Damon Linker Still Doesn’t Seem to Know What a Libertarian Is

In July, Damon Linker over at
The Week wrote a piece claiming that “libertarian dogma”
is ruining liberals based on some weird idea that libertarian
influences on the left were somehow resulting in the left wanting
bigger government and restricting freedom. It didn’t make a whole
lot of sense and Reason’s Elizabeth Nolan Brown explained
the many ways he didn’t know what he was talking about.

This week, Linker has written two more pieces at The
Week about how America is, indeed, having a “libertarian
moment.” No, this is not in response to the outrage this week as
the public realized the consequences of the militarization of
the police force as it played out in Ferguson, Missouri,
something libertarians have been warning about for years.

No, Linker, still not quite understanding what a libertarian
actually is, argues that our libertarian moment is entirely a
transformation of morality and culture, not politics or economic
policy. He is arguing that libertarianism is simply about being
non-judgmental hippies, man.
From Wednesday:

Americans now inhabit a world in which increasing numbers of
individuals find it difficult, if not impossible, to imagine
submitting to rule by any authority higher than themselves on moral
and religious matters. Sure, people continue to accept that one
will be judged harshly and punished for violating another
individual’s consent (the only libertarian moral consideration).
But beyond that? Don’t be ridiculous.

Who are you — who is anyone — to judge my behavior?

That’s the rhetorical question we increasingly pose to
ourselves, our family members, our neighbors, our church leaders,
and our fellow citizens as a way to put a stop to any conversation
that threatens to veer into moral evaluation and condemnation.

Consider the phenomenon of Miriam Weeks (Belle Knox), the Duke
University undergrad who’s become a breakout celebrity (and
something of a libertarian folk hero) for proudly admitting that
she works as a porn actress to pay for her education.

Pornography is obviously nothing new. But what is new —
aside from its easy and costless availability online in effectively
infinite quantities and varieties — is the claim that we shouldn’t
judge Weeks’ decision to earn a living by having sex for money and
in public, which is often the subtext behind discussion of her job
choice. At least when the discussion isn’t explicitly framed to
make her look like a saint for “empowering women and sex
workers.”

In our libertarian paradise, moral judgments are perfectly
acceptable, as long as they praise and never blame.

Libertarianism is a philosophy based on what power the
government does and does not possess or should or should not
possess. It is not a philosophy about how we, as individuals, judge
each other’s choices. It is about the manifestation of government
authority over the individual’s choices. It does not mean
individual choices are correct (whatever that might mean). It does
not mean individual choices cannot be judged as terrible by
individuals (or groups of individuals).

Then today he thinks he hit on something in his further musings
about Belle Knox by going around asking people how they’d feel if
their daughter started working in porn. Unsurprisingly, most people
are opposed to their daughters working in porn. He wants to try to
pull together what he sees as a contradiction.
He states:

One reason could be that we don’t want to be ruled by any higher
authority. That’s what makes us libertarians (albeit superficial
ones). We want to be free not just from political tyranny but from
the rule of external moral standards, which can feel tyrannical in
their own way — ruling us, as it were, from inside our own heads.
The libertarian urge to overthrow this tyranny is what leads more
and more of us to seek escape from traditional constraints as well
as the vertical moral judgments that can leave us feeling low,
base, and degraded. It seems easier and more pleasant to pretend
that the very distinction between high and low is an illusion, even
if our own thinking and convictions demonstrate that we secretly
believe otherwise.

None of this has anything to do with libertarian philosophy and
not wanting to be ruled by a higher authority is actually the least
superficial component of being a libertarian. He concludes:

None of this should be taken to mean that I favor banning porn
or making it illegal to work in the industry that produces it. In
the end, I’m a libertarian, too.

But only in politics. Not in morals.

You’re probably actually not a libertarian, but “only in
politics” is the part that matters to us. There are extremely
religious libertarians (who would object to your claim that they
don’t want to be ruled by any higher authority) and there are
extremely atheistic libertarians who each cast their judgments on
the moral choices of others. What they have in common is the “only
in politics” belief that the government should not be forcing their
moral choices on others.  

Brown has been writing this week over at Andrew Sullivan’s blog.
She has her own response to Linker here.