled, but they’re still generally better off.

More importantly, economic liberalization (free markets) has helped more people become higher-skilled, and indeed, education (and the higher-skill levels it brings) has become increasingly available and attainable. Higher education has, over the past century, gone from being a extreme rarity to an upper middle class luxury to a mass market phenomenon—and much of its increased availability can be attributed to economic growth. The wealthier a country, the more likely it is to be generally well educated.

Ross’s comments about happiness indicators don’t do much for me either. As one of his commenters noted, Will Wilkinson suggests here that the increase in these indicators from mental health pros is probably due primarily to a change in classification standards, and I don’t put much faith in anyone’s ability to accurately judge, must less their willingness to truthfully respond to a poll about, their own personal happiness level. It’s absurdly subjective.

As for Friedman’s benefits, of which—except for “tolerance”—Ross doesn’t see much evidence, I think the availability of education and the desire of so many to immigrate to the U.S.—even at great personal cost—speaks to our provision of opportunity, and the rise in our country’s general standard of living has done a great deal of providing for the disadvantaged. And public institutions, whether it’s the Wednesday morning meeting conservative establishment, free market think tanks, the environmentalists or the evangelicals and the megachurch phenomenon, have certainly become more solidified, prominent players in the debate about our national direction.

Like Ross, I’m a Christian, and I find the coarsening of culture somewhat disturbing. However, it seems to me that a society in which government is given more power to push and prod the prevailing social mores, or attempts to influence them indirectly through economic means, is one that will inevitably end up having its culture shoved in the wrong direction by the please-everyone, offend-no one muddle of bureaucracy. The government, as an entity that must remain secular, simply isn’t the right institution to decide upon or enforce universal social mores, because it will inevitably get them wrong. This means that if Ross is worried about the “pornographication of the public square,” a more libertarian approach that lets those aforementioned institutions—churches, policy groups and other private organizations and individuals—work without government intervention is really the better way to raise our cultural standards.