I Chose Liberty - Ludwig von Mises Institute

Jeremy Shearmur 339
the governments of the U.S., Britain and Australia is horrific. Aside from the likely deaths
of conscripts involved in the fighting and of civilians who get caught up in it, there are
wider problems posed by the hubris of politicians who think that nation building is an
easy enough matter, and the dangers of an international regime in which it is accepted
that if you have strong moral objections to some other political leader, it is fine to go to
war with his country. In addition, there are the dangers of a loss of liberty within the
countries that engage in war.
So what is the outcome? I am still concerned with issues relating to how specific
customs to which people may be attached, and worthwhile traditions (a concern, also, of
John Gray’s, which has led him in very different directions) may be preserved within
market-based societies. But, over the years, and as I have learned more, not only is my
attachment to classical liberalism stronger, but I have also become convinced that the
best way to address these long-standing concerns is by means of voluntary associations
within market-based societies, within which government plays as minimal a role as possible.
I have also found the libertarian case against international intervention increasingly
telling. Accordingly, I find that I have become almost a libertarian, and there is the possibility
that, as I find out more, I may be led all the way, even to embrace a form of marketbased
anarchism (I am conscious of the fact that my views do change, on a regular basis,
as the result of further reading).
However, while this change in my views has occurred, my reasons for holding the views
that I do differ, I suspect, from those of many libertarians. I find Aristotle tedious and
unconvincing and Ayn Rand’s novels unreadable (while her work as a philosopher makes
me think she should have stuck to novels). I’m a bit skeptical about traditional rights-based
approaches and don’t think that utilitarian or self-interest based, rational-choice approaches,
or the recent rebirth of a kind of libertarian sociobiology, are either fully satisfactory or that
they really lead to libertarian conclusions. I also find Mises and Rothbard better as cheerleaders
than as sources of really telling scholarship.
All this, however, serves to re-enforce Popper’s point that we are all fallible (not least
myself in such judgments), and also to bring out just how diverse a group even of libertarians
and near-libertarians may be. And this, as Nozick was to suggest in the under-appreciated
utopia section of his Anarchy, State, and Utopia, itself suggests a further line of argument
for libertarian, or almost-libertarian, ideas.
Jeremy Shearmur is Reader in Philosophy, School of Philosophy, Australian National University.