Obviously I disagree with Mark Olson’s belief that I misinterpreted his earlier post, but that’s not worth discussing so much as another comment he makes here. The government, he argues, has a “legitimate interest” in “continu[ing] to exist.” He literally says that “all citizens” have an interest in seeing “that their Nation/polis continue to exist,” but it’s clear from the context that he is not talking about the collective “interests” of citizens, but of the specific “interest” of the “nation/polis” itself: “Stable marriage,” he writes, is “distinctly a thing that needs ‘defense’...in the state’s interest.”
This is interesting because this really is the very center of the dispute between libertarians and conservatives. Does the state itself have rights valid against its own citizens, to act for its own preservation at their expense? Conservatives say yes, libertarians say no. I addressed this point at length in a series of posts some years ago, (1,2,3,4,5) but let’s briefly consider the proposition.
First, the libertarian would argue that the state itself has no “interests” or rights: it is simply a group of individuals who themselves have interests or rights. To say that the “state” may act to defend “itself” from the innovative or destructive acts of individuals is really only saying that a group of individuals who believe X have the legitimate right to limit the freedom of those who believe in not-X. The libertarian objects to the reification of the state in this way. It is logically problematic, if nothing else, since it seems to just assume the existence of the state and of its interests, without giving a ground-up account (or what Nozick in AS&U calls an “invisible hand explanation”) of the origin of these interests. The state and its interests in the libertarian account can be explained in terms of something else; in the conservative account, they seem simply to be assumed ad hoc.
Second, if the state has rights of self-preservation valid against individuals who would like to act in a manner contrary to the status quo, where does this end? Obviously the worst sorts of tyrannies are built on the assumption that the state has the right to preserve itself against those who would challenge the prevailing social order. May the state, for example, force people to have children, as the polis of Sparta did? The libertarian account has a clear stopping point: the rights of the individual being the source and definition of legitimate state interests (“to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men...”), the state cannot go further than that (“whenever government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it…”).
Third, and closely related, is the vagueness of the proposition. What specifically qualify as “interests” which the state may legitimately protect? May the state only enforce those institutions that have some direct economic impact on the preservation of that state—so that, for example, preserving the jobs of buggywhip makers against the disruption caused by the invention of the automobile would not qualify, but preserving the jobs of American car makers against competition by Japanese car makers would? Even this degree of specificity does not work, given that many Japanese cars are made in the United States. A government’s interests—let alone “society’s” interests!—are simply too complicated to even assess for purposes of later enforcment against citizens. This fact is complicated still further by the fact that the state would seem to also have an interest in fostering some degree of dynamism! So the state would then have to be in the business not only of stifling allegedly destructive change, but of simultaneously encouraging allegedly helpful change as well. This would be such a complicated matter that, again, it would be extremely easy to slide into tyranny.
This leads to the fourth objection: the proposition seems to commit the fallacy Thomas Paine identified in the first line of Common Sense: it confuses “the state” with “society.” The state is not society*: it is a social institution, one among many that exist within society. But it is not responsible for, or the guardian of, society.
Finally, into what objective hierarchy of values does this proposition fit? Assuming the state has a “legitimate interest” in preserving institutions “it” considers central, does that include preserving those institutions which are patently contrary to reality? May the state preserve itself at the cost of a “noble lie”? Take the abuse of women in Middle Eastern societies. Institutions like genital mutilation, honor killings, censorship, beatings, stonings and the like are all considered by many to be central to such societies. Do Middle Eastern states have a legitimate right to preserve those institutions against those who would seek to alter or to abolish them? And if the answer is no—which it is—then how do we make that decision? It must be by reference to some objective (i.e., not merely conventional) standard of good and evil. But if we judge politics by standards other than conventional, then the state cannot have a right to enforce conventional standards simply because they are conventional (which seems to me to be an appropriate way of rephrasing the proposition in dispute).
* Conservatives are fond of using the word “polis” to blur this distinction, but in my opinion that word is simply never appropriate when applied to the United States. The U.S. has never had poleis, or anything properly analogous to them. The closest thing might be the nineteenth century religious communities like Amana or the Shaker communities or early Salt Lake City, but these too don’t count since they were very explicitly social compact societies. I don’t think this is a minor distinction. A polis is not a social compact, or at least, not in the way that American cities have always been. A polis was politically independent, and to a degree culturally independent as well: it consisted of the religious, cultural, economic as well as political institutions in which the Greeks lived. It had its own patron god or goddess. It was the source of nomoi and not just of laws. No United States city has ever had these features.
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