Those who favor limited government shouldn’t ignore the virtue factor.
American politics is awhirl. Donald Trump’s transformation of the right is the clearest sign of it. But the left is reborn, too—in outraged opposition to the new president and with the example of Bernie Sanders pointing his young admirers toward democratic socialism. Any ideology that fails to adapt to this radically altered environment will die. Can libertarianism, a philosophy at odds with Sanders’s democratic socialism as well as Trump’s populist nationalism, survive?
Its formulas are well known: gun rights and gay rights; lower taxes and less military spending; civil liberties and maximum market freedom; open immigration and free trade. To critics, all this adds up to an amoral, if not immoral, philosophy. But in the pages of Reason last summer, two of libertarianism’s leading minds set out to refute that impression and change the way the heirs to classical liberalism think about themselves. William Ruger, the Charles Koch Institute’s vice president of research and policy, and Jason Sorens, founder of the Free State Project, introduced the concept of “virtue libertarianism.”
The most dogged defenders of the right to do as one pleases—to buy and sell freely, even drugs and sex—must still draw and act upon moral distinctions, they argued. Not everything that is uncoerced is good. Virtue is not only right in itself but is an indispensable support to a free society. Vice, by contrast, breeds dependence and servility: “we have set up for failure those who, for whatever reason, suffer from greater impulsiveness, hedonism, laziness, hopelessness, or greed,” Ruger and Sorens warned. Moral interventions—not government interventions, but judicious praise and blame—are essential to the health of society.
“To respect others, we must act beneficently and generously toward them, not just refrain from taking their freedom,” Sorens and Ruger contend:
In some cases, this means providing approbation and disapproval of certain choices to foster a culture consistent with human flourishing and a free society. For example, we should applaud those who pursue excellence in education, the arts, and sport as well as those who give their time and money to help their local communities. We should also not be afraid to hold up life-long committed marriage as an ideal for those with children. Harder in our current age, but equally important for a good society, we should not shy away from expressing disapproval of rent-seekers (those who demand special government privileges), those who harm themselves and their families through habitual intoxication or gambling, and those who idle away their time and talents in frivolous pursuits. … if someone wants to drink his life away, that should be legal but strongly disapproved or even shunned.
This is a libertarian alternative to tackling moral and social problems through government. “Prohibitions, SWAT raids, and prison terms for non-violent criminals are all poor ways to grow a healthy moral ecology. Society has better, more-just alternatives.” The same strictures all libertarians apply to the use of formal power are upheld by virtue libertarians—but the moral pressure that others eschew, they employ. The goal of virtue libertarianism is to regulate society by manners and morals, as far as possible, rather than the blunt instrument of law.
