On cultural libertarianism

What started with a sideline comment by Ross Douhat has quickly expanded, and now, fellow AFF Brainwash contributor Michael Brendan Dougherty and Cato happiness guru Will Wilkinson have also weighed in with responses to my response. Ah, the twisty paths of blogosphere arguments.

Will, in his excellent comment, makes pretty much all the points I would’ve in order to counter Michael’s economic arguments. Globalization and the interdependence through trade creates far more stability than an inwardly focused economy. Technology has been the engine that has exponentially increased the potential for human productivity, allowing faster, cheaper, more available goods to anyone and everyone (goods which, I’ll add, free trade makes even more readily available, eliminating more poverty). China may not be a glittery paradise today, but Thomas Sowell recently published a column in which he quoted undercover economist Tim Harford as saying that “China is lifting a million people a month out of poverty.” While there are still clearly many gains to be made there, this is no small feat. Wealth, trade and prosperity create peace and well-being far better than nationalistic self-centeredness.

Michael lobs a pretty strong bit of rhetoric directly at me, though, on the issue of cultural decline:

Peter says that as a Christian he is concerned about the coarsening of public culture. But is he willing then to do something about it- like regulate pornography? Or even stigmatize the making and buying of it in some way?

The quick answer to this is no. I would prefer to keep any and all content regulations—and other laws fought for on indecency grounds—extremely minimal or non-existent, whether they’re attempting to regulate pornography, video-game violence, offensive stereotypes or annoying liberal tripe. Would I like to stigmatize the purchasing and buying of it? Possibly, but not through any action on the part of the government.

The problem with state-instituted regulations that are designed to uphold some sort of centralized standard of morality is that the state is the worst possible institution one could ask to be a source for moral uplift. As a Christian, I think it’s important to have a secular state, one that neither promotes nor degrades my religion or anyone else’s. Religious freedom is paramount to this country’s success, and the only way to ensure total religious freedom is to have the government stay out of it. All regulations are threats of force, and whether for or against my particular faith, I don’t want the bureaucracy threatening anyone for either holding beliefs or acting on them (I’m excepting beliefs that might require one to engage in violence, of course).

The consequence of having a state that’s a necessarily secular institution is that the state can’t and shouldn’t take sides in religious, moral debates. Moreover, the state, as conservative smoking-rights defenders the world over will join in a chorus to sing, isn’t supposed to protect us from risk; instead, government is supposed to enable human choice and physical safety—and not a lot else. So even if we agree that looking at pornography is a risky behavior, it’s not the state’s job to stop individuals from doing it.

The only way to regulate bad choices is to give the state oodles of power—power which will manifest itself as a threat—that will eventually backfire on those who initially sought to use it.

The way I see it, the state’s ever-growing power has coincided with the rise of secularism. This is to be expected from a necessarily secular state, but the way to fight it isn’t to try to turn the government into a wing of the church. Instead, the church and other social organizations need to realize that as long as people see the government—with its regulations, programs and redistributionary ways—as a tool to fix social problems, their influence will continue to diminish. Why turn elsewhere when the state will fix everything?

The goal, then, ought to be to get the government out of the way, restore the role of privately-funded institutions—whether they’re churches, think tanks, whatever—and dismiss the idea that lack of regulation is the cause for any moral failings in our society.