[I]t is my understanding that many of your prominent Mises Institute colleagues have expressed far more socially conservative views than I have, staunchly defending the "traditional family." You certainly wouldn't condemn them all as "sexists," would you?
Roderick Long is remarkably polite, especially with people he interacts with in person on a regular basis (for obvious, prudential reasons), and to a lesser extent with people associated with the Mises Institute and those who write articles and blogposts for Lew Rockwell's website. Roderick does occasionally call a person sexist, but usually he reserves this sort of name calling for people he is unlikely to ever interact with directly; celebrities, for instance. He outlined some reasons for hating the sin and not the sinner here:
I don’t mean to be projecting a holier-than-thou tone here. I’ve argued elsewhere that libertarians shouldn’t assume an air of moral superiority over statists – first, because statism is “a form of spiritual blindness that can, and does, infect even those who are largely sincere and well-meaning,” and second, because a commitment to libertarianism is only part of virtue, not the whole of it, so that even if we “score higher” than our statist neighbours on this point, that’s no guarantee that they don’t outscore us on others. These points apply, mutatis mutandis, to the present issue. I certainly don’t claim that those who defend traditional sex roles are evil! But that traditional sex roles themselves are evil – and evil for much the same reasons that statism is evil – I continue to maintain.
Roderick has indeed condemned certain socially conservative views which defend traditional gender roles as sexist. The quote excerpted above comes from an exchange between him and Brad Edmonds, a columnist who wrote some socially conservative, sexist articles for Lew Rockwell's website. In the essay Roderick wrote with Charles Johnson (who you might know as Rad Geek) linked to above, he criticizes the views of one of his Mises Institute colleague, Hans-Hermann Hoppe:
Male supremacy has its own ideological rationalizations, its own propaganda, its own expropriation, and its own violent enforcement; although it is often in league with the male-dominated state, male violence is older, more invasive, closer to home, and harder to escape than most forms of statism. This means that libertarians who are serious about ending all forms of political violence need to fight, at least, a two-front war, against both statism and male supremacy; an adequate discussion of what this insight means for libertarian politics requires much more time than we have here. But it is important to note how the writings of some libertarians on the family—especially those who identify with the “paleolibertarian” political and cultural project—have amounted to little more than outright denial of male violence. Hans Hermann Hoppe, for example, goes so far as to indulge in the conservative fantasy that the traditional “internal layers and ranks of authority” in the family are actually bulwarks of “resistance vis-a-vis the state” (Secession, the State, and the Immigration Problem § IV). The “ranks of authority” in the family, of course, means the pater familias, and whether father-right is, at a given moment in history, mostly in league with or somewhat at odds with state prerogatives, the fact that it is so widely enforced by the threat or practice of male violence means that trying to enlist it in the struggle against statism is much like enlisting Stalin in order to fight Hitler—no matter who wins, we all lose.
Here he criticizes the views of another LRC columnist, Larry Beane, and here he criticizes Mr. Libertarian himself, Murray Rothbard.
I am not as polite as Roderick for a variety of reasons, some personal, some tactical. Sometimes goals are better achieved not by convincing flies with the honey of reason, but by shaming them with vinegar of social ostricism. One of the great moral advances of our society over the last few decades is that anti-black racial bigotry is no longer acceptable behavior among polite company. There are holdouts, but social pressure isolates and marginalizes them, and this is a good thing. In order to maintain this social pressure, people need to be reminded that this kind of behaviour is unacceptable, and one way to do that is by directly shunning them - that is, by calling bigotry for what it is directly, and sometimes calling a bigot a bigot. The wisdom of this tactic depends on the context: Whether or not someone with bigoted views is open to reason, whether the view is held intentionally and knowlingly, how far society has already advanced in excluding that view from polite discourse.
Most of the criticism you've received so far in this thread is from a marketing perspective: If you are curious why fewer women than men identify as libertarian, you might want to consider the possibility that many women are turned off by those who suggest that women are too emotional or not as logical as men, or insulted by those who suggest that women should become libertarian in order to preserve the sanity of libertarian men, or offended by the notion that you want to control their uteruses. Try to put yourself in a woman's shoes and ask yourself if you would be attracted to a political movement or ideology that insulted your intelligence as a man, implied that a good reason to join was not merely the inherent truth or justice of the cause but the utility you would provide to existing (possibly not sane?) members, and wanted to control what you did with your penis because every sperm is sacred.
Tough sell?
Submitted by Micha Ghertner (not verified) on August 31, 2009.
Matt,
Roderick Long is remarkably polite, especially with people he interacts with in person on a regular basis (for obvious, prudential reasons), and to a lesser extent with people associated with the Mises Institute and those who write articles and blogposts for Lew Rockwell's website. Roderick does occasionally call a person sexist, but usually he reserves this sort of name calling for people he is unlikely to ever interact with directly; celebrities, for instance. He outlined some reasons for hating the sin and not the sinner here:
Roderick has indeed condemned certain socially conservative views which defend traditional gender roles as sexist. The quote excerpted above comes from an exchange between him and Brad Edmonds, a columnist who wrote some socially conservative, sexist articles for Lew Rockwell's website. In the essay Roderick wrote with Charles Johnson (who you might know as Rad Geek) linked to above, he criticizes the views of one of his Mises Institute colleague, Hans-Hermann Hoppe:
Here he criticizes the views of another LRC columnist, Larry Beane, and here he criticizes Mr. Libertarian himself, Murray Rothbard.
I am not as polite as Roderick for a variety of reasons, some personal, some tactical. Sometimes goals are better achieved not by convincing flies with the honey of reason, but by shaming them with vinegar of social ostricism. One of the great moral advances of our society over the last few decades is that anti-black racial bigotry is no longer acceptable behavior among polite company. There are holdouts, but social pressure isolates and marginalizes them, and this is a good thing. In order to maintain this social pressure, people need to be reminded that this kind of behaviour is unacceptable, and one way to do that is by directly shunning them - that is, by calling bigotry for what it is directly, and sometimes calling a bigot a bigot. The wisdom of this tactic depends on the context: Whether or not someone with bigoted views is open to reason, whether the view is held intentionally and knowlingly, how far society has already advanced in excluding that view from polite discourse.
Most of the criticism you've received so far in this thread is from a marketing perspective: If you are curious why fewer women than men identify as libertarian, you might want to consider the possibility that many women are turned off by those who suggest that women are too emotional or not as logical as men, or insulted by those who suggest that women should become libertarian in order to preserve the sanity of libertarian men, or offended by the notion that you want to control their uteruses. Try to put yourself in a woman's shoes and ask yourself if you would be attracted to a political movement or ideology that insulted your intelligence as a man, implied that a good reason to join was not merely the inherent truth or justice of the cause but the utility you would provide to existing (possibly not sane?) members, and wanted to control what you did with your penis because every sperm is sacred.
Tough sell?