Livestream: FRI 07 JUN 2024 @ 9:00 PM EDT
Andrew Wilson vs Dave Smith: Is Libertarianism better than Christian Populism?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqIaiQ-aK_s
{
The Crucible | 07June 2024}
Thank you for sharing this! Below are my notes from the first hour or so. I had to cut off because of time-constraints and because Andrew is an insufferably bad debate participant. Please excuse the many typos...
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[Andrew's opening thesis: libertarianism leads to degeneracy. Libertarians can't or don't want to stop serious evils in the public space such as aberrant sexuality, cultural destruction of the nuclear family, suicide, and so on. This is because libertarianism begins with the principle of self-ownership, which is indefensible.]
(PS: The looks on Dave's face during this opening statement were amazing.)
I felt Dave's opening response left something lacking, so I will add some further remarks here. First, we have to ask: the principle of self-ownership is flawed
by comparison to what alternative? Andrew's reply will be "that God owns us, because he created us", which is a perfectly excellent answer. Here, I agree with Andrew's ultimate foundation but there is one flaw, which will be readily identified by any political adversary: whose god? I agree with Andrew there is just one, true God, but many people do not. And the State is supposed to be ruling the public space, which includes me and all those other people who believe in other gods. We are prohibited by the Lord Jesus himself from using force in any way, shape or form (or even desiring to!) against those who believe in false gods. Rather, we are to win them over by the testimony of the Gospel, and our manner of life (practicing what we preach). Thus, the
theological fact that we are God's (and cannot just live any way we please) must be separated from the question of what sort of behavior is permitted in the public space.
The key, here, is to realize that the censure
by force of certain actions in the public space cannot merely be the result of the moral wrongness of those actions. As I am walking down the sidewalk, someone may inform me that they consider my face to be repulsive. This is rude and it is wrong, but am I justified to "defend myself" with my fists against this verbal insult? Of course not. But
why not? This is the problem that the naive theory of State-enforcement of public morality can never properly answer. Ultimately, they have to just kick the can down the road to "the people" and they hand-wave that, by some magic, the people having elected representatives and those representatives writing laws somehow resolves the underlying logical problem. But it does not resolve anything, it just evades the matter completely.
Second, there we can (and must!) make a libertarian theory which sets the limits of what violence can be used for, in the public space. Let's say you are living in Ancapville, which is a walled, anarcho-capitalist city-state. Property-rights are enforced but, beyond that, everyone is free to do as they please without onerous regulations or nannying supervision by "the State". Even the city itself is just a for-profit corporation and the only power it has is the power of eviction from the confines of the walls. It cannot even seize property within its walls, it can only exclude the owner who remains the title-owner and may sell his property even if he becomes evicted. One day, you are taking your kids along a path in a private-park which is several acres of land along the banks of the river that flows through the center of Ancapville. You look across the river as you have thousands of times before, and there, sprawled out in XXX-detail is a pornographic advertisement. You quickly divert your childrens' attention and shuttle them back to your vehicle and depart. Now, the naive theory of libertarianism is that this is the end of the matter. Your
only recourse is to be offended, and go home, and keep quiet about what bothers you.
But this is not correct. We don't have to go into a full explication of Coasean rights theory to explain the matter simply. You call the park owner and complain. In turn, the park owner contacts the billboard owner and complains (as the park owner stands to lose a lot of revenue!) The billboard owner asserts, "It's my property, and I'll plaster any advertisement on there I get paid for." What we have, here, is a tragedy of the commons, where the commons is the public space itself, that is, that which is visible while walking about. THe solution, obviously, is for the park owner to threaten the billboard owner with a lawsuit, and to have the summons prepared and delivered by his security agents. THis is a Friedmanite theory of the public space. Obviously, if you do things that make a lot of people angry, there will be a lot of people willing to sue and/or (legally) threaten to make your life hard in every way they possibly can. Someone might even risk taking a crack at you even though it's illegal. Intentionally making yourself an unwelcome pariah is something that humans almost never do precisely because it is so dangerous. No one, that is, except for the State and its agents. Which shows what is really at stake here. It is not the rogue XXX-billboard renter who is the actual danger to the public space, it is the State! It's always the State. Wokism is not a manifestation of a lack of government, it's a manifestation of the very godless State which Andrew wants more of! Rogue billboards can arise in Ancapville, but it will not be long before enough material interests are aligned to its removal, that its removal will be effected.
My assertion is that Wokism, opposition to the nuclear family, unnatural relations, and so on, are unsystematic in the human population
but for the State. Without the State, they are just the random, rogue billboard. Sooner or later (and probably sooner), the problem will be squelched, because the individual who is causing the ruckus in the public space is arousing the ire of many people, all of whom will be happy to chip in a small sum to a fund that will be used to hire a legal/security-agency for the squelcing of that ruckus. This has always been how such problems have been handled prior to the modern era. That this even needs to be explained is a symptom of just how atrophied human society has become by the monopolization of practically all social functions by the modern, omnipotent nation-state!
Also, Andrew opened with a litany of "are you against _____?" arguments, which is a common tactic of collectivist/socialist thinkers (and yes, sadly, many conservative Christians are, at root, collectivists). Bastiat wrote in
The Law:
Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all.
We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain.
It's astounding that this trick still works fully 200 years after Bastiat wrote this!! I'm sure Andrew is not a socialist, but he is a collectivist in his thinking. That we object to using the tool of the State because
it's the wrong tool for pretty much everything except patrolling the border and (maybe) hanging crooks, doesn't mean we're opposed to all those other things, in fact, quite the opposite! The State is the great
ruiner of everything it touches, and we want to see the State removed from those things so they can be properly enjoyed!
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[Do you own yourself? Is ownership a "social construction"?]
Self-ownership is, as Dave notes, demonstrated by the mere act of speaking. This negation of this assertion is what we call a
fight, or (more generally) warfare. Since the aim or object of social order (as by a State) is to preserve peace, self-ownership automatically follows. The idea of self-ownership as
merely a "social construction" is just collectivism in disguise, and also it is the same kind of mush-headedness that gives rise to Wokism. If everything is what whatever "society" constructs it to be, then men really can be women and vice-versa, and there really are 3,000 genders. Rather, self-ownership is something that we all know to be the case by virtue fo the image of God within us. Above, I raised the question of self-ownership by contrast to
what alternative? On the "social construction" theory of government, the alternative would have to be something that "society" constructs collectively, but society
can't do this, which is demonstrated by the problem of Wokism. It can't do this, because it is not only collectivism but it is a consensus problem. Everybody would have to agree, and that's never going to happen. Thus, I own myself because (a) it is obvious, (b) you cannot name someone else who has a higher claim to own me than I do, (c) if you want to persist in contradicting my self-ownership
I will fight you (that last one is basically what the 2nd amendment is all about). Thus, since self-ownership cannot be contradicted (thrice-over), it is true.
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[Dave: Do you own your words?]
Dave is basically appealing to Hoppe's argumentation ethics here. By virtue of speaking, you are logically (implicitly) asserting self-ownership. If you do not own yourself, then you are someone's slave, and you speak only by permission of the one who owns you. In which case, you are just a mouthpiece (e.g. as an ambassador is to a king) and you are sub-rational, that is, you are not capable of reasoning because your tongue is harnessed by the one who owns you. Thus, the one who asserts "I do not own myself" is simply opting out of rational argument. He is choosing not to have a rational discussion or evincing that he is not
capable of having a rational discussion (because his master will not permit it).
Dave concedes that self-ownership can
also be a norm, but the key point that needs to be driven home, here, is that
self-ownership is logically irrefutable. You cannot
deny with "your" tongue that you own yourself, without immediately running into a performative contradiction. If you do not own yourself, then you are some kind of slave or robot or automaton belonging to someone else, and the entire "argument" is a waste-of-time, kind of like "debating" ChatGPT. The very act of entering into debate is a concesion
in itself that you own yourself. And this is also self-evident -- the explanations given here are not necessary for anybody to know they own themselves...
everyone automatically knows this.
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[Andrew: Slavery has existed.]
Sure, it has. Also, murder has existed. Saying, "you can't own yourself because people have been enslaved" is like saying "you're not alive because people have been killed." Furthermore, even though slavery hsa existed, so have slave-revolts. So, if the mere existence of slavery disproves self-ownership then, by the same token, the mere existence of slave-revolts disproves the "you can't own yourself" theory. (Note: this
entire line of reasoning is a complete non-starter. Dave seems to have been caught a little by surprise but this is not a difficult point to argue against. Denying your own self-ownership is downright silly. If you don't own yourself, then shut up! If you don't own yourself, then I suppose I can just tape your mouth shut just as I could apply tape to a tree out in the wilderness, if I felt like it, because it has no agency and certainly doesn't own itself!)
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[Dave: What demonstrated that people have owned other people?]
Now Dave is cooking with fire!
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[Andrew: My moral foundation is divine command]
So, this is where we get to the core of the disagreement and what the debate is
really about. My position bridges half-way between Andrew and Dave: divine command
is the ultimat moral foundation...
and it is not a sufficient basis for public law! God commands us not to lie. Therefore, it is wrong to lie. This command really and truly impinges upon all people, whether they accept it or not.
Nevertheless, we all understand that the State has no business enforcing truth-telling in almost all cases. Why not? Because the State does not exist for the purpose of enforcing divine commands, rather, the State exists (to whatever extent its existence can be tolerated at all) in order to secure the peace in the public space. If someone parks directly across the street from your house and turns up their 5,000w truck-bed speaker-system to maximum volume playing obnoxious music, you are perfectly reasonable to expect forcible intervention in this situation. This is the
only legitimate function of the State! Even the punishment of crimes is really just this "don't be a nuisance" principle (that is, don't violate NAP) applied to more extreme situations.
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[Dave: How do you know the divine commands?]
[Andrew: My delusions of divine command are as good as your arbitrary moral preferences.]
Well, sure, this is completely true, and (speaking for myself, not Dave), this is one of the reasons why divine command
matters. We really do need a "heavenly tie-break", so to speak. But that is a theological matter of ultimate moral authority and the mailman and trash-collection (assuming these are functions of the State, which they usually are in the modern West) have nothing to do with that. That this is even a matter of contention is itself yet another manifestation of the mental atrophy induced by the modern omnipotent State. It should be an obvious point but, sadly, it's not.
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[Dave (again): How do we know divine commands?]
[Andrew: subjective v. objective; libertarian values are subjective, therefore, they don't require any answer at all from the objective position since they make no objective claims]
Dave: God talks to you, he also talks to me, so we're even. (Correct answer.)
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[Andrew: Do you want the state to intervene to stop a suicide?]
Dave: I would want that.
My view: I don't think the State has a duty to intervene in just any such situation. The State, in itself, does not automatically have anything to do with this. The problem only becomes a matter of State if (a) it fails or (b) it otherwise becomes a public matter. In those situations, the State would potentially be involved as it becomes a rogue-billboard problem. A man who goes up on a tall building each day over the public square and threatens to throw himself down is making a nuisance for children and families below, who are subjected to disruption by his outrageous behavior. The State should not intervene "to stop him from harming himself", rather, the State should intervene so that peaceful families going about their daily business will not be disturbed. This point is actually very important because the other answer is how you get weaponized "compassion". I'm not saying we (society) should not have compassion for someone in distress, but
the State is always the wrong tool for social compassion.
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[Andrew shouting over Dave and insisting on high-school debate team antics]
This is flatly un-Christian behavior and a bad representation of the name of Jesus. I don't think Dave Smith is a Christian (to my knowledge), but this kind of battle-ax debate methodology is inappropriate in the context of inviting someone onto your show and then laying into them like they just built a fence on your side of the property-line and are justifying themselves for that. Dave is just on the show for the purposes of a discussion or even a
friendly (non-adversarial) debate. Intentionally turning it into an adversarial debate is just rude and an example of immoral behavior that, as libertarians, we know does not justify the exercise of violence
no matter how badly you might feel otherwise. I find it ridiculous that this has to be said and Andrew's antics at this point makes it difficult for me, as a believer, to continue watching. Rude and absolutely un-Christian behavior.
Amazingly, Dave persists through the fire, so I will continue to watch the debate.
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[Andrew: Why can't (adult) brother/sister have sex?]
[Dave: Against nature]
[Andrew: Naturalistic fallacy]
Andrew is here losing track of the argument. He wants to have a debate with Dave over the foundations, but Dave is repeatedly
granting the argument over foundations. Andrew is just going off half-cocked, having hyped himself up for a different debate than the actual debate itself.
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[Andrew: Absent God, morality is just preferences.]
The problem with this argument is, once again, Andrew is misfiring, he's aiming a good argument at the wrong target. If Dave were arguing against the ultimate foundations of Scripture, these arguments would be applicable. As Dave astutely points out, Andrew has gotten himself hyped-up for an argument with a 20-year-old OnlyFans streamer, not with someone who is actually reasonable and can defend their position logically. That Andrew resorts to jack-hammer verbal debate tactics actually undermines whatever credibility he might have had in the discussion, since he shows that he simply didn't prepare for a debate with Dave himself, just his own private caricature of what a libertarian is. He seems to think he's debating Chase Oliver, or something. It's a very bizarre look and I cannot emphasize strongly enough that this kind of verbal jack-hammering, in this context, has absolutely no overlap with the Gospel of Jesus Christ whatsoever. By behaving this way, Andrew is dragging the name of Jesus through the mud. It is shameful and sinful.
"He who answers before listening- that is his folly and his shame." (Proverbs 18:13)
As to the substance of Andrew's (irrelevant) question, the correct answer is that it's just a trick question, there is no valid answer. "Absent God" would be Mad Max world, it would not be civilized America under the influence of the Gospel, circa 2024. Thus, there is no "absent God". The question he's
really asking (by way of baiting) is "absent God-
belief, can you justify morality?" and the answer to that is: of course, because we are never truly
absent God. The one who is absent God-belief is still acting in accordance to mores whose ultimate justification can only be derived from the Christian worldview.
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[Dave: <humping your sister> is so uncomfortable to talk about]
LOL. I've never watched this channel before, but I just have to reiterate again that it's obvious that Andrew has been debating very juvenile-minded Woke types, and he is blindly convinced that this is an accurate model of Dave's views, despite Dave's repeated protests to the contrary.
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[Andrew/Dave steel-manning Andrew's position on NAP]
Andrew does not understand the meaning of the word "aggression". He seems to think that aggression is just any use of force outside of exigent circumstances (e.g. immediate self-defense). Rather, aggression is
inherently immoral and is never justifiable,
by definition. What we mean by "aggression" is the use of force
without a good reason, without moral justification. If someone steals your bicycle, it's not "aggression" to repossess the bicycle from them, even if you have to wrest it out of their hands. You're simply undoing
their prior aggression. You can snatch your own bicycle back, even much later, even against resistance from the thief, for exactly the same reason you can shoot an intruder in your house: they are the aggressors!
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[Andrew: "If I own myself, and you own yourself, then there can be no moral objection to _____"]
Once again, misses the point. What differentiates between where the State can and can't be used to intervene is the rogue-billboard; the State is simply
the wrong tool to address private sexual perversions in a private home, as long as they
remain private. It only becomes a State matter once it comes out into the public square. Thus, sodomy laws are objectively a bad idea, and this is not just a libertarian thing... it's a historical evidence thing. But abolishing sodomy laws and replacing them with nothing (the Woke, Chase Oliver, libertine-wing of the LP solution) is also an objectively bad idea (and we're living through the reasons why, right now!) Rather, the State can be used (and should be, lacking a better tool) to suppress the promotion of sexual perversion in the public space. Removal of rogue-billboard problems would be done much more quickly and efficiently in Ancapistan due to the removal of State corruption, but that's an efficiency argument, which is not the important thing in this context. The key issue is that the NAP is no obstacle whatsoever to rogue-billboard issues, it just tells you that (a) the State is not the best tool for addressing them and (b) rogue-billboard problems don't create an easement for State invasion of the private space because
it is aggression against self-owning individuals.
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[Dave: Freedom and liberty do not automatically lead to degeneracy.]
This is a situation where Dave is correct but for the wrong reasons. Let's go back to Dave's admission that he attributes God as the reason he understood moral reality, even before he believed in God.
That is why freedom and liberty do not automatically lead to degeneracy. We call this God's
common grace. The problem comes when we try to assert that humans are somehow "intrinsically good", which history amply disproves. Apart from the Gospel, all humanity is without hope. The Gospel transforms culture, even if many people do not accept it. Rather, the contrast that needs to be teased out is that the Gospel is the
only path that leads to freedom and liberty (in the fullest possible sense of freedom and liberty) and that, when humans are left to themselves, they naturally go into slavery. (Ultimately, this is slavery to sin.) The fact that, under the influence of the Gospel, freedom and liberty do not automatically lead to degeneracy is itself evidence of God's common grace, which extends to all people. For this reason, those who value liberty (aka all libertarians) ought to
welcome the influence of the Gospel
whether or not they believe in it. The whole purpose of the Gospel is to
set men free from the shackles of slavery that define this present world-order. That's the key takeaway here!
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[Andrew (interrupting, for the 10 millionth time): Degeneracy is being promoted by libertarians]
OK, yes, that is true. There are some libertarians who are promoting degeneracy. There are Christian churches who are also promoting degeneracy. So what? I'm not defined by the people who say they're with me, I'm defined by the people I say I'm with. This is yet another completely irrelevant point.
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[Dave: Government undermines the values that Christians and traditionalists care about.]
This is
the point. The cure, in this case,
is the poison. Andrew is just a run-of-the-mill Christian authoritarian. There must be a factory somewhere where they stamp these people out, they're cookie-cutter copies of one another. Government force is
at best suitable for patrolling the frontier to keep out invaders, and (possibly) hanging crooks. It has no other legitimate use. The Constitution gives the Federal government a
tiny list of a few other powers besides these. What has the Federal government done with that tiny list? It has taken over not only the entire economy, but the entire
culture. And who is the single, largest megaphone promoting WOkism right now? It is the Federal government. That we are in this predicament is
precisely why libertarians are such "NAP fundamentalists". This is a camel that cannot be given even a
single micron of leeway, let alone an inch! As soon as you permit the State to engage in any form of aggression, you have already given the camel the whole tent. It might take a few decades or a couple centuries to fully work its way from night-watchman to global tyranny, but it will do so as surely as rocks fall when dropped.
Government is the premier cause of degeneracy, it is not the cure.
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[Andrew: But how could you have enforcement against <weird_butt_stuff> without the gubbernmint?!?!]
Muh Roads. That's always the nuke. BUT WHAT ABOUT MUH ROADSs$sSsS$%SS&*.
People are smart. They'll figure it out. What people do in their private house is a matter that God cares about (Dave concedes this) and can potentially have ramifications in the public space (Dave implicitly concedes this), but the State is not only the wrong tool to fix it,
it can only make the problem worse. Dave points out the exponential growth of government in the last 3 or so decades, and its correlation with the explosion in open depravity. Andrew avoids this point
completely because it completely breaks his super-Boomer world-model.
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[Andrew: <hilariously continues to conflate every form of consenting action with adult brother-sister incest and butt-stuff>...]
[Dave: Government is the primary cause of all the evils that you're complaining about]
[Andrew: <super-Boomer mode> Yeah, but the AMA was founded as a private trade-organization]
So, this is the typical Leftist debate-tactic (hilarious to see how the hard-Right parrots the hard-Left whenever it suits their agenda). "Private institutions are just as evil as the government."
Still beside the point, because what
makes private institutions
dangerous is that they can use the weapon of the government to impose their agenda on the rest of us. Without government, any "private institution" is of no more nuisance than a furniture store advertisement blowing down the street. Who cares if they're evil,
don't patronize them. "But other people can!" Again,
so what? Until they have
teeth, I don't have to care about them, and I won't care about them. And there is only one place they can get teeth: the State.
[Andrew: You wouldn't even need a medical license to practice medicine! <cue Boomer outrage> It's anarcho-capitalism, baby!]
LOL.
Just that. LOL.
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[Andrew: We used to have anti-trust laws!]
So out of his depth, it's just downright embarrassing.
[Andrew: Mussolini, fascism!]
Please, make it stop.
[Andrew: Corporate power can also become elite and it becomes a power unto itself]
Sure, but until they pick up guns, they can simply be
ignored. And when they pick up guns, so can we. And there's more of us than there are of them. When they pick up guns, they just give us the opportunity to physically remove them fro society. Problem solved. What prevents us from doing
that... is the State because it's the only organization large enough, well-funded enough and well-staffed enough to even have a chance of resisting the people. And if they want a showdown
for real, we can kick their ass, too, because the State is just a parasite, nothing more. And guess whose leg the corporate power is
always, always always hiding behind?? The State!!!
[Andrew: There are no licenses in anarcho-capitalism.]
Please,
please make it stop...
[Andrew: Pat Buchanan would agree with me.]
Dave gives him the smackdown on licenses.
So well deserved.
[Andrew: Who would issue licenses?!]
BUT MUH ROADS!!!
[Dave: <lays down lesson on Andrew regarding the true meaning and history of paleo-conservatism>]
[Andrew: State and local governments can be corrupt like the Federal government!]
*sigh* -- this whole discussion is like watching a blind toddler angrily flailing at the dog who is holding him at arm's length like "WTF?"
Nobody said they can't be corrupt. However, the whole
big idea of American constitutionalism is that the Federal government exists in order to create a playing-field for the several State governments, wherein the unanswerable questions of what regulation is best can be answered by simply trying them all, and seeing which ones work. It's not a complicated idea. As soon as you allow the Federal government to transform into a centralized, national Leviathan, however, the entire purpose of the Constitution is mooted, and we're better off having many small, competing governments since this limits the total amount of damage that any one of them can do. If you have slavery in one state,
at least it's only in one state. Right now, we have natioanlly enforced tolerance of the transgender Agenda... thanks, Federal gubbermint!!
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PS: As a post-mortem on where Andrew's reasoning goes wrong (from a Christian standpoint), it is that he is mis-applying the principles of presuppositional reasoning by expanding their scope beyond their true domain. I confess that God is sovereign over
me and
my mind, but I do not imagine that God's sovereignty over
me gives me any right to do something to
you. In fact, quite the opposite, God is not only sovereign over me, he is
also sovereign over you and
therefore, I may not lay a finger upon you! You are God's property, not mine, and so the ultimate offense that is occurring when I violate your property rights is that I am violating
God's property-rights (in you). This is a fairly common mis-application of presuppositional thinking by certain folks within the church (who I will leave unnamed) and this is why I am well-versed in what is going wrong here. Andrew wants to assert God's sovereignty
through himself
onto his fellow-citizen (through the proxy of the State). But that is not how God's kingdom works, at all, as anyone who has read the New Testament should understand. God is sovereign
both over Andrew
and his neighbors and, for this reason, Andrew is bound to the Gospel (since he professes faith) and the Gospel absolutely prohibits Andrew from aggressing against his neighbors, in fact, the calling of the Gospel is that we believers are to
accept (not retaliate against) aggression
from our neighbors if it is God's will for us to do that. This is not to be confused with defense of the innocent, which is a separate matter.
