Posted by David Bernstein:
Kay Hymowitz on Libertarianism and Civil Rights:
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2007_09_09-2007_09_15.shtml#1189652647
Happy New Year to all our Jewish readers. Through the magic of
technology, I'm posting tonight via Powerblogs' "publish later"
function a post I wrote earlier. But in observance of the holiday, I
won't be responding to comments.
Kay Hymowitz [1]has an essay in the Wall Street Journal on
libertarianism, which at times is fair-minded (especially when she
praises "the law professors who write The Volokh Conspiracy"!), and at
times, not so much.
Here's an example of the not-so-much: "To the extent that libertarians
are remembered at all for their role in the civil-rights era, it is
not for marching on Selma but rather for their enthusiastic support of
states' rights and the freedom of white racists to associate with one
another."
Libertarians, it's true, deserve criticism for not being more involved
in opposing Jim Crow. There was a fair amount of moral blindness
there, not uncommon to whites of the era.
But Hymowitz's point is nevertheless exaggerated, at best. Certainly,
libertarians did, and still do, support the right of freedom of
association, but it's rather uncharitable to call this the "freedom of
white racists to associate with one another." The principle of freedom
of association existed and exists independently of the particular
issues surrounding the civil rights movement. Unlike, say,
conservatives, (to whom Hymowitz implicitly and unfavorably compares
libertarians), libertarians did not abandon their belief in freedom of
association once the Title VII passed and discrimination against
blacks was off the table politically. One can argue, therefore,
perhaps somewhat unfairly, that conservatives were less interested in
freedom of association, and more interested in stifling the civil
rights movement. One can't make that argument about libertarians, who
continue to support the rights of everyone from the Nation of Islam to
Utah polygamists to the Boy Scouts to religious "cults" to S&M
fetishists to associate to their hearts content. In short, (some)
conservatives, it seems, supported the "freedom of white racists to
associate with one another." Libertarians supported freedom of
association.
Similarly, since when were libertarians known for their support of
"states' rights?" By far the two most prominent libertarian essays on
civil rights in the early 1960s were Ayn Rand's "Racism" and Milton
Friedman's chapter on discrimination in Capitalism and Freedom.
Neither expresses any support for "states' rights."
In fact, Rand wrote that "[t]he Southern racists' claim of 'states'
rights' is a contradiction in terms: there can be no such thing as the
'right' of some men to violate the rights of others." Friedman, not
surprisingly, thought that school choice was the best solution to the
problem of segregation in schools, both southern and northern. But he
also clearly states that given the choice of "enforced segregation or
enforced integration, I myself would find it impossible not to choose
integration." Enforced integration, of course, was the anti-states'
rights position of the time.
By contrast, reading the leading conservative organ of the time, the
National Review, discussing Jim Crow in the South is enough to make
one sick to one's stomach. Here's a quote from a 1957 editorial:
The central question that emerges--and it is not a parliamentary
question or a question that is answered by merely consulting a
catalog of the rights of American citizens, born Equal--is whether
the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures
as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas
in which it does not predominate numerically? The sobering answer
is Yes--the White community is so entitled because, for the time
being, it is the advanced race.
And here's a quote from an essay by Richard Weaver, a longtime NR
favorite, also in 1957: "'Integration' and 'Communization' are, after
all, pretty closely synonymous. In light of what is happening today,
the first may be little more than a euphemism for the second. It does
not take many steps to get from the 'integrating' of facilities to the
'communizing' of facilities, if the impulse is there." And here's
James Kilpatrick in NR, also in 1957: "the State of Arkansas and Orval
Faubus are wholly in the right; they have acted lawfully; they are
entitled to those great presumptions of the law which underlie the
whole of our judicial tradition."
Admittedly, NR's writers were not uniform in their views, and they
mellowed overall during the early 1960s, but it was still not
exceptional at this time to find frankly racist views expressed by
certain leading conservative thinkers of the era; I haven't looked at
it for a long time, but I remember being pretty shocked when I read
James Burnham's Suicide of the West as a college student, based on
NR's consistent recommendation.
In any event, the point it not to condemn conservatism, or
conservatives, for their past misdeeds. Rather, Hymowitz's article is
in large part a critique of libertarianism for being insufficiently
attuned to the importance of conservative values. She makes some
reasonable points, but her implication that libertarians can learn
from conservatives because libertarians were insensitive to racial
injustice, well, that's a little much.
References
1. http://opinionjournal.com/federation/feature/?id=110010591
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