Principles and Outcomes

Reihan takes issue with my suggestion that some of the younger libertarian writers offer what what he desires from “disputatious” and “intellectually curious and un-partisan” critiques of the right:

Because the critics Suderman names are, as far as I can tell, broadly satisfied with Cato-style libertarianism as a political doctrine (they're not Rothbardians, that is), they're not exactly renegades. And that's not a bad thing. Still, I think Peter missed my admittedly obscure point.

It may be that I misunderstood Reihan’s (probably half rhetorical) question: “Can you think of many conservative opinionistas as open to persuasion and as intellectually curious and as un-partisan as my co-blogger [Ross Douthat]?” But I’m not one hundred percent sure that Reihan, whose thoughts move at speeds that make lightning jealous and who has more interesting ideas before Sunday brunch than I have in most weeks, knows exactly what he meant either. Considering his rather high ratio of ideas to minutes, this is perfectly understandable. But let me explain.

It’s certainly true that none of the writers I mentioned (Wilkinson, Sanchez, Balko) feel the need to part too much from the Cato-libertarian line. Seeing as all three either are or were employees there, this is to be expected. But to call their libertarian identification “partisan” in our two-party system is, I think, a bit of a misstep. The libertarian center may be a relatively sizable force (though I suspect that generalized small government ideals fade significantly the further one wades into the specific politics of many individuals with vague libertarian leanings), but it is hardly a stable or poll-significant party. For all the subdivisions on both sides, ours is still unequivocally a two party system, and as a general rule, more of the Cato-style libertarian intellectuals choose to side with the conservatives and Republicans. These gentleman may not be renegades from their subgroup, but they’re somewhat aligned with the right, and they offer a critique that meets his standards: "conservative opinionistas" who are certainly "disputatious," "intellectually curious and un-partisan,"--in other words, smart guys willing to take a stand and who're not slaves to the Republican party line.

Maybe what Reihan is asking for is someone who is a known conservative, is aligned, at least tacitly, with the Republicans, and yet is willing to differ for principle or outcome. But differ with who? There’s no shortage of notable conservatives fed up with Republican Party shenanigans; Bush and Congress have been given stern warnings or worse by any number of prominent writers on the right. Un-partisan, I would think, is largely about being ideology based rather than party based: Power Line is a Republican blog; National Review is a conservative magazine. Maybe Reihan wants a conservative who parts ways, at times, with other ideological conservatives in the name of conservative principle. But I doubt it. There are plenty of conservatives who argue about ideology and how it ought to be applied: witness John Derbyshire vs. Ramesh Ponnuru, just as the easy example. But Riehan knows this, and it doesn’t satisfy him.

It seems to me, then, that what he’s thinking of is someone who calls himself a conservative, has some goals that might be arguably conservative in nature, and is willing to depart from the standard conservative toolset to accomplish these goals—forgetting entirely that ideological conservatives are defined as much by how they want to accomplish things as what they want to accomplish. Arguing often for raising taxes and regulating markets, or whatever else he’s thinking of, even in service of allegedly conservative outcomes, would make someone, well, not a conservative, and therefore not really a “conservative opinionista”—at least not until someone manages to redefine conservatism so that it is a set of policy goals rather than broad governing principles. While conservatism may have flirted with this occasionally, being a conservative is still associated strongly with the process by which one accomplishes goals, not just the goals themselves. Of course, if I were betting on any pair of pointy-headed blogging tag-teamers to change this, my first pick would be Ross and Reihan.