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My
Disappointing Experience at
the Liberty Magazine Editors Conference
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By fortuitous coincidence, Liberty Magazine was having their Editors Conference in Las Vegas at the same time that Joy and I were there for the American Society for Clinical Pathology conference. We were able to get into three of the Liberty sessions, which produced, for me, two disappointments, one minor and one major. First, the minor disappointment: We attended a talk by Randy Barnett. I don’t recall the title, but it was an interesting and entertaining talk, much of which was about his personal development as a libertarian and constitutional scholar. In this talk he also went into his view on constitutional legitimacy, as related in his book “Restoring the Lost Constitution.” His view, in essence, is that a constitution is legitimate if it requires procedures that make it probable that the resultant laws will be respectful of individual rights. I have long held a similar view. The idea that a constitution could gain legitimacy via consent never had much appeal for me. It seems obvious that there is no actual consent; apart from naturalized citizens, no one has explicitly consented to live under our constitution. Even at the time of the founding, only a small minority could be said to have actually consented. Of course, the fall back position of those who think consent is required is implied consent. That is, if you live in the territory of a government and use its services, you are impliedly consenting to that government’s constitution. This never made any sense to me. After all, there are many plausible reasons for living in a particular territory, some of which could override an extreme dislike for its constitution…e.g. all your family lives there, you were brought up there, there’s no better place to go and you have to live somewhere. So, I don’t see any justification for implying consent. In approaching ethics, Ayn Rand asked, “Why does man need a code of morality?” I thought it made sense to ask, “Why does man need a government?” The most fundamental answer is to protect his individual rights. So then it makes sense that a legitimate government is one with a constitution that protects individual rights. But it has always bothered me that I couldn’t find a rationale for how good a job it would have to do to be legitimate. I thought that maybe Randy Barnett would have an answer to that question; he doesn’t answer it in his book. This has been bothering me for a long time, but though I kept raising my hand, I never got called on. That was my minor disappointment. I couldn’t stay after the session to talk to Randy Barnett, because we had to get to the next session, in another room, which was to be a panel discussion on libertarianism and religion. The panelists were: Jo Ann Skousen, a Mormon; Stephen Cox, a Christian; Charles Murray, an agnostic; David Friedman, an atheist. After some mostly pointless discussion, I decided I should raise an issue relevant to the topic. I suggested that religion was incompatible with libertarianism. A rough paraphrase follows: “I would like to suggest that religion and libertarianism are incompatible at a fundamental level. Suppose you have a significant disagreement between two people about their faith-based beliefs. How will they resolve it? Since they lack the common ground of a belief in reason, persuasion would not seem to be an option. If the disagreement is serious enough, it seems to me there will be a strong tendency for force to be used. Thus a libertarian solution would be very unlikely.” The response stunned me enough that I (and Joy) remember little of the detail. What I do remember is that Charles Murray said the result would be “just the opposite.” Then he and David Friedman, as I recall, provided anecdotes of particular people or groups that would support Charles Murray’s position. I responded by asserting that I was making a generalization that shouldn’t be refuted by anecdotes, but had the sense that I wasn’t heard. Indeed, I felt rather invisible. There wasn’t even any support from the audience. This was my major disappointment. I have long held both Charles Murray and David Friedman in the highest esteem. How could they have not gotten my point, which was a fundamental, abstract point about the epistemology of faith and its likely result? Especially at a time when religion related violence is rampant? I have no idea. |