Progressive Claptrap

Vintage Robert Higgs, important to examine his point in the day of Michael Moore.

http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/117604.html

Thinking about Boyes' post of Oct. 13th I would recommend a read of Bob Higgs posting over on HNN. Higgs is really getting at the importance of rhetoric in the "discourse" about the role of liberty and freedom in society. Samuel Gregg argues that civil discourse is a natural outcome of a commercial society, while Higgs implies that as the state expands in scope and scale in society civility is a casualty.

Both of these complimentary views are key to an appreciation of the importance of the media in the economic change of society. This change, to paraphrase North, is gradual and incremental and both formal and informal institutions shape this change. The institution of information diffusion is a key one as it shapes informal norms and beliefs and is shaped by these informal norms and beliefs.

I am thinking of a conversation with my brother, who considers himself a believer in liberty. I had given him Higg's classic - Crisis and Leviathan, my brother read the book and said that Higgs was a nut job. I had a similar conversation with a brother in law during the last election - he said that Ron Paul was a nut job.

Why does this happen? I think part of the answer might be in rhetorical choices by advocates of liberty. Higgs and, to a lesser extent Paul, seem to be to be reasonable, civil and accurate in their articulation of the importance of liberty and the consequences of its loss. However, an audience that is not convinced of these two issues (in my limited sample) finds them to be extremists. Oddly enough, one of these relatives applauds Michael Moore's latest film while the other condemns it.

In a previous post, I mentioned my reading of Samuel Gregg's The Commercial Society in which he models civil discourse. Perhaps advocates of liberty would benefit from a consideration of Gregg's rhetoric.