You Can't "Live and Let Live" If You Want a Functioning Culture

And don't get your politics from a comedian.

My libertarianism phase began after I read an interview with a writer I loved. Unfortunately, that writer was Dave Barry, a comedian with a weekly syndicated column at the time. You might think that’s not the best place to get your political convictions, and you would be correct.

I was in high school. I was dumb. People who take John Stewart seriously have no such excuses. And Dave Barry was actually hilarious, and a top-notch writer.

The interview meandered into Barry’s libertarian politics. In response to a question, Barry lambasted the War on Drugs and said something along the lines of, “If we had vending machines with heroin on every street corner, would you be an addict? I certainly wouldn’t try it or buy it.”

To my 16-year-old self, this argument was bulletproof. Of course I wouldn’t buy heroin from a vending machine! The idea was absurd! Hardcore drugs being illegal was stupid. What a drain on productive members of society. Let people make their own choices and suffer the consequences.

At heart, I think every libertarian has a 16-year-old boy inside of him, gloating about personal responsibility and patting himself on the back for being so personally responsible while the world crumbles around him. I’m convinced this is 90% of the reason for libertarianism being so impotent. The other 10% is because they’re blind from standing in the middle of a perpetual cloud of marijuana smoke.

The Grace of Good Laws

The sad truth is that, yes, many people would buy heroin from the vending machine, and making it so freely available is cruel. The friction caused by the illegality keeps many people from falling off the edge, much like how a guardrail functions on the top of a steep cliff. Some people who would never try hard drugs and live long and productive lives might try them if they were easy to get and they came with no threat of arrest and shame.

Good laws are not merely raw exercises of power. They are not merely restrictive. Laws also teach. They provide guidance and clear, obvious (and hopefully immediate) feedback on what is right and wrong. A baseline that helps civilization chug along and still allows some of the rougher elements of society to function, as long as they stay in the lines. The threat of force was always for those danced on the edges, not for the typical law-abiders.

We’ve tried drug legalization. All it did was subsidize more drug use, ignoring people wallowing in misery, and ignoring the inconveniences, both large and small, minor and violent, forced upon law-abiding citizens. Oregon is already rolling back some of its permissive policies because they have been a disaster. Extreme freedom to engage in vice leads to slavery, and faster than most would like to admit.

Likewise, as no-fault divorce swept the nation, we got more frivolous divorces. As it turns out, having some guardrails in place to help people keep their vows is a good thing.

The laws of a culture not only enforce but also communicate the values of a culture. If you change the laws, you change the culture, because different values are communicated. To paraphrase Churchill, we shape our laws, and then our laws shape us.

So yes, I would like pornography, for example, to be much harder to create and obtain. Any culture that respects women and cares about where young men direct their energy will want some kind of protection in place for both. It will always be possible to jump the fence, but where the fence is placed says something important.

When you build a new house, you shall make a parapet for your roof, that you may not bring the guilt of blood upon your house, if anyone should fall from it.

Deuteronomy 22:8

This was a simple building code that communicated something important. It cost a little more money and a little more time to make a parapet, but the tradeoff was worth it. A guardrail is not the same thing as a chain around your neck. In fact, it can help set you free to do things that matter, as Chesterton aptly described:

We might fancy some children playing on the flat grassy top of some tall island in the sea. So long as there was a wall round the cliff's edge they could fling themselves into every frantic game and make the place the noisiest of nurseries. But the walls were knocked down, leaving the naked peril of the precipice. They did not fall over; but when their friends returned to them they were all huddled in terror in the centre of the island; and their song had ceased.

“Live and Let Live” Really Means Death

It was the gay marriage question that began my slow crawl away from a libertarian mind. “The state should not be in the business of marriage,” I would declare, which let me sit safely on the sidelines and completely ignore the point.

Then I stumbled across an article by Dennis Prager that asserted:

The acceptance of homosexuality as the equal of heterosexual marital love signifies the decline of Western civilization.

That seemed a preposterous claim. And yet he argued his case well, describing the long crawl away from the sexualization of the public square, of the containing of the wildfire of masculine sexuality and funneling toward productive purposes.

As it turned out, what two people do together in the privacy of the bedroom has enormous consequences for the wider culture. Anthony Esolen has powerfully argued that open homosexuality has killed male friendship, for example, and that is only one casualty. J.D. Unwin determined that every culture that gives itself to sexual debauchery collapses within three generations.

The collective private actions of citizens matter, and the laws that guide and shape and punish those actions have long-term consequences, for good or ill. They help shape cultures, and some cultures are better than others.

Much better to have good laws, rooted in wisdom and an understanding of human nature, colored with a grace for the weaker brother who needs a firmer hand to avoid certain pitfalls. These laws are an act of love. Hard love, sometimes, but still love.