You Can Choose from Phantom Fears . . .
What is everybody afraid of?
I think politics is driven by fears, and politicians too often are successful by playing off these fears. Politics is downstream of culture, and politicians follow rather than lead. Therefore, something else must be at the root of fear-based ideology.
Arnold Kling identified long ago what he termed “FOOL” for Fear Of Other’s Liberty. I have written about this before including my own twist on it, Fear Of Others’ Mistakes (FOOM). I think both clearly encapsulate the motivations behind why people support certain policies. Verily, to fight our fears we adopt beliefs and support policies consistent with these beliefs in battle with those fears.
Long ago I wrote about this and how my thinking was working in parallel with Kling’s.
Keeping with Kling, I was thinking about some examples of FOOL & FOOM under the framework of the Three Languages of Politics, his 2013 book that he updated most recently in 2019 (download it for free here; then read it—it is short but great).
Read this partial list as areas/topics/behaviors and the associated fears of others’ liberty/mistakes.
Libertarians:
Public property - creates a tragedy of the commons
Government support programs - the politically powerful will exploit the public choice collective action problem
Conservatives:
Tolerance for drug use - enabling destructive behavior
Generous personal welfare benefits - subsidizing unproductive lifestyles
Free speech - bad influences will corrupt the vulnerable listeners
Progressives:
Private property - unequal use or destruction of resources favoring the powerful at the expense of the weak
Free speech - strong voices will hurt weak listeners
There is at least a kernel of truth in each of these fears, but the fear itself is not enough to outweigh the benefit of each per se. That is even true of the libertarian examples. The arguments against public property and government support programs are very strong, and I believe they defeat almost all of the cases to be made for each. It is just not the case, though, that the fears as stated above are definitive against them.
Fear alone is a powerful but misguided motivator. It is an emotion. Emotional responses are reflexive not contemplative. Indeed fears might be well founded. Yet they are incomplete—they are not good arguments. Don’t give in to your fears.