Category: Politics, Power, and Governance

PETER BOETTKE ON THE REVEAL: PARTISAN CHEERLEADERS NOT SOCIAL CRITICS

Observation — journalists and other intellectuals freaking out over the outcome of the election reveal that they were never really “students” of society, or even “social critics”, but were instead partisan cheerleaders. Also, it appears that many are completely incapable of asking themselves whether it might be possible that the consensus of the progressive elite in public policy is perhaps neither as accurately descriptive of how the world works or as normatively appealing as they sincerely believe. Rather than critical self-reflection we see outrage, blame, and emotional expression of pain.

There are many reasons to be concerned, but the responsible response from intellectuals is to think through rationally, to ask what I was wrong about, try to force yourself to pass an ideological Turning Test, and to recognize that if there are institutional problems the answer requires institutional solutions.

Liberal democratic traditions do not work based on the “good” and the “wise” being in power, but were designed so that “bad men can do least harm”. Let’s hope those liberal democratic institutions are still in operation after so many years of sustained critique by progressive intellectuals.

Democratic governance (liberalism) is a different beast from bureaucratic governance (progressivism). Bureaucratic governance requires trained experts immune from democratic checks and balances, democratic governance requires responsible citizens and institutions that empower as well as constrain. – Peter Boettke

(NOTE: I would say they are all engaged in customer seeking – a long form of rent seeking. The interesting question not discussed is that because we humans make use of law, religion, and market, but we choose a dominant bias with which to employ them in our social orders, yielding:

(1)kin/law,

(2)cult/religion, or

(3)state/corporatism;

depending upon homogeneity or heterogeneity of the population; to overcome resistance to the creation and preservation of commons – so that why is it that one bias in the order is always better off than the others? And why does not social-criticism and intellectual-decidability limit itself to the order desired by the population? of course, we know the answer is genetic in both desire for construct, and in the expression of that desire for construct as a will to power.

I frequently ask the same question: why do economists vary in bias of decidability? for the same reason: austrian-social-science and rule of law preserving sovereignty, freshwater limits of rule of law as a commons against harm, and saltwater abandonment of rule of law in favor of preferential discretion in order to acquire customers for the state.

If it isn’t clear to you, then the answer is this: anything other than kin/law is nothing more than an act of war by slower means. – CD )