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Do conservative magazines take liberty seriously?
Daniel Klein and Jason Briggeman say maybe not:
Abstract: Conservatives say they are for small government and individual liberty, but a content analysis of leading conservative magazines shows that most have preponderantly failed to take pro-liberty positions on sex, gambling, and drugs. Besides many anti-liberty commissions, the magazines may be criticized for anti-liberty omission—that is, failing to oppose anti-liberty policies. Magazines investigated include National Review, The Weekly Standard, The American Enterprise, and The American Spectator. We find that National Review has had the strongest record on liberty on the issues treated, while the others have preponderantly failed to be pro-liberty or have even been anti-liberty.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on February 25, 2009 at 07:32 AM in Data Source | Permalink
Comments
Abstract: I misstate what conservatives believe and point out that they do not, in fact, believe my misstatement.
Posted by: josh at Feb 25, 2009 7:58:43 AM
I haven't read Dan's article, but I wonder if the hypocritical conservative magazines are worse in this respect than the liberal magazines (which presumably support tighter financial regulation, higher taxes on hedge funds, etc.).
Posted by: Bob Murphy at Feb 25, 2009 8:15:44 AM
So conservative magazines are conservative rather than libertarian.
Who knew?
Posted by: Stuart at Feb 25, 2009 8:33:12 AM
Why does taking liberty seriously mean that liberty is the primary or even only virtue? Conservatives are not libertarians. Dan may lament that, but that does not mean conservatives are inconsistent or hypocritical. Thus they can admire thinkers like Hayek or Von Mises without agreeing with all their positions or broad philosphical premises.
Posted by: nnn at Feb 25, 2009 8:34:30 AM
If in fact those were the only liberties there were, then it's possible the article could be correct.
Absent a consistent, broad-based definition of what constitutes a liberty, it's simply a self-serving, meretricious nonsense.
Posted by: David Hecht at Feb 25, 2009 8:37:42 AM
The conservative movement has two wings - these magazines are (presumably) the non-libertarian "Palinite" side.
Posted by: Neal at Feb 25, 2009 8:45:21 AM
"We find that National Review has had the strongest record on liberty on the issues treated.."
You have got to be kidding me.
Posted by: Sanjiv at Feb 25, 2009 9:05:29 AM
______ say they believe in freedom, but they also want to put murderers in jail! They also fail to complain loudly enough about the oppressive policies of some small island nation in the Pacific!
Posted by: Hei Lun Chan at Feb 25, 2009 9:13:40 AM
This just in, liberal magazines frequently don't support economic liberalization.
Those swedes need to learn the distinctions in American politics of what constitutes conservative, liberal, libertarian, statist, etc.
Posted by: jn at Feb 25, 2009 9:21:12 AM
Edit: I only said swedes because of the .se in the url, four seconds of research shows that they are GMU staff. Nevermind on that part, but it should be even more obvious to someone living in the US what the oddities are that characterize conservative and liberal positions.
Posted by: jn at Feb 25, 2009 9:23:47 AM
I don't think it is news that there are at least two political dimensions: the economic dimension and the social dimension. Arguably, Republicans tend to be economically liberal but socially interventionist, i.e., not liberal. Democrats tend to be socially liberal but economically interventionist, i.e., not liberal. In a two-party system that unfortunately leaves two quadrants empty, one of which is liberal in both dimensions.
Posted by: Oreg at Feb 25, 2009 9:29:03 AM
Equating "conservatism" with "pro-liberty" is simply wrong (that's what libertarianism is for). Conservatism is pro-ECONOMIC liberty but anti-SOCIAL liberties. From this guise, the findings are really not that interesting.
Posted by: Michael at Feb 25, 2009 9:29:34 AM
Sex, gambling and drugs? All three issues have strong moral overtones that could obscure the magazines' true opinions of liberty.
Posted by: Zach at Feb 25, 2009 9:37:58 AM
I don't think it is news that there are at least two political dimensions: the economic dimension and the social dimension. Arguably, Republicans tend to be economically liberal but socially interventionist, i.e., not liberal. Democrats tend to be socially liberal but economically interventionist, i.e., not liberal. In a two-party system that unfortunately leaves two quadrants empty, one of which is liberal in both dimensions.
Posted by: John at Feb 25, 2009 10:31:20 AM
The sad thing about stating something so obvious is that is that the study was paid for with tax dollars. Clearly, colleges get too much government money.
Posted by: kilopy at Feb 25, 2009 10:48:47 AM
Pop Quiz: I'm picking a hotel to stay in for a trip. I want one that doesn't have hookers peddling their wares in the lobby. Does that make me anti-liberty?
Posted by: Silas Barta at Feb 25, 2009 11:51:25 AM
Is this somehow a new idea? The very nature of being 'conservative' means being against free will and openness. Isn't it the classical liberals who were for small government (truly free markets) and the open societies that are needed to foster the small government mentality?
Posted by: Noah at Feb 25, 2009 11:51:31 AM
"We find that National Review has had the strongest record on liberty on the issues treated.."You have got to be kidding me.
They studied drugs. National Review's editorial position remains that the War on Drugs should be ended and marijuana decriminalized. They studied gambling; National Review is not anti-gambling, unlike some of the Right. (This is due to a strong Catholic influence; Catholics are not anti-gambling in general, unlike American Protestants.)
I would put, e.g., gun rights in "individual liberty" as well, rather than economic, personally.
The conservative movement has two wings - these magazines are (presumably) the non-libertarian "Palinite" side.
I don't understand bringing up Palin at all. I'm not particularly a fan of her (though I appreciate greatly that she's taken on the corrupt Republican establishment in Alaska), but I don't understand either the hero worship or attacks on her that have absolutely nothing to do with her actual record. She hasn't done anything of a social conservative nature in Alaska.
Posted by: John Thacker at Feb 25, 2009 11:57:36 AM
Too many libertines masquerade as libertarians.
Posted by: 8 at Feb 25, 2009 12:47:19 PM
Do libertarians take conservative magazines seriously?
The two big (old, legacy, short-for-this-earth, etc.) ideological movements, liberal and conservative, have scuttled much principal and become constituency servers, probably due to their tie-ins with political parties.
Conservative's contituency is largely "traditional" values families. They don't even see gambling, sex, and drugs as liberty. If I went to a lady at my church and asked if she had all the sexual liberty she desired, she would either look at me like I'm an idiot or slap me.
They think they are pro-liberty, they just define the concept differently. Just as liberals look at you funny when you suggest that saving, buyint, and investing in what you choose is part of freedom.
Posted by: Andrew at Feb 25, 2009 1:18:33 PM
Pop Quiz: I'm picking a hotel to stay in for a trip. I want one that doesn't have hookers peddling their wares in the lobby. Does that make me anti-liberty?
No, it's the same difference as between looking for a non-smoking restaurant and trying to pass an ordinance that bans smoking in all restaurants. Only the latter is anti-liberty.
In the absence of government interference, the market would spontaneously segment into hotels with and without hookers (assuming a sufficient base of consumers for each type). Accommodating a variety of preferences is one of the things markets do very well.
Even perfect market segmentation, of course, doesn't prevent people who genuinely *are* anti-liberty from trying to get the hookers out of *everyone else's* hotels too. But that's not the question you asked.
As far as the original post is concerned, though: Duh. Conservatives are conservative. This is news how? Did libertarians actually believe that by politically servicing conservatives for a few decades, they would make the conservatives more libertarian? Sorry, not happening. If you want to change someone's political views you have to engage them in political discourse and convince them. And conservatives highly prize their closed-mindedness and refusal to engage in substantive discourse.
Posted by: Chris at Feb 25, 2009 2:36:59 PM
I don't understand bringing up Palin at all. I'm not particularly a fan of her (though I appreciate greatly that she's taken on the corrupt Republican establishment in Alaska), but I don't understand either the hero worship or attacks on her that have absolutely nothing to do with her actual record. She hasn't done anything of a social conservative nature in Alaska.
It's pertinent because of her beliefs and the sector of the party that rallied to her when McCain chose her for VP candidate.
Posted by: Neal at Feb 25, 2009 3:26:02 PM
"most have preponderantly failed to take pro-liberty positions on sex, gambling, and drugs"
Often, one must look to those that were viewed as radicals in the past, to find the cures for the ills of the present.
http://www.lysanderspooner.org/VicesAreNotCrimes.htm
Posted by: Tom M. at Feb 25, 2009 3:34:59 PM
The distinction between social and economic liberty is not nearly as sharp as it seems at first glance. If your social goals require economic means, economic intervention can have as large an effect as direct social intervention in many cases, if not larger.
Posted by: Jayson Virissimo at Feb 25, 2009 3:37:27 PM
"The very nature of being 'conservative' means being against free will and openness."
"And conservatives highly prize their closed-mindedness and refusal to engage in substantive discourse."
And with those sorts of attitudes and beliefs about conservatives, is it really any wonder that conservatives (to say nothing of the rest of the political spectrum) consider libertarians to be--shall we say--not even worth the powder to blow them to hell?
The only time I ever hear from libertarians is when they're threatening to torpedo some Republican candidate who isn't sufficiently to their liking. The fact that this will inexorably result in the election of a Democrat who--objectively speaking--should be even less to their liking seems...irrelevant to them.
Libertarians are basically like Marxist-Leninists: they believe in a utopia that is fundamentally contrary to several millenia of observed human behavior, and they apparently believe that the way to usher in this utopia is by using tactics that amount to "the worse, the better."
Pfui.
Posted by: David Hecht at Feb 25, 2009 4:21:16 PM
