The Virtues of Libertines

Cato’s Jason Kuznicki offers a valuable contribution to the
“libertarian morality” discussion that’s been meandering around the
Internet of late. In a post on his personal blog, Kuznicki says,
“but
of course I’m a libertine.”

Kuznicki is reacting to a strange strain of libertarianism he
spies lately, one that advocates fusing libertarianism and social
conservatism in a way we haven’t seen since the 1960s. As evidence
he points to Damon Linker’s recent “What
if your daughter was a porn star?” piece (which
both Scott Shackford and I
have written about) and a piece in The Federalist by
Rachel Wu, which asserts that “if
millennials want liberty, they need virtue too.” I would also
point you to
this post by Pamela Stubbart, who left the libertarian group
Young Voices over its promotion of porn star Belle Knox’s writing,
and the bizarro
cult of Stefan Molyneaux. 

These folks differ from social conservatives in that they don’t
always advocate using the state to impose their morality
unilaterally. But “the sentiment remains the same,” Kuznicki
writes:

If you don’t share our morality, then you’re
doing freedom wrong, and bad things will happen. 

What makes all that a little hard to swallow is the fact that
almost nothing so-cons have wanted—obscenity laws, sodomy laws,
tough standards for divorce, stigma around birth control—has panned
out for them in the past 50 years. Meanwhile “libertines”—a term
Kuznicki uses with tongue firmly in cheek—have been getting exactly
what they want on matters of vice. How’s that working out for
American society?

Pretty well, I’d have to say. Let’s imagine some victory
conditions: How
about massively falling crime rates? Check. Also
falling abortion rates? Check. A whole lot
less teen pregnancy? Check. Falling
divorce rate? Yep, got that one too!

No traditionalist would ever have predicted the present moment.
On every single one of these matters, if the numbers had gone the
other way, the so-called libertines would be taking every bit of
the blame. Perhaps reasonably. But over here in the real world, we
have a paradox: It begins to look as if the way to get almost every
item on the social conservatives’ wish list is to give us
libertines what we wanted.

Sure, we may now be a nation of cohabiting, contraception-using,
homosexuality-supporting, pot smokers, but we’ve also become a
nation that’s infinitely less bigoted and misogynist. If the former
makes one a “libertine” (or a “cultural
libertarian“), then most of us may be so, but “in another sense
none of us are libertines—if by that word we
mean foregoing all moral judgement,” Kuznicki writes. 

Essentially nobody does ​​that​​. We give a very false
picture of developments since the 1960s if we suggest that it’s all
been a matter of things disappearing from our moral radar. We have
added many new norms as well, and we are clearly better off for
having them. Norms against drunk driving, smoking, racism, and
sexism are stronger than ever, and those are certainly better than
the norm that permits you to disown your son if you find him having
gay sex.

Leonard Steinhorn, a professor at American University,
makes similar points in his writing on the baby boomer
generation. He thinks “boomers deserve far more credit than they’re
typically given” for what the ’60s hath wrought:

In surveys, 71 percent of Greatest Generation whites said that
blacks smell different, 36 percent said they wouldn’t try on
clothes a black had worn, and 94 percent disapproved of interracial
marriage. In 1954, only 12 percent said they would allow an atheist
to teach college, and in 1957, 80 percent said that an unmarried
woman had to be sick, neurotic or immoral. Boomers refused to
accept this America, and ever since the ’60s they have quietly
agitated for change. They did it by transforming society, by
changing attitudes, norms, institutions and families, and the
result is an America more inclusive, equal, tolerant and free than
any time in our history.

And here’s what I wrote
about libertarian morality at The Dish last
week: 

… libertarian-minded folks are plenty capable of placing blame
at the feet of people who deserve it. We have no problem expressing
moral disapproval of an administration that rains
death on innocent people, or of the insane
militarization of our police force and the attendant
terror it’s causing. We cast stones at those who let
their own
discomfort come before women’s safety and those who think
any abuse
by the state is warranted once someone has committed a
crime. These are absolutely moral judgements – you don’t have mere
differences of opinion on whether it’s okay to kill Pakistani
children and African-American teenagers.

I ventured into different moral arenas than Kuznicki, and that’s
the point here: morality can be conceived of in many, many
different ways. It’s easy to frame libertarians, or American
society as a whole, as decliningly moral when you define
the parameters of morality. But if we dig past purity in its many
manifestations, there’s a whole host of ways in which libertarian
libertines are making the world a much more safe, just, tolerant,
moral, and free place.