Although there are several schools of libertarianism, at their core they all uphold liberty as the ultimate principle. And while liberty is necessary in a democratic capitalistic society, it is not sufficient. As the Aphorist notes, “Liberty is not an end, but a means. Whoever mistakes it for an end does not know what to do once he attains it.”
Ironically, Judeo-Christian values helped shape the ethos of democratic capitalism, but since that ethos forbids any religion to rule, those values are now being undermined by the secular world. Hence, we have lost of our “moral center.”
As David Brooks comments in a recent column, “A deadly combination of right-wing free-market fundamentalism and left-wing moral relativism led to a withering away of moral norms and shared codes of decent conduct. We ripped the market out of its moral and social context and let it operate purely by its own rules. We made the market its own priest and confessor. Society came to be seen as an atomized collection of individual economic units pursuing self-interest. Selfishness was normalized. As Steven Pearlstein puts it in his outstanding book, “Can American Capitalism Survive?” ‘Old-fashioned norms around loyalty, cooperation, honesty, equality, fairness and compassion no longer seem to apply in the economic sphere.’ ”
On a deeper plane of Reality, we always embedded in a story and not an “atomized collection of individual economic units.” As such, we need a framework as to how this story is guided.
Michael Novak got me to see this best in his seminal book. He remarks, “Democratic capitalism is more likely to perish through its loss of its indispensable ideas and morals than through weaknesses in its political system or its economic system. In its moral-cultural system lies its weakest link.”
And so, “the system qua system will be moral if two conditions are met. First, the design must include pluralistic institutions which permit both liberty and virtue to prosper. Second, the system of moral and religious culture must instruct individuals in the ways of liberty and virtue. Such a design rests upon an exact diagnosis of human frailty on the one hand, and of the effects, intended and unintended, of institutional arrangements on the other.”
So like most libertarians, I am not arguing for some state-sponsored coercion to bring back moral norms. This would never work in any case. But unlike the libertarian, I do believe we need a culture that is supportive of a moral telos. And that may require some guidance from the state and the social fabric of institutions that can reinvigorate such an ethos.
(Ideally, the state should primarily supplement, and not substitute, for the areas where the social fabric has gone beyond repair. See here, for a good read on this.)
So while I agree with the libertarian that much needs to start from the bottom-up with the individual! — I also do believe, in our tribal and morally conflicted society, that the state (as top-down low-entropy guardian) and non-governmental institutions/associations/affiliations (as bottom-up moral subcultures) need to play roles that are mutually supportive.
While there are no easy answers, the libertarian option is overly permissive to a culture that needs to yield to moral constraints, cultivate a covenant of social trust, and bend towards an inspired telos with a common purpose.