Liberaltarianism and the Sex Vote
Liberaltarianism may be an interesting political development, but without reference to the Sex Vote, it is an incomprehensible one; with reference to it, it is an unappetizing one.
In a culture where to be interesting is to be laudable, this argument already fails. Slap at the kairos nevertheless. Jonah Goldberg thinks the “first principles” of liberaltarianism “aren’t aligned.” John Hood thinks “the private sphere must give way as costs are socialized and power is centralized.” Meanwhile Reihan endorses Will’s desire to “help create the possibility of a popular political identity that takes the value of human liberty, in all its aspects, really seriously.”
Liberaltarianism agrees to take the value of certain aspects of human liberty more seriously than others, wisely or blithely recognizing that we already do:
The liberaltarian idea, as I understand, is to start rethinking coalitions that appear to be natural because they’ve been in place for so long. — Reihan
But Reihan, like Goldberg, Hood, and many others, ignores the centrality of the Sex Vote, which is a snappy name for people who are generally willing or even eager to trade away political and economic freedoms for broad (in terms of scope, variety, protection, and enforcement) social and cultural freedoms — i.e. for the pink police state, which I named in honor of Marilyn Manson (“cops and queers / make good-looking models”) for a reason.
Poulos: Are you concerned that young people won’t care what the government does as long as they have ‘lifestyle’ freedom?
Frum: It will be hard to afford much lifestyle freedom as payroll and income taxes rise to pay for the Obama administration’s hope and change.
Is this answer persuasive? How many hipsters are too poor to party? The liberaltarian bargain, with the state as cool parent, does have a first principle: we should help create a popular ‘private sphere’ that can, should, and does expand as costs are socialized and power is centralized.
It is the allure of this promise, already planted within the popular culture, which is making lots of young people more liberal and more libertarian — this principle, and nothing else. It, not any narrow point of political economy, is the true and only threat to Conservatism Today. But you would not know it from reading Sam Tanenhaus, either, who at least accurately revealed, by compounding their silence on the Sex Vote, exactly in what way the Movement Cons and the Beaconsfielders are waging a phony war.
The inescapable conflict point between libertarianism and liberalism (contemporary, not classic, liberalism) becomes most apparent when the medical system is socialized and run by the government. When society as a whole pays for the consequences of people’s individual choices, society becomes ever more repressive. You must wear, not just a motorcycle helmet, but a bicycle helmet; we don’t want to pay for your head injury. You must reduce your weight; obesity causes too many expensive health problems, so we’ll forbid foods we associate with weight gain, and regulate what restaurants can serve. Forget drug legalization; the government doesn’t have a moral objection to drugs that make you stupid, it has a medical objection to drugs that make you sick. Reproductive rights mean that government should stay out of decisions between a woman and her doctor? Maybe when you’re killing fetuses, but not when you’re growing them; we don’t want to pay for your having more babies than we approve of.
— Gary Imhoff · Feb 16, 04:34 PM · #
You may be reifying what is really a pretty transitory, historically specific dynamic. Broadly speaking, the formative experience of the “Sex Vote” cohort was opposing Bush—and Bush was (nominally) a small government republican. It’s pretty unreasonable to expect these people to conclude that the problem with Bush was that he didn’t hold to small government ideals. What’s more, Bush was so cartoonishly evil and incompetent that you don’t need a broad theory of state dysfunction to identify the cause of what went wrong—it’s that smirking guy over there in the flight suit, dummy!
As the Bush years fade into memory, the “Sex Vote” will lose its originating impulse and fracture on the issues of the future.
— salacious · Feb 16, 05:05 PM · #
I don’t see how that’s a situation limited to public health insurance. Private health insurance has the same problem of the people paying for your healthcare dictating its terms, with the added disadvantage that you don’t elect the president of your HMO every four years.
And no one’s figured out how to make health care work without socializing the costs in some manner, public or private. (Arguably nobody’s figured out how to make the latter work, either.)
But what do I know? I’m just a sexually degenerate liberal.
— Chet · Feb 16, 07:06 PM · #
Huh, I saw the title and was expecting this to be about a very different variety of ‘sex vote’ — namely, the portion of the population (rather larger than the one you target) who would be willing to trade away political and economic freedoms for broad (in terms of scope, variety, protection, and enforcement) capacities to restrict others’ sexual & reproductive freedoms.
While there are plenty of people in this sort of ‘sex vote’ categody, I actually don’t think that there’s that many in the one you try to characterize here. How are you distinguishing the “I don’t care what the government does, etc.” folks from the “I want the government to exercise a certain set of controls, x, y, and z over various large economic actors” folks? (I take almost all mainstream left-wing bloggers to be obviously in the latter camp, for example.) Only the former produce a “pink police state” worry, but the latter simply have a different vision of where the balance of power between government and various big business interests should lie.
— James Williams · Feb 16, 07:10 PM · #
You know what’ll make your head explode? Think about what Poulos has
written here – which is perceptive, and complex, and has big implications – and then read something – anything – about the Singularity, and then try to suss out what the effects of our present reality of
[massive social change] + [global economic confusion] + [dizzying technological change]
is going to mean to North American political choices (particularly at the intersection of culture wars & size of the state questions.)
I’d pay like 30 bucks to watch a video of Reihan try to do all this while eating an entire bowl of espresso beans.
— Tim Ross · Feb 16, 07:47 PM · #
Also, salacious, I get what you’re saying but have to disagree. I don’t think the Sex Vote all comes down to Bush. (snicker. please don’t ban me for one horrible pun) You’re right that, demographically, most folks in Poulos’ Sex Vote bracket would trace the formative experience in their political consciousness back to opposition to post-millenial Bushian Republicanism, but that’s just one ingredient in the soup. You’re also looking at a generation that almost literally comprises the children of the sexual revolution. So I predict that the ‘bloc’ will remain more unified then you’ve predicted; that they won’t fragment to the extent you’ve indicated precisely because there are more ties uniting them than the Uniter himself.
In conclusion, Sex Vote would be a good band name.
— Tim Ross · Feb 16, 07:55 PM · #
Also, “liberaltarianism” is, in the “strong” form of the term anyway, an unstable isotope outside the lab. What I’m saying is kind of elementary: there are no “liberaltarians”. You can’t find one. You can find liberals, libertarian-leaning liberals, gun-owning liberals, and libertarians who hide their copies out Mother Jones and Utne from their friends, but you will never ever meet a “liberalarian.” The term just refers to the alliance.
And alliances are unstable. From a macro-level: now that the Bush/Cheney era has given way to the “Hope for the Best, and expect the Changes to Come to Suck” era, the bond between the libertarian & liberal atoms will weaken, and the molecule will denature.
Alliances are also unstable on the micro level. Things change when you start pushing 30. And those lifestyle changes influence – very strongly – political preferences. As your world changes, so goes your Weltanshauung. Even for those folks who don’t opt to marry & have kids, they may still to choose not to be 24-hour party people. Maybe they practice a form of serial monogamy, but perhaps it’s one embedded in an ethic of personal responsibility, where each person looks after their own financial independence. (Is anyone under 35, say, in the US really expecting there to be anything left in Social Security?)
But I can see that this doesn’t have any bearing on Poulos’ point. It’s the confluence of increased liberalism and libertarianism in the US that is going to challenge conservatism. It’s immaterial how much friction there is between liberalism & libertarianism. Even if the two streams are working at cross purposes (to deliberately mix metaphors) the effect will still be to drown out conservatism, or to turn it into very weak tea.
Huh. Well, as usual James Poulos is right, and wicked smart. In conclusion, thinking about the US is difficult for me because my country is a noticeably more social-democratic polity, and it just doesn’t scale well. Also a country with 300 million people is kind of absurdly large.
— Tim Ross · Feb 16, 09:32 PM · #
Explain to me why we have to “trade away political and economic freedoms” to have “broad (in terms of scope, variety, protection, and enforcement) social and cultural freedom.” What is the exact mechanism here?
This aregument remindes me of the argument that a democratic western freindly Iraq would transform the region. It sounds great, but how was it supposed to actually work, in detail?
— cw · Feb 17, 02:33 AM · #
It’s too bad you can’t “like” a post here like on Tumblr because this one was great and dead on.
— PEG · Feb 17, 08:00 AM · #
cw hits on an important point. Subjectively, the “Sex Vote” demographic doesn’t conceptualize greater government involvement in the economy as a relinquishment of rights. If anything, they see government as fighting for rights which have been usurped by other institutions. This means libertarians won’t get a lot of traction arguing their position from a fundamental liberty perspective. I suspect they will find more success with a pragmatic narrative about the incompetence and corruptibility of government.
— salacious · Feb 17, 08:59 AM · #
My (admittedly alarmist) take is there’s more free surface area in the economy, politics and society than anyone (save yours truly and a handful of fellow travelers) has yet recognized. The “sex vote” is another glib, link-bait perfect (as witnessed by PEG) misidentification of one small symptom. You’ve grasped the tail, James, and declared the beast a snake.
Tim, you’re closer when you talk about an “unstable isotope” (being decidedly stuck in Newtonianism, I prefer the free surface metaphor, but either will suffice.)
But it’s not the confluence of liberalism and libertarianism that will (did?) drown conservatism. Conservatism tied an anchor to it’s neck and jumped overboard. Liberalism, libertarianism and at least two dozen other “isms” merely followed. (Granted, some won’t realize the rode’s wrapped around their ankle till it’s too late.)
In other words, when I lived in rural Oregon under Herbert Walker, I thought the survivialists were a bunch of nutters, but living in NYC under The Decider made me reconsider, and it looks like BHO is going to seal the deal. There won’t be many more rants about the corrosive effect of non-profits on commerce because the problem is going to take care of itself. Same for traffic congestion.
James is right about one thing: social mores will be increasingly degenerate.
— Tony Comstock · Feb 17, 02:02 PM · #
Don’t you mean the “Eloi Vote”?
— JA · Feb 17, 02:18 PM · #
After reading the flurry of recent posts about the liberaltarian project, I thought I had it figured out until I cam across this:
“centrality of the Sex Vote, which is a snappy name for people who are generally willing or even eager to trade away political and economic freedoms for broad (in terms of scope, variety, protection, and enforcement) social and cultural freedoms”
Does this mean the central tenant of liberaltarianism is who cares what color the cat is as long as it gets laid? (I apologize for the crudeness of that remark.)
If so, this sounds like liberal authoritarianism, which I guess could also be called liberaltarianism.
— Jeremy R. Shown · Feb 18, 04:26 AM · #