I know that Daniel is only trying to soften his blows, but really, I don’t think my argument can be “innocuous” and “unfortunate” at the same time. Come on, tell me what you really think!
I can appreciate how it seems that liberals are always in the business of telling people what rights they do and don’t have. But, in my view, this is unavoidable. Everyone does it, even libertarians. Does anyone (anyone serious, that is) really think there is nothing, absolutely nothing, the state should provide for people or protect them from? If not, we inevitably get into the muck of trying to determine what those things are. And any time someone takes a stand on what those things are or ought to be, you could accuse him or her of saying, “various state provisions are a liberty/civil right/thing of justice/commandment, and thus we must be brook no opposition!” It’s a big fat straw man.
Now, I appreciate Daniel’s further elaboration of his support for federalism, but I am, predictably, not satisfied. I love Brandeis more than is reasonable, but I suspect that his idea of states as “laboratories of democracy” had more to do with testing out various methods of economic regulation and social provision than with finding a way for “social change to happen with as little state intervention as possible.” Of course, Daniel can create a new meaning for the phrase if he likes. But I have to wonder, again, whether there’s really anything to be said for the idea of a stateless solution to marriage, and whether one even exists. The state is going to endorse and enforce someone’s personal morality at some point or another. The question is, Whose?
Personally, I’m on board with the idea that the state should give out marriage licenses to all (or at least to all human, adult, two-person relationships, but let’s not go there right now), and leave religious ceremonies to those who want them, completely separating the state from everything but “civil” marriage. But even this is perhaps not a true libertarian position. After all, what gives the state the right to hand out marriage licenses at all? As Daniel says, “doesn’t it make sense to abolish privileges rather than make everyone a dependent of the state?” I sense that Daniel is trying to make a broader point about liberalism, but let’s stick to the issue we started with. No, it does not make sense to abolish the privileges of marriage rather than extend them to more people. See, liberals and other supporters of gay marriage like marriage. This is what conservatives, and apparently libertarian-anarchists, never really understand. We don’t want to abolish the institution; we want to spread it. It is good for families, it is good for kids, and it is good for society. We don’t think it will be made worse by getting some more people involved, which is to say we don’t think gay marriages are any less good for families, kids, and society.
As for Daniel’s little history lesson, I don’t need to think liberty was never a bigger concern than equality in order to think that it might not be in 21st century America. I can think it was a good thing to get rid of feudalism and the divine right of kings, and also think that maybe it isn’t such a good thing for people’s life chances to be largely determined by how much money their parents made. But all of this supposes that I agree with the assumption that there is some inherent conflict between liberty and equality. But of course that is silly. Freeing the slaves and the serfs, decreasing the power of noblemen and increasing the power of everyone else, de-segregating the Jim Crow South — these great advances surely increased both liberty and equality.
And yes, liberty does come out of planning committees. Liberty can, in fact, be increased by state action. At this point, if only because the phrase “planning committee” reminded me, I’d like to block-quote from an article in the Boston Review, for which I’ll be interning this summer. Tell me if any of this sounds familiar.
Friedman says “equality comes sharply into conflict with freedom; one must choose. One cannot be both an egalitarian . . . and a liberal.” We disagree. We think it is right to be both, and that it is possible to be both, without being naïve.
And that is partly because we have a different picture of politics. We think that politics is more than an unfortunate necessity required by our inability to live together without killing each other. We think it is, can be anyway, an arena in which we work out and pursue, sometimes with notable success, large and constructive purposes. When I think about the history of democracy in the past century, and think about its greatest achievements of domestic policy, the areas of real moral progress, I think of civil rights, women’s equality, and the halting fight against a class society. With respect, classical liberals were in the rearguard in every one of these struggles. And for a simple reason: in each case, the struggle depended on a willingness to fight against inequality, subordination, exclusion through political means, through the dread state. And if you mix your classical liberal values with the classically conservative predisposition to think that politics is at best futile, at bad perverse, at worst risks what is most fundamental, then you will always celebrate these gains when the fight is over: always at the after party, inconspicuous at the main event, and never on the planning committee.