The Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues
Abstract
At the philosophic core of libertarianism is a set of market-oriented commitments that are entirely compatible with, and indeed congenial to, traditional leftist concerns with the well-being of the disadvantaged in society. But over the past several decades, the libertarian movement has fallen increasingly under the spell of toxic, callous, right-wing versions of libertarianism that scorn empathy while championing the cause of the economic winners in society at the expense of those who lose out.
That’s one way of stating the central thesis of Andrew Koppelman’s book Burning Down the House. And that thesis, so stated, is one I emphatically, albeit lugubriously, endorse.
However, Koppelman’s conceptual map of the libertarian landscape, his take on how its elements interrelate, his sense of where its merits and deficits lie, his diagnoses and proposed remedies, are radically different from mine. So I come to his book as neither an ally nor an opponent, exactly, but rather from a more oblique angle.
There is a tendency, one of long standing, for libertarians and leftists to caricature and demonise each other’s positions, and indeed each other period. Koppelman is refreshing in his determination to avoid this tendency —to seek not only to be fair to both sides, but indeed to find within each side valuable insights from which the other side can profit. And this determination is a laudable one. As we’ll see, though, I do not think he entirely succeeds in escaping the temptation to caricature and to demonise; there are cases where he brings a sledgehammer or a blowtorch to tasks that seem to me to require tweezers or a fan (a winnowing fan, the kind one uses to separate the wheat from the chaff).
Volume
26
Issue
2
Start Page
425
Faculty Editor
Steven Smith & Maimon Schwarzschild
Recommended Citation
Long, Roderick T.
(2025)
"We Didn’t Start the Fire: For and Against Koppelman on the Corruption of Libertarianism,"
The Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues: Vol. 26:
Iss.
2, Article 4.
Available at:
https://digital.sandiego.edu/jcli/vol26/iss2/4
