Methodological Individualism and Noam Chomsky

I find that whenever I listen to Noam Chomsky speak about foreign policy I become angry. It isn't that he thinks that the foreign policy of the United States ought to be changed that alienates me. Typically when libertarians raise some of the same objections that Mr. Chomsky does, I find myself agreeing with them. He fails to obtain my support in spite of the fact that I would agree that the foreign policy of the United States is imperialistic and should not be.

It occurs to me that the reason why I object to Mr. Chomsky's approach to foreign policy is probably connected to my disagreement with his economics. He talks about all the bad things “we” have done. This flies in the face of methodological individualism. It ignores the fact that actions are taken by individuals. Many bad things were done, but we are missing something very important if we fail to see that they were done by individuals. Understanding this is the first step we can take toward solving these kind of problems.

As destructive as I believe socialized medicine to be, I think that socialized guilt is much worse. If your approach to solving problems in foreign policy is to get up and talk about how terrible America is, then the response that you should expect is for people to get defensive. Instead of making statements like “We killed a democratically elected leader in Iran.” you should place the blame squarely where it belongs, with Dwight David Eisenhower. When our leaders know that they will be held morally responsible for the actions that they take while in office, then this will act as a disincentive for the type of behavior that we want our leaders to avoid.

There is an important truth behind the defensive response that I believe that most Americans will have to Mr. Chomsky's speeches regarding foreign policy. The vast, overwhelming majority of Americans have never killed anyone. They have never ordered anyone to engage in any military action, nor have they declared war. People want to enhance their reputations. They will want to seek credit and avoid blame. Most individuals will be unable to single-handedly change the foreign policy of the United States. They can, however, deter the people around them from blaming America, and by extension themselves, for whatever destructive foreign policy decisions are made on its behalf.

I will concede that there may be structural problems with the way our political institutions are set up that might provide incentives for our leaders to make bad foreign policy decisions regardless of their ideology. However, this doesn't mean that it will be effective to blame America since there is little that the typical American could do to change those institutions. Americans have even less control here than they have over foreign policy.

I would say that many features of our system of government are indefensible. At the root of the problem is the fact that there is no way for voters to directly change the constitution. Specifically those parts of the constitution that deal with how the government is put in power should be under the direct control of the people. We should not delegate the power to determine how the legislature is selected to the legislature. Legislators have a conflict of interest in this area.

There is a very good argument for making it difficult to change the constitution, but this doesn't justify the delegation of this power to the legislature. We could just as easily require a super-majority of voters to make the appropriate changes.