Bryan Caplan mentioned that Michael Huemer is notw blogging. For example, Huemer writes,
I think ideology is based on outrage. We like to feel righteous outrage, and we pick our ideology according to the thing we most like to be outraged about. The ideology then tells us that that thing is everywhere.
That is a very TLP-ish statement, of course. Conservatives are outraged by threats to civilization, and they see them everywhere. Progressives are outraged by oppression, and they see it everywhere. etc.
He has this interesting corollary:
How to scam an ideologue: tell them a [false] story that fits their narrative about society and plays into their stereotypes.
Bryan points out that Huemer’s early posts offering tips for debate are pretty sensible–if you assume that people want fair debate. Unfortunately, the TLP-ist view is that is not the game they want to play. Instead, they prefer competing for status within your tribe by portraying the other side as evil.
ITYM “now” blogging.
So . . . libertarians don’t have an ideology? Libertarians don’t get outraged? Libertarians don’t portray people who don’t agree with them – particularly people who just want to limit immigration – as evil?
What libertarians really don’t have is self-awareness.
I don’t think he meant that at all. He just gave two examples and didn’t feel the need to give all three examples.
Go read TLP. Kling explains it. Libertarians are outraged by state coercion of the individual and see it everywhere and tend to view those wanting to expand the government’s coercive power as evil.
Though that may be Old or True Scotsman Libertarians. The new breed seems much friendlier to progressives and less outraged, if at all, by many coercive progressive programs.
Libertarianism does seem to have abandoned liberty as its main driving force. In fact one rarely sees libertarians defend things on liberty based grounds anymore. It’s mostly utilitarian or technocratic grounds.
There was certainly a time when libertarianism had more of a “don’t tread on me” ethos. Now it feels like a lot of “XYZ coercion really isn’t that bad” or “paternalistic nudging is really what people would want if they could use their liberty properly”. You may get a different answer based on different inputs, but it doesn’t seem like a different formula working in the background like in my youth.
Huemer is a particularly zealous vegan, and is finishing a whole book about it, Dialogues on Ethical Vegetarianism.
I wonder how we would respond to the statement that he picked the ideology and morality of ethical vegetarianism because mistreatment of animals is just the thing he most likes to be outraged about, that he sees it everywhere and things people who do it, or contribute to it by eating meat, are evil.
For more, try his post on “preachy vegans” http://fakenous.net/?p=64
Robin Hanson leaves a comment telling Huemer that the post itself makes him sound precisely like a typical, annoyingly preachy vegan.
So I was right – libertarians (in general – maybe not including Dr. Kling) lack self-awareness.
How can they believe themselves to be non-ideological when they demand that society be reorganized to conform to a principle (“non-aggression”) that has been unknown for the previous 10,000 years of civilization? Or, in the case of veganism, demand that everyone stop eating animal products, which humans have been doing since we came down from the trees?
Who ever said that libertarians were non-ideological? That’s news to me.
I read this post as reflecting the image many libertarians maintain of themselves as nonideological. Evidently, you don’t read the post that way.
Huemer’s solution: Be aware that people might try to trick you, not don’t be an ideologue.