Incrementalists and Hard-Liners

JL Wilson posts about incrementalists and hard-liners http://independentcountry.blogspot.com/2006/03/incrementalist-hard-liner.html. Wilson sees both as having their uses and reckons that he is a little of both at times. I am a Georgian, and our state motto is “moderation in all things”, and I used to strive to be an “extreme moderate”, a living oxymoron like the man who won a medal for humility and had it taken away because he wore it.

Wilson lists some attributes of a libertarian that he regards as essential:

1. Pro-peace/anti-intervention in the affairs of other countries2. Pro-freedom of speech/anti-censorship3. Pro-self-defense/anti-gun control4. Pro-self-determination on health choices and lifestyle/anti-Drug War5. Pro-freedom of association6. A general and substantial decrease in the tax burden.7. A general and substantical descrease in our dependence on government for health, education, and income.8. General and non-prejudicial freedom of commerce and trade.

I agree with him on these points, but I believe that they can all be reduced to a commitment to non-coercion and non-aggression. This is the one value about which I cannot be a moderate. I take a hard line against coercion and aggression. That said, I favor reductions in aggression and coercion over increases of them. In that sense, I am an incrementalist.

Some hard-liners seem to me to engage in catastrophic thinking. It’s either the perfect outcome or nothing for them. Anything less than everything is nothing to them. I am pro-choice as an extension of my commitment to non-aggression/non-coercion, but I acknowledge that folks might have a serious scruple about abortion and I have nothing against non-coercive efforts to reduce the number of abortions. But many of the hard-liners I know on the womb control front are bent on one thing: criminalizing abortion. Nothing other than the use of force to end the practice of abortion will satisfy them.

I am currently reading Jimmy Carter’s “Our Endangered Values”, and he writes at length about the issue of abortion. As the only practicing Christian to serve as President in my lifetime, it is interesting to read how he reconciled his religious beliefs with his responsibilities as a public official. Carter obeyed Roe v Wade as the law of the land but objected to public funding of abortions. He also thought it would be appropriate to address the causes of unwanted pregnancies and the issues that led women to have abortions instead of bringing pregnancies to term. Among the things he promoted was facilitation of adoption.

I disagree with President Carter on the propriety of the government’s spending money to influence the number of abortions one way or another, but I agree that there are ways short of criminalizing abortion and ceding control over women’s bodies to the state to reduce by a lot the number of abortions. My hard-line womb control authoritarians want none of it, however. The fact is that education about contraception results in a reduction in the number of unwanted pregnancies. Teenaged American women, who learn about contraception from each other, are many multiples more likely to get pregnant than their more well informed European counterparts. My hard-liner womb control enthusiasts are against teenagers’ having information about contraception. It’s abstinence or nothing. This stance breeds more unwanted pregnancies which in turn leads to more abortions. This is a pretty bizarre outcome for anyone who thinks abortion is wrong.

Carter reports that close to two thirds of women who have abortions cite an inability to afford the child as a reason for their decision. Any number of non-coercive things might be done by charitable concerned folks to make childrearing more affordable or attractive or to make adoption easier. If women contemplating abortion could be assured that they would have sufficient resources to raise the child or that they would be helped through an adoption process, that would probably have a significant impact on their decision. My womb control authoritarians don’t give a dime to such programs, but they give money gladly to candidates who seek to criminalize abortion. They want to spread the costs of fulfilling their preference that nobody ever have an abortion to society as a whole rather than putting their own money where their mouths are.

I don’t mean to pick on womb control enthusiasts, however. Any position can be subject to catastrophic thinking. I don’t like drug laws, but I would support incremental decriminalization as superior to increased criminalization. I hate taxes, but I prefer tax cuts to tax increases. I hate war, but I would support an incremental withdrawal of troops from Iraq over an escalation or no withdrawal at all. I hate government and regard it as illegitimate, but I would favor abolishing some agencies over adding new ones.