I think that the trick is that a lot of the right-wingers/conservatives want the initial position to be ‘these things are wrong, but we won’t ban them due to freedom of ….”. The reason is that it’s then conceded that those things are wrong. This puts the right-wingers in a better position to push banning/restricting/regulating them.

When some (if not many, if not the majority) of libertarians say ‘these things are *not* bad’, then the right-wingers have a problem – to the extent that they want to set up for banning them.

As far as the same-sex marriage, pornography, etc. they have to be, as you say, “objectionably wrong”, in order for them to be regulated according to a Hayekian model of libertarianism. They are not. Hence forthââ?¬Â¦

But then again, you guys are the scholars, I’m just a chump. So I concede.

For now, I’d like to address the last response by Mr. Feser. I wonder if it is at all fair to say that regulating something like same-sex marriage could be believed to be regulated by those who take Hayek seriously because they believe such things have social consequences when, as far as I understand (and I’m no Hayek scholar, so I am perfectly willing to be corrected), there is no way to actually make a reasonable case for this without violating Hayek’s epistemic rules for what counts as good reasons. In other words, it doesn’t seem to be the case that I can just say “I think wearing hats in public is disgusting and corrupts youth, therefore I can be a Hayekian who is against wearing hats in public.” And it seems that I cannot say this because any justification for my belief that I give cannot really be accepted by a Hayekian as a reason that counts. Am I incorrect on this view? Thanks for your attention, both of you.

Steven Maloney

I apologize in advance for the length of this reply — I’m afraid it couldn’t be helped given that you “manage to say something badly wrong about once per paragraph.”

Re: the remark you find “truly weird,” you have simply ignored the context in which it was made, which was a discussion about whether fusionists of the Meyer sort are right to think that libertarianism is, not only compatible with, but positively conducive to and maybe even required for, a society that fosters moral virtue (as traditional moralists would understand it). In other words, the question I was addressing was whether there is, as some fusionists claim, a natural moral and philosophical harmony between libertarian politics and moral conservatism, not merely grounds for a contingent political alliance. And seen in this light, it is surely relevant to ask whether this or that version of libertarianism is really compatible with moral conservatism.

Re: the consigning of traditionalist views to a cultural ghetto, what I have in mind — as, again, should be obvious from the context — is the attitude evinced by some libertarians (some but not all, as I acknowledged in my article) that free markets, limited government, and the other elements of libertarian political philosophy naturally go hand in hand with a more relaxed attitude about traditional morality, and in particular that capitalism is good because it inevitably makes us more cosmopolitan, socially tolerant, skeptical about authority, etc. If this view is correct, then obviously a traditionalist would have reason to worry about capitalism. And the point is not to determine whether this view is in fact correct, or whether it would be good or bad if it were, but rather to illustrate that one common argument for fusionism (in the sense of the belief that there is a deep philosophical harmony between libertarian political philosophy and conservative moralism) is too facile.

Re: the stuff about whether the choice for virtue should be inordinately difficult, I think you’ve missed the entire point of the argument, and again because you simply ignore the context. Some fusionists argue for their position on the grounds that (a) they think moral virtue, as traditionalists understand it, is a good thing and should be fostered, and (b) they also think that libertarian institutions, including a completely free market, are the best means to realize this end. My point is that this is superficial insofar as it fails to address the question of whether market trends might in some cases positively undermine virtue. So, suppose a fusionist thinks we ought to confine sex to marriage, but suppose also that deregulation of the airwaves, easily accessible pornography, etc. entail as a matter of empirical fact a society in which relatively few people will choose to confine sex to marriage. Then the fusionist has a problem on his hands if his main case for fusionism is that the market fosters virtue. The point, to be clear, isn’t to argue for this or that regulation, but, again, just to criticize a certain superficial argument for fusionism.

Re: my being either “deliberately disingenuous or almost unfathomably obtuse” vis-a-vis Hayek’s rejection of the label “libertarian,” two points:

(a) Once again ignoring the context, you fail to note that I say he rejected the “libertarian” label only to go on immediately to show that there is nevertheless a clear sense in which he was enough of a “libertarian” to make his position a plausible way of grounding fusionism. In other words, I wasn’t saying “Hayek wasn’t a libertarian of any sort — see, he rejects the label!” Quite to the contrary, I was saying “Even though he rejected the label, there is a relevant sense in which he might be considered a libertarian.”

(b) In the Companion, I explicitly acknowledge the reasons you cite for why Hayek rejected the “libertarian” label (see p. 11, note 7) (though I also note there that by itself, the fact that his rejection was based on the artificiality of the term hardly shows that Hayek’s position really was “libertarian” in the imprecise popular sense of entailing a rejection of moral conservatism).

Re: the “panglossian” charge, this is a rather tiresome canard. I have never said, and would never say, that Hayek thought, or that a Hayekian view entails, that the products of cultural evolution are always beneficial and should never be challenged. I have addressed all this in detail in my essay “Hayek on Tradition,” which appeared in the JLS a few years back.

Re: the passage you quote from CL, I might well ask whether you’ve read it yourself, since for my part I cannot see anything there that “_entails_ the decriminalization of so-called ‘victimless crimes’ like drug use and prostitution.” You might think this is hair-splitting, but if so that would only be more evidence of your failure to interpret my remarks in context. Most people — including most libertarians — think of libertarianism as a view according to which such practices must be decriminalized _as a matter of justice_ (a la Nozick). That, specifically, is the sort of claim I was saying has no grounds in Hayek, and the passage you quote does not show otherwise.

I might also note that absolutely no conservative advocates criminalizing things merely because of “the bare fact that an action is disliked by some of those who learn about it.” In particular, traditionalists who think pornography should be regulated, that same-sex marriage should not be legalized, etc. think both that these things are objectively wrong and that they have or would have bad social consequences. And whether or not they are right to think this, there is nothing in such claims that conflicts with what Hayek says in that passage. If Hayek’s defense of property and liberty is compatible with a social safety net, limited government regulation of business, etc., then it is hardly plausible to say that his defense of a private sphere of liberty _absolutely rules out_ (as other libertarian theories would) the regulation of pornography, prohibition of same-sex marriage, etc.