American Paradox

There was a recent article in the Boston Globe about how judges most often drift liberal over time, which is to say "liberal" in the modern sense (high amounts of state regulation of the economic sphere, and an embrace of social and multicultural liberalism in the social sphere). I also was linked on some page to this old interview with Richard A. Posner, where he has this quote which is very interesting (given that Posner has widely been considered a conservative-libertarian economics-meets-law guy):

The second point is that the experience of being a judge is bound to moderate one's views. When you are dealing with large doctrinal policy issues in a rather abstract way, it's very easy to allow your general outlook on things to carry you to foreordained conclusions. But when you are actually forced to consider both sides of the case, often you realize there is more to be said on the other side of the case than you might have thought. So a lot of statutes that I would have ridiculed as preposterous interventionism in the economy, when looked at up close in the context of the specific case, make more sense. I have learned there is more to be said for some of these interventionist laws than I had initially thought.

No doubt many of those who call themselves "libertarians" have not lived in a world without significant labor, health and safety regulations, and so cannot (or will not) understand the purpose behind their enactment. Remember that it was less than a century ago that libertarians were fighting tooth-and-nail to prevent the enactment of a statute in the U.S. banning child labor (under age 14). These were kids, working forty-plus hours in coal mines and factories, and libertarians said, basically, "freedom of contract... they knew what they were getting into." Sometimes I read history, non-partisan, purely factual history, and I blanch.