I often say to my classical liberal friends that language matters, partly in recognition of a profound remark that James Buchanan originally made in 1999 about what it will take to save the ‘soul’ of classical liberalism in the twenty‑first century:
classical liberalism, as a coherent set of principles, has not secured, and cannot secure, sufficient public acceptability when its vocal advocates are limited to … [those whose advocacy finds its origins primarily in the results of scientific inquiry and the dictates of enlightened self‑interest.] … Science and self‑interest, especially as combined, do … lend force to any argument. But a vision of an ideal, over and beyond science and self‑interest, is necessary, and those who profess membership in the club of classical liberals have failed, singularly, in their neglect of this requirement.
I think where the role of language fits in framing the Buchananesque ‘vision thing’ for liberalism comprises two general components.
First, classical liberal proponents need to resuscitate the true meaning of elemental phrases such as ‘liberalism,’ ‘laissez‑faire,’ ‘capitalism,’ ‘justice,’ ‘equality,’ ‘social,’ ‘law’ and others which have been captured or egregiously misrepresented by the socialistic enemies of freedom of all stripes.
Second, classical liberals must find different, innovative ways to represent their critiques of socialism. For example, wherever practicable, I try to prefix public sector financing and provision of education, health and welfare services with the terms ‘conscript,’ ‘conscripted’ or ‘conscription’ to highlight the fact that governments not only force taxpayers into compulsorily financing such functions, but that end consumers are typically forced to accept a one‑size‑fits‑all standard of service provision as determined by political and bureaucratic diktat.
It must be said that language is not the only game in town in efforts to engender a more acceptable vision of liberalism among the general public. Visual images matter, too.
In this context, I was somewhat bemused earlier this week to read a piece on The Punch website, written by Tory Shepherd (see here), in which it stated the Institute of Public Affairs recently nominated an ‘eyebrow‑raising list’ of 75 suggested policy reforms, such as means‑testing Medicare, repealing the carbon tax, removing Section 18C from the Racial Discrimination Act, and so on (to read the IPA Review piece referred to by Shepherd, see here).
But what bemused me was not Shepherd’s short piece, as such, but the image attached to the piece showing three Daleks with the caption ‘Abolish! Abolish! Abolish!’
Unquestionably, the image is intended to paint an impression in reader’s minds that classical liberals are inherently destructive personalities only seeking to exterminate, as it were, the large governments that socialists have worked tirelessly to build up over generations.
There is no question that ‘abolish, abolish, abolish; repeal, repeal, repeal’ will be necessary to reduce the currently extensive, and indeed excessive, size and scale of government in all of its taxing, spending, employing and regulating dimensions. However, it is my view that evoking an image of classical liberals as wantonly destructive Daleks leaving everything behind in waste misleads, largely because it confuses means and ends as to what public policy applications of classical liberal principles are inherently about. (The Punch Dalek image also betrays a lack of understanding by many journalists, and others, of Frederic Bastiat’s fundamental ‘seen’ versus ‘unseen’ distinction.)
At the risk of speaking for others, classical liberals necessarily see the ‘abolish’ and ‘repeal’ aspects of their government rightsizing agenda as a means to the end of enabling the domain of freedom in all of its dimensions to flourish.
Allow me to explain further by way of two counter-images. The creeping socialism of public sector taxing, spending, employing and regulating since the late nineteenth century resembles something not unlike the festering of toxic weeds in a field, which increasingly crowds out every other form of life.
A public policy reform agenda inspired by classical liberal principles would, admittedly, ‘abolish’ and ‘repeal’ the weeds. However this process is intended to allow the healthy and beneficent flowers of freedom to bloom fully, for the benefit of all. Putting it in another way, classical liberals wish to root out the ugly weeds of government coercion allowing the beautiful, glorious flowers of free enterprise and community cohesion to blossom.
The major fallacy of modern socialistic thinking is that it claims that classical liberals want to have their way to reduce or eliminate governmental involvement in areas such as education, health and welfare, leaving behind an imbecilic, unhealthy and poor population lacking those services that, allegedly, only government can provide.
However the lessons of history in the West, and the lived experience of today in many parts of the developing world, reveal that a rich non‑governmental ecology of services, including in education, health and welfare, arise spontaneously (in a field, say) for as long as there exists inherent community demands for such services and that governments desist from substituting their expensive, low‑quality versions of services (weeds) for those alternatively provided by the not‑for‑profit and for‑profit sectors (flowers).
If there is one thing for certain socialists will continue to misrepresent the intellectual basis and practical aspirations of classical liberalism, to trick or dupe others into subscribing to their agenda of economic and social weed‑sowing. Classical liberals will have to expend intense energies to counter such falsehoods, and so not hesitate to use images and art to help make the case that liberty and freedom ought to flourish throughout every realm of human existence.
Disclaimer: As most Catallaxy readers know, I work for the IPA as a Research Fellow.
Julie,
What you have to realise is that Shepherd is a statist in the true sense of the word. there is not a problem that cannot be solved by spending more…just ask her.
She is a carcicature of the typical “journalist”. Wildly progressive, feminist, anti-christian, pro islam, open borders…the list goes on.
In truth she is a blogger of a small mind. She is not a journalist. Here research is biased and poor and in general she is not worth reading. I gave up a year ago.
She would have zero concept of liberalism which I can testify to from first hand experience.
The Punch itself is a joke and she is the chief comedian without the funny attached. It used to have adults and adult themes. It is now just an apologist cesspit of open border advocates, feminists wannabes and statist hacks. Sad. It did have potential and was fun for a while.
The Punch ain’t all bad. It ran an anti-Obama piece earlier this week too!
Reform requires hard decisions to be made.
And use Gillard as a model. I am serious. Criticize her all you like, but she’s not afraid of making big calls. Carbon tax, mining tax, live cattle exports, marine parks, shutting down the trawler, reducing Murray-darling irrigation allotments.
These and other tough decisions made by the Gillard Government have been primarily to shut down or punish various industries in the name of the environment or other worthy causes. But she is decisive.
Liberal leaders who fail to be decisive because they wring their hands worrying about backlash should get out of the game.
The way to neutralise the backlash is to make sure you make the case; sell the idea that reform is needed, and ideally, do it with concrete examples.
That is just another case of demonising the people arguing instead of addressing the argument.
With all the slander thrown at the IPA we know you guys are used to the ad hom crap from 3rd rate statist hacks like Shepherd which no-one reads.
I have no problem with the impression.
The carcenogenic state should be exterminated.
Nonsense. She is a policy coward and idiot who did all of the things you cite because she honestly – and moronically – believed that it would play well in middle bourgeois Australia. She guessed wrong. And that’s not surprising, given the bubble-wrapped life she has lived since being sacked from Slater & Gordon for setting up an illegal slush fund.
And the best way to control weeds is with a selective herbicide.
I didn’t say they were good decisions. Just that they were decisions. My point was, Gillard can get in there and make all the hare-brained decisions she likes, what are other leaders so afraid of?
Yes, that’s because in Gillard land, closing down industries doesn’t matter. She bought the Green maxim that you can protect the environment without any real cost to humans.
I think CL’s point was that they weren’t “big” decisions, merely popularity-seeking ones (which turn out not to be very popular, as it happens).
And a fair point it was too.
Populism should be separated from non-populist reform.
I think I get what you’re on about, and it’s what I’ve been saying for a long time now. Those of us on the classical liberal side need to market ourselves a helluva lot better.
For all their anti-capitalism,, socialists and miscellaneous big government types are damn good at using the very capitalistic tool of marketing to further their causes.
We also let them get away with controlling the agenda by using language that suits their cause. Think of ‘climate denier’ as one term – clearly intended to equate any skeptic with Holocaust denialism.
Another one is ‘progressive’ versus ‘reactionary’ or ‘conservative’. Progressive sounds sooo good, doesn’t it?
We can and should fight back. Tell everyone that Margaret Thatcher was the most genuinely progressive leader of the 20th century.
I agree we need to win back terms like ‘justice’ and ‘freedom’.
At the moment – sadly – ‘freedom’ (and particularly ‘free speech’) doesn’t do it for people.
But I don’t think Julie Novak’s suggestions are going to work. ‘Conscripted’ medicare? Who under fifty has even a vague idea what that might mean?
Rather than getting hot under the collar in our little libertarian group, we need to go out and ask normal people what inspires and excites them – and what words are meaningful to them.
To be mentioned on the Catallaxy blog would surely be the apex of Tory Shepherd’s career.
I’m not kidding. The very fact that something she’d authored was noted and disparaged by a Catallaxy contributor should be considered a major intellectual achievement for her. She’s that dim a bulb.
Apart from that, she’s the leading hand at The Punch, the sheltered workshop for News journos.
Excellent piece.
Prudent deployment of words and images is critical, especially for classical liberals who face such hostility in the public forum. Remember John Howard’s “incentivation”, which sank without trace after a round of msm guffaws. Not that I hold it against him – on the contrary, he at least saw the need to repitch things and had a go at it.
Along this line, I’ve always thought the word “privatisation” sends the wrong message. For starters, it sounds as if one is taking something which is out there, in public view and control, and making it secret (“private”) and unaccountable, all for someone’s “private” gain – whereas of course in a real sense the very opposite is happening. Someone needs to come up with another word, and not “denationalization”, which is even worse.
Frederic Bastiat, where are you when we need you?
In the climate change debate, I as a skeptic* like to use the term “global defrosting” to describe the gentle thawing-out that’s been going on since the end of the Little Ice Age a few hundred years back.
(Of course I’m a skeptic. UWA Professor Lewandowsky has just proven all free marketeers are unthinking denialists in a piece of gold standard research which is gaining attention all over the internet.)
Wow.
I am impressed that some sensible people read the punch.
The comments are overwhelmingly positive besides one or two trolls.
Only a sick minded person would object to free speech or prosperity for all that free markets and civil liberties bring.
If you control the language, you can control the culture, methinks.
Trouble is, I think that folks have swallowed and digested the socialist pill now. Many people have reached the ‘kill his goat’ stage of thinking.
We home educated our kids, and when discussing this choice with others, there were quite a few that just seemed to resent the idea of different children receiving a different education. They felt much more comfortable with the idea of a sausage-machine education – diversity was a worry to them. How did this kind of thinking grow up in the generation that sang “Little Boxes“?
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While I agree with the sentiment, we have to be careful not to come across as to rabidly anti-government, otherwise people will think we are anarchists and/or survivalist gun nut types.
I prefer the angle of opposing the nanny state – arguing that government might mean well, but rarely get these things right and that their role shouldn’t be to protect people from themselves at the cost of freedom.
Trouble is the cigarette companies have hijacked that slogan with their anti-plain packaging ads. While I agree with what they’re saying, allowing them to control the agenda has mean that, in the eyes of Joe Public, if you’re a libertarian, you must support evil corporations giving little kiddies cancer.
It’s probably set our cause back a fair way.
I agree that we have to be careful how we word our protest, but I listened to an interview with Rand Paul and he was retelling some of the stories from his book. There are people in jail for years because they filled in ‘puddles’ on their property (EPA deciding they were wetlands). If this is true (and I assume Rand would be pretty careful with his facts), then we just might have to end up siding with those survivalist, gun-nut types some day.
We need to push that as the norm because the norm is Nicola fucking Roxon.
Ellen,
I’ve seen the same thing on Stossel.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlfvnOCeAjU&feature=related
That’s ‘Everything Illegal” but check out “They Can’t Do That Can They?” and “No, They Can’t”