Happy Thanksgiving!

In"Rethinking Libertarian Minimalism" and on his blog (starting here), Ryan Sager has been lashing out at libertarians because they have, he says, an"inability" to say anything"serious ... regarding foreign policy. Pacifism combined with isolationism, as preached more or less by many at Cato and Reason is neither the popular nor the correct answer to the threat of global terrorism. And hunting Osama bin Laden, as was the Kerry solution, is, frankly, just an idiotic personalization of a phenomenon that ultimately, make no mistake about it, amounts to a historic clash of civilizations," he writes.

One of the problems, of course,"facile" or not, is that there is no such thing as a monolithic libertarian position on foreign policy; we can argue all we want about who is the"true" libertarian in all this, but that debate is fast becoming religious (like who is the true"Christian" among scores of Christian sects). Truth is, there has been an amazingly diverse response from libertarian writers on the subject of the war. Some of us favored the Afghanistan campaign, some stopped short at Iraq, while others supported the Iraq war and would like to move on to Iran and Saudi Arabia. Still others have opposed U.S. government actions anywhere, suggesting Letters of Marque as an alternative. This is evidence, I think, that a serious debate has been taking place for several years now among libertarians about the best course of action.

I can only speak for myself. In this"historic clash of civilizations," one thing is important: If one is not to merely oppose the dark forces in the Middle East, but triumph over them, one must not adopt and practice the very policies that emboldened these forces to begin with. It is not a serious solution to the long-term problem of Islamic terrrorism if libertarians merely mimic the neoconservatives, providing them with an ideological apologia for their"muscular foreign policy" goals.

True enough, Sager understands that"those of us who espouse a philosophy of limited government domestically" have faced difficulties in the post-9/11 era. But that's because most of us who espouse this philosophy understand the intimate relationship between the growth of an interventionist policy abroad and one at home. That doesn't mean that we're"mired in a pre-9/11 mindset"; what it does mean is that we are capable of applying a classical liberal mindset to today's problems in a way that seeks not to duplicate the same policy mistakes, which formed part of the context for the 9/11 catastrophe.

Sager is correct to emphasize various areas requiring deeper discussion, specifically on the question of how to encourage liberalization and democratic-liberal nation-building in deeply illiberal Middle Eastern societies. He asks:"What are the prerequisites of a free society? How can they be fostered? How can we turn over power to the people we've liberated?" I've been asking, and answering, similar questions from the beginning; one of the reasons I opposed the invasion and occupation of Iraq is that I opposed the neocon belief that it is possible to simply institute democracy without certain cultural prerequisites.

One more thing needs to be addressed here. Though Sager is willing to concede that"[p]eople of good will and good judgment disagreed about the Iraq invasion before it happened, and [that] we all have our various assessments of how it has turned out so far," he is urging libertarians to come up with a good way to fix the problem. He seems to suggest, however, that antiwar libertarians are simply"sounding more and more like Michael Moore," not quite able to truly understand the nature of this war as a" clash of civilizations."

Justin Raimondo had something valuable to say about this issue in last week's antiwar.com column,"Why We Fight," where he:

underscore[s] the self-undermining mechanism of the effort to"export democracy," as one neoconservative publicist puts it. The process of spreading a"global democratic revolution" – in the president's words – not only subverts democracy at home, but also discredits and defeats it throughout the Middle East. If"democracy" and even"free markets" are represented by foreign invaders and their local quislings, then sheer pride and instinctual nationalism will give rise to a rebellion of illiberalism. ...

The outright barbarism of the defenders of Fallujah – the beheadings, the kidnappings, the suicide bombings – is the work of a"resistance" that is in no way admirable. The various groups that have arisen in opposition to the American occupation – the Islamists, the neo-Ba'athists, the radical Shi'ites, etc. – are all of them totalitarians of either a religious or secular cast, with the former rapidly gaining the upper hand. No American peace movement worthy of the name can give them any kind of support: they are not the"minutemen" of Michael Moore's imagination, unless one views Patrick Henry as some sort of improbable early American ayatollah – which he was most certainly not. ...

Today, we oppose the occupation of Iraq, without granting the Islamist-Ba'athist resistance a single iota of moral or political legitimacy. ... Yes, it is understandable that an occupied people will fight back: but totalitarians feed on legitimate grievances, and often come to power because they seem to address them. The tragedy and irony of our war of"liberation" in Iraq is that it is empowering the very forces – and, make no mistake about it, they are dark forces – we seek to defeat. ...

Yes, we are at war with radical Islam. However, that struggle does not require the democratic"transformation" of the Middle East, but rather a recognition of the reality that we are fighting an asymmetric war against a worldwide guerrilla insurgency, not a traditional-style battle to conquer and occupy nation-states – a battle that must be won politically, primarily, and conducted militarily only in a precise and strictly limited sense. Our strategy must be to isolate the Islamists, and that requires the renunciation, not the escalation, of the foreign policy that gave birth to the jihadists in the first place.

I have some differences with Raimondo in this excerpt. I don't believe, for example, that U.S. foreign policy gave birth to the jihadists but it certainly emboldened them. Of course, I should add that some kind of cultural transformation in the Middle East will be necessary in the long-run; but, with Raimondo, I believe that it won't be achieved by the forced grafting of"democratic" institutions onto cultures that reject them. In any event, my point here is a simple one: even Justin Raimondo, whom I take to be among the most profoundly opposed to U.S. intervention abroad, is under no illusions about the dangers of radical Islam.

Sager is worried that if libertarians don't get with the prowar program,"we risk utter irrelevancy in a post-9/11 world with a tendency toward increasing state power." Alas, opposing that increase, and fighting the right battle against the forces of oppression at home and abroad, is more relevant than ever. And though relentless military battles will need to be fought, the primary battle remains philosophical and cultural. Armed with an understanding of the nature of freedom, its preconditions and effects, armed also with an understanding of the unintended consequences of political action, most libertarians are well-armed indeed to fight this battle.

Dr. Sciabarra is right. But it's not quite a matter of hatching a plausible cultural-change game plan. Brad Bird and the other folks who made"The Incredibles" tapped a seemingly endless supply of imagination and talent, and comedic timing, and brio, along with whatever other virtues had to be enlisted to produce such swell stuff.

But maybe nurturing our own talents and potential is the ultimate secret ingredient of cultural and ideological change anyway. If we believe in certain things, it's going to show up in our expressive work. But all-important is making sure the work is good, and good as a matter of personal pride and independent vision. And as we see in"The Incredibles,""society" tends to be better off, too, when the individual aspires to admirable heights for his own sake.

There's a reason why this is important. I have been arguing here and elsewhere that politics is not a primary, but an effect of certain extra-political (social and cultural) preconditions. It's one of the reasons I have been profoundly critical of the neoconservative project to bring"democracy" to the Middle East, without those necessary preconditions in place. But that same principle is operative in the United States, where any attempt to change political institutions must proceed on certain social and cultural preconditions. That's why the"Culture War" is so important: because the warriors are arguing over the nature of those preconditions. Are they secular? Are they religious? Are they some mixture thereof? Either or neither, one or both, the point is that the preconditions need to be understood, analyzed, discussed, and debated.

But what must also be emphasized is this: Only the most constructivist among us could possibly believe that cultural change is simply implemented like some Five Year Plan. If we want to change an ideological culture, for example, there will be a delicate exchange among our intended actions (producing books, columns, novels, artworks, etc.) and the unintended consequences of those actions. Ultimately, Brown is right: Each of us needs to nurture our own talents and potentials, not necessarily because we wish to be cultural warriors, but because we have convictions that we wish to express. And if enough of us share those convictions, it will be possible to continue creating and extending a subculture of freedom that can permeate established cultural institutions and forms and the vehicles of popular culture as well. That is how a dominant cultural trend emerges ... not as a top-down edict from Court Intellectuals, not as an enforced Maoist Cultural Revolution, but as a long-term spontaneous development from the efforts of real, concrete individual men and women.

Some on the Left have understood this need to transform culture, spontaneously as it were. And it's the kind of"left-liberal" transformation that has most likely led to the religious reaction we have seen over the last several years. I wrote about this in my book Total Freedom: Toward a Dialectical Libertarianism:

Some socialist theorists recognized the logical contradiction of using the state as a vehicle for human liberation. The Italian Marxist, Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937), distrusted the state's ability to transform society. He thought that the institutions of civil society, which were distinct from the state, could enable people to transcend the coercive character of the state. By augmenting civil institutions, Gramsci argued that coercion would become superfluous as a strategic device. For Gramsci, capitalism would not perish until all spontaneous social forces were fully developed. The hegemony of capitalist institutions could be traced primarily to extra-political power structures, which act in unison to bolster political authority. The"ideological state apparatuses" of religion, education, family, law, communication, culture, political parties and trade unions all helped to maintain the predominance of capitalism. An alternative socialist system could not emerge without attaining a" counter-hegemony" in all these institutions. This"bloc of historical forces" could only develop"within the womb of the old society.”

Gramsci favored the primacy of ideological spheres over economic structures, and of civil society over political society. Hence, a political movement without corresponding cultural change is bound to fail, in Gramsci’s view. Civil society and its self-regulative social relations are the model upon which communism must be based. Rather than violently crush civil society, says Gramsci, the political sphere will be reabsorbed and transformed by civil society.

Some libertarians have learned from Gramsci. Murray Rothbard, for example, much

appreciated Gramsci’s emphasis on the “rich texture of ‘civil society,’ of non-state institutions that are in many ways more influential and determining than the State itself.” Indeed, Gramsci’s counsel that socialists achieve an alternative “cultural hegemony” may have partially influenced Rothbard, in his later years, to embrace the conservatives’ declaration of cultural war against the Left. ... Like Gramsci, Rothbard recognizes the importance of creating"parallel" institutions.

Rothbard argued that, as the systemic crises of the interventionist system developed over time,"a voluntary network of popular revolutionary organs" would be needed to take over the functions of organized struggle. This struggle, he thought, would involve building coalitions with non-libertarians—socialists or conservatives, for example—on various ideological issues. It might also require" civil disobedience or the establishment of a mass-based political party. In all cases, Rothbard insists that the 'tactics to be used' must be 'consistent with the [non-aggression] principles and ultimate goals of a purely free society.'"

So, how on earth did we get to this little discussion from our posts on a little animated movie? Very simply this. As Ayn Rand once said:"Anyone who fights for the future, lives in it today." You want a free society? Fight for its ideals today. Live those ideals. Practice them in your craft in ways that inspire, uplift, and entertain. I say this especially for the benefit of those of us who fashion ourselves as revolutionaries. Changing society, especially against awful odds, can be daunting, discouraging, even grim. But as another revolutionary of a different stripe once said:"If I cannot dance, I want no part in your revolution."