I arrived at the 2012 International Students For Liberty Conference with a host of expectations. There is a great deal of variety in a movement so diverse, but on some level all the big pro-liberty events always seem to leave the same flavor in your mouth. Part of what’s wonderful for many first-time conference-goers is finding out that you’re not the only one advocating for these ideas. A movement towards consensus is natural and understandable. But, for a group that prides itself on intellectual honesty and diversity of opinions, this can be a real problem. One major issue is that our own ideas stop growing in breadth and depth. Another is that we lose the ability to articulate these ideas to those outside the movement.

Zach Wahls

For me, this year was different. The breakout session with Zach Wahls destroyed my expectations. I wanted to see this breakout in particular because I had seen Zach’s address to the Iowa State House on YouTube and thought, “Here’s a guy who’s my age, with the guts to do that and an intelligent grasp on issues.” How could I not hear what he had to say? What I found out shortly before the breakout was that Zach wasn’t totally sold on the libertarian idea but considered himself a liberal, maybe “liberaltarian.” I was expecting a bit of, “Here’s what we agree on,” and “Let’s work together.” While that certainly happened, there was a lot more going on in that room. We ended up in a good, old-fashioned discussion. By the end, it wasn’t just one question and an answer, but people fleshing out their ideas back and forth. Zach would ask, “So, you all believe this, right?” Some would nod, some would shake their heads, a lot of people mumbled, half the hands shot up. There is nothing like an outside opinion to make you realize the things you haven’t figured out yet. As James Padilioni, Jr. mentioned in a post about critical race theory recently, we as libertarians have many “blind spots.” On issues like economics we have a lot to say. On issues like sexism, most just figure that markets will solve the problem. This is one idea Zach brought up that got a lot of us thinking. He saw these things as “market failure.” Here was someone speaking about the problems and concerns with our ideas in our language. It was suddenly much clearer why people didn’t like our answers to these problems.

It’s not that we haven’t thought about these issues. On the contrary, I think many are dealing with these concerns right now. We tend to think about it, however, in ways that make sense to our libertarian minds and stop there. Zach brought up the Civil Rights Act as an example of a useful function of the state. I asked which direction he thought the causality went: did the Act pass because minds changed, or did minds change because the Act passed? In my mind, the fact that the major change factor was a voluntary shift in social norms answered the claim that it was a useful state action. I was ready to stop thinking about it there. I had never really considered that while shifting social norms may have been the main driver, people care what the state says. Zach’s point was that while a lot had changed voluntarily, the passing of the Act had changed many minds of those who saw the state as having moral authority. I would never have thought that someone would change their mind because the state said so. For someone who likes to rail against the “statist paradigm,” this is a ridiculous oversight. In a world where our ideas are the minority opinion, the burden of proof is on us. That means that when we argue for things like not passing the Civil Rights Act, we have to be more than clear about the comparisons we make. Additionally, we can’t just critique the current system; we have to have something to replace it with. This means not just saying the market, private charity, and individuals will solve all our problems, but rather proving this and building the new institutions and social systems that will make the government more and more irrelevant with each passing day. This means thinking about social theory. This means not just saying welfare is bad, war is bad, but having something better to replace it with. Obviously, I think we have a case to make here, but I think we have a lot more work to do.

So, what do we do? We keep challenging ourselves. Expose yourself to critiques of your ideas. But most importantly, we interact with students on your campus who have different opinions. Working with the progressives (and conservatives!) on your campus is great and something we should all strive for. But my point is to not focus on consensus. From debates about the economy to a small discussion on different views of anarchy, I have learned so much more from the events focused on disagreements than those focused on agreement. That breakout session was a wakeup call for me, and the best thing that came out of ISFLC 2012 in my opinion.