Thoughtful Libertarians, who are very aware that the military-industrial complex promotes the corporate welfare state and rent-seeking, have increasingly started to reflect on the possibility of an intellectual alliance with the Rawlsians. (Thank you Roger Koppl, who does very interesting work on the institutional and epistemic background to forensics, for the facebook link.) This is no surprise to those of us who are familiar with the lifelong engagement (e.g., here) with Rawls by (the Nobel Laureate) James Buchanan, arguably the philosophically most profound and lasting Libertarian of the twentieth century (recall my passing comments last week about his criticism of Nozick).
Yet, for all the shared horror at war and torture, the Libertarian-Rawlsian alliance can only get off to ground if there is a honest dialogue about what prevented it in the first place. No doubt the Rawlsian defense of the welfare state should be listed among the most important barriers to a strategic alliance. But in my view the greatest single obstacle was/is the Libertarian fondness for States Rights over Civil rights.
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