Wow David. That was more than I was expecting. Thank you. While we may disagree on a number of issues, we share a deep and abiding interest in promoting social justice and economic opportunity, and I am extremely happy that you found my arguments fair and well reasoned. With apologies for quoting myself, I did think you might be interested in reading this piece that I posted some time ago that explores many of these themes. And thanks again for your thoughtful response. As I mentioned in a previous response to needforname, we must do what we can to reject certainty and embrace the ambiguity inherent in understanding the views of others. As a young man, I used to to believe that I could understand the world through introspection. But to understand the world, we must look through open eyes, and not merely into our souls.
I believe that the world’s future is dim if we fail to recapture the ability to engage in meaningful and sober dialogue. Not made-for-TV dialogue, but careful exploration of the strengths and weaknesses of our own and competing views. Those of us who view ourselves as politically progressive tend to look for intervention by government to address unfairness, conveniently overlooking our distrust of concentrated power and authority. Conservatives tend to see individual empowerment as flowing from the application of neutral rules, regardless of outcomes, conveniently overlooking that the application of neutral rules to a society marked by unequal opportunities will not produce fair results.
I am convinced that in the end, most people want the same thing — a society in which individual effort is rewarded and in which everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed. But to get there, we need to marry the libertarian vision of freedom as freedom from any constraints, and the progressive demand for social justice and equal opportunity. We need each other. And I don’t here mean that we need each other because the truth is to be found in compromise — I mean we need each other because a market solution will fail in the absence of equal opportunity and perceived fairness, and an interventionist solution designed to achieve social justice will fail in the absence of economic growth.
Freedom without constraints overlooks the impact of one’s action on other parties, and is unsustainable in a world in which we are so inter-connected. Demands for social justice can result in ad hoc interventions by an unduly empowered and unrestrained government. We need a new paradigm built on an understanding that freedom can not be untethered from responsibility and that one must be accountable for the effects of one’s actions. Ensuring that everyone starts with the same opportunities to succeed is not a partisan, progressive value — in fact, it is central to the key tenet of conservative market-oriented ideology. Markets, understood in their broadest context, only work where there are buyers and sellers operating without unfair competition. Poverty and unequal access to education, health and other services are forms of unfair competition that undermine the market and our ability to demand personal accountability. De-politicizing these issues is a matter of the greatest importance.
