Heritage Roundtable

Went to a roundtable discussion at the Heritage Foundation last night. It was only five bucks to get in, there was an open bar (a pleasant surprise; I thought I was going to have to pay), good company, and the discussion itself was all in very good fun.

The topic was, "Are libertarians anti-Left or anti-State?"

Marc and Evan, I'm certain you guys would have had even more mirth than I did, because you know the blogosphere much more than I do. The panel was composed of Matthew Yglesias, of TPM Cafe, fulfilling the role of token liberal and moderator; Nick Gillespie, editor-in-chief of Reason magazine, as representative of libertarians; and Jonah Goldberg of the National Review, the quintessential Conservative.

Goldberg spent his opening statements attacking the libertarian assaults on tradition; Gillespie spent most of it saying that people shouldn't follow "bullshit traditions for the sake of tradition" if it had no relevance in the real world, then promptly began throwing tee-shirts with the Reason logo on them into the surprisingly packed audience. (My guess is that about 200 or so people were in the auditorium).

No, unfortunately, I wasn't able to snag one. A guy in his mid-twenties dove over me to grasp the one that came my way like Kramer leaping for the football at that NY Giants game. I emerged without a free garment, which is a little dissapointing, but on the other hand, I was sitting next to an attractive girl who I had struck up a conversation with, and getting into a mosh pit for a free tee-shirt seemed somewhat counterintuitive to my objective (not like it really mattered; I never got the chance to ask her for her number).

But back to the debate. The man who introduced the three panelists insisted that we operate by the British rules of debate (think the Prime Minister's Questions; if you haven't, go watch it on C-SPAN and wish that our Congress got to do that), since those were the rules that he was raised on. In other words, every time Goldberg or Gillespie made a particularly incendiary comment, there was a smattering of boos, hisses, and "For shame, sir!" that erupted.

Like I said, fun times.

The main points of contention were threefold, covering the issues of:

• how "organic" society is and how it evolves (and if it should evolve)
• English monarchs
• Housing Regulations and the Reasons by which We Do the Things We Do

If this sounds like a Jeopardy board instead of a roundtable debate, I don't blame you. I was consistently reminded of Celebrity Jeopardy SNL skits, with Yglesias playing the irritated Trebek and Gillespie & Goldberg switching off between who was Sean Connery, taking potshots at the poor, defenseless liberal whenever they had the chance.

One of the debates involved whether or not society changes. Goldberg tried to make the point that society improves by staying true to "tradition" because through tradition, the bad parts are weeded out, and the "wisdom of the Ancients" shouldn't be disregarded. Gillespie said that slavery used to be part of the "wisdom of the Ancients" too and that tradition should be able to be justified in contemporary society in order to justify its existence. To demonstrate that the "Ancients" weren't always great, he brought up the English monarchs and how their "wisdom" wasn't so wise. He also asked Goldberg to name two, to which the Conservative replied, "Oh no, I'm not taking that bait."

How the names of two English monarchs constitutes bait is beyond me, but he also said that the most powerful English female monarch was Victoria (I'd say Queen Bess), so maybe there were darker forces at work here.

The Housing Regulations bit went like this:

Goldberg: I hate intellectuals and their constant harping about how believing that people do things for one reason. Intellectuals like Tim Russert (Tim Russert? An intellectual? I laugh.) always want "The one reason why we should go to war with Iraq" or things like that. But no one does anything for one reason. When you buy a house, you ask a lot of questions: what are the schools like...what is the neighborhood like...does it have a roof...
Gillespie: Does it have a roof? Of course it has a roof!

[Everyone laughs]

Yglesias: Because of the building regulations.

[More laughs]

Gillespie: Oh yeah, it's big business trying to take our roofs away. If it weren't for the government building inspectors, not one house would have a roof. Some grand conspiracy by big business.

[General Uproar]

I was laughing too hard to remember where things went from there. All in all, it was a good five dollars well-spent.