Isegoria

Flying with Libertarian Hawks addresses the war in Iraq, giving arguments both pro and con:

And covenants, without the sword, are but words and of no strength to secure a man at all.
— Thomas Hobbes

The libertarian hawk takes her cues from Hobbes, not Locke, as the spaces mostly untouched by globalization are, in her view, like a state-of-nature. She sees threats that organize themselves in the shadows beyond civilization; operating, no less, in an age of deadly weapons proliferation. She fears the world’s great, but nimble powers coalescing into a slothful and ineffectual global body — where the toughest decisions of life and limb must be made in committee. She understands that freedom does not drop like manna from heaven, but is earned drop-for-drop and coin-for-coin by the sacrifices of blood and treasure.

Con:

Which brings me to what could be the best criticism against the current conflict in Iraq. Let’s call it the Hayekian Argument. It can be summarized in the following way: a complex order, like a country, is very difficult to plan or impose upon a people. It emerges, pace Hayek, “spontaneously.” Under certain institutional conditions backed by years of tradition and certain entrenched cultural mores, civil societies can form. But these conditions simply are not in place in Iraq, so we may have gotten ourselves into a? (OK, here goes) ? a quagmire.

Posted in Policy, War | No Comments »