Communitarian vs. Libertarian
[Caleb Stegall  02/24 10:00 AM]

Prof. Fox write me again:

Leave aside for the moment that Jonah is completely dismissing the possibility that the articulation of a "common good" — on any level — might actually involve some democratic participation and representation, thus resulting in something more than just an arbitrary "picking." (Though that's a pretty revealing glimpse into his very estimation of human ordering in the first place.) Let's just address his libertarian-communitarian distinction. There is some good sense to his argument, but finding it requires a lot more thought than this comment of his betrays.

Is communitarianism—in this case, meaning a concern for consensus, identity, authority, and the pursuit of a common good—good or bad? If it's good, then why do you want libertarianism on the federal level; wouldn't you rather try to bring forth whatever kind of communtarian feeling is possible on any level of government? Obviously a national body can't be communitarian or republican or concerned with a common good in the same way a small locality can — that's an understanding and an argument which goes all the way back to the Federalists and Anti-Federalists. But why does that mean such language should be wholly abandoned once one leaves the local level, save only for matters of "general welfare"? (Was fighting a war to end slave power in the South a matter of the "general welfare"?) Or maybe because Jonah actually thinks communitarianism is bad? That it infringes upon his bedrock individualism? If so, why would he want localities to be communitarian at all? Sure, national governments can oppress people terribly, but it's not like local communities can't be pretty oppressive as well. Maybe Jonah thinks communitarianism is a necessary evil, that we need it to form the sort of civic virtues and habits of the heart that make a libertarian society sustainable? In which case, we would want communitarian communities, so as to provide citizens like Jonah the opportunity to escape from such when they grow up, so they can enjoy "real" freedom. But that, of course, raises the question of how to keep said local communities going from generation to generation, if the real pay-off of American society is to be able to escape into a wider, more libertarian polity. And moreover, if that's the way he thinks, then shouldn't he have reluctantly written that local communities should only be as communitarian "as necessary," rather than saying they should be as communitarian "as feasible"?

Basically, Jonah here seems to be tossing the crunchy cons, the philosophical conservatives, the communitarians, some sort of bone, praising what they make possible locally, but insisting that if the common good ever aspires beyond that level (and wait — what about all the intermediate levels in between: states, regions, etc.?), then it should be actively discouraged; when it comes to the nation, we want libertarianism. The only way to make this coherent is to argue that the very meaning of "community" and "the common good" fundamentally alters when it is expanded beyond a particular level, such that the harms associated with it start dramatically outweighing the benefits. That's a valid argument to make. But it needs to be made, rather than simply asserted as Jonah does here as if it's some sort of obvious, prudent truism.