Positive Liberty

Filed under Why We Can’t Just All Get Along: National Review Online editor Jonah Goldberg’s soon-to-be-released Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning is generating scorn and ridicule from some of my libertarian friends and colleagues and praise from others (you all know who you are). Having not read the book, I couldn’t say. Just playing the odds, however, I doubt it’s nearly as good as Goldberg’s friends are claiming nor, for that matter, nearly as bad as his political foes claim.

Regardless of whatever Goldberg, himself, claims about the history of the Left in American politics, libertarians have long held that the Left and the Right as traditionally (mis)understood share more than they may care to admit. As Santayana almost said, those who cannot remember the past are condemned to be influenced by Hegel. Once upon a time not really all that long ago, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was Europe’s most influential philosopher, and the title quote is (perhaps unfairly plucked) from his Philosophy of History. His legacy, especially in Germany, led to what was once called Right Hegelianism and Left Hegelianism and, you guessed it, the Left Hegelians won the day. While it is perhaps unfair to claim that Right Hegelianism was to Fascism what Left Hegelianism was to Marxism, the collectivist, statist perspective of 20th century Leftist political thought bears the same idealist legacy. Indeed, that statist, collectivist (and therefore anti-individualist, anti-libertarian) legacy runs back to the philosophical origin of idealism, itself; that is, to Platonism.

It would be nice to think that the libertarian exodus from the Republican Right (whether or not it includes Mr. Goldberg) constitutes some sort of significant realignment in American politics away from collectivism. But there is precious little evidence to that effect. None of the viable Democratic or Republican presidential candidates shows the slightest inclination toward claiming that the principal problem in American society is its own government. To be sure, they argue whether state power is being used wisely or properly (read: “as it would be used if they were in charge”), but that is a far cry from claiming that the problem is structural or that the solution requires more than a bit of tinkering here and there with checks and balances and such nonsense. Until either the Liberal Left or the Conservative Right abandon their fundamental, irrational faith commitment to the State, the difference between the two remains largely illusory.

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