All in a podcast, edited down to about 20 minutes. Mostly about The Three Languages of Politics. I start around minute 3. It seems that for about the first half of the podcast there is occasionally the sound of breaking glass. Not quite sure what that’s about.
In the podcast, Arnold says: “I lean somewhat conservative. I’m not entirely libertarian, but when I read a typical Victor Davis Hanson column, just using the civilization barbarism rhetoric, I try to push that away. I said, okay, well, he’s using this rhetoric. He’s trying to pull me, let me just filter that a little bit. Maybe he’s got a point, maybe he doesn’t, but I’m not going to immediately fall for that.”
Arnold seems to treat the three axes of political rhetoric as equally valid; the conservative (civilization v. barbarism), the liberal (oppressor v. oppressed), and libertarian (coercion v. its absence). But are they?
There’s only one axis that matters. Take stuff that isn’t yours, vs. don’t take stuff that isn’t yours. The latter is normally not called politics, though. Sometimes called buying and selling, for example.
If barbarians are a problem, it’s because they trespass.
If the oppressor is a problem, it’s because they take things that aren’t theirs.
Coercion is a problem if it’s used to steal, and it’s the virtuous opposite of that when it’s used to stop a theft.
Alas, that axis is not obvious, for it depends on the answer to two big questions, What is legitimately mine and what can I legitimately do with it? The answers determine what is taking, what is trespass. Different people in different times and places give different answers.
For a penetrating critique of the “oppressor-oppressed” axis, see https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/conflict-theory-and-us If battles for domination and power between groups are driven by disparities and inequality, as are interactions between individuals, then an unending state of warfare is the lens through which we view the smallest of everyday interactions as well as the entirety of human experience. This hardly seems an acceptable way of viewing our world.