I honestly thought I was done on this topic, and for the most part I am.  But given the misunderstandings that seem to have developed (e.g., arguing that it’s “big-government libertarianism,” or that the idea is just an attempt to allow us evil cosmotarians to feel comfortable hanging out with the cool kids), it’s worth calling attention to Will Wilkinson’s writing of the last 24 hours, which draw some really compelling connections that I’ve been struggling to make ever since I started seeing the appeal of liber-al-tarianism almost a year ago. 

Start here, and then look here and here.  Trust me – you’ll learn a lot; I know I did.   This paragraph from the first post is especially enlightening:

The fact that a government is small doesn’t rule out the possibility of egregious restrictions on non-economic liberties or of incredibly burdensome economic regulation. Suppose it takes two years to fill out all the paperwork, get all the licenses, etc. to start a small business, but once you do that, your profits aren’t taxed all. Suppose many forms of exchange are simply prohibited. You might have small government, low taxes, and very little economic freedom. Of course, a small government can ban abortion, prostitution, drugs, a free press, etc. just as well as a big one. Such a government may need to spend a lot of its modest budget on police and prisons instead of on genuine public goods. The size of the budget as as percentage of output doesn’t tell you anything about the composition of spending. This is a really important point. The United States spends a lot on prisons, the military, drug law enforcement, border patrol, etc. A lot of this is the opposite of rights-respecting, and a lot of it is downright wasteful. The composition of spending is important both as a matter or morality and a matter of economic growth (which I happen to think is also a matter of morality.)  Which is all to say, the fact that a government is small logically implies almost nothing about either liberty, justice or efficiency.

This is a point I tried to make, albeit far less successfully, here.  Wilkinson goes on in that first post to note that qualitatively there is little difference between minarchists, liber-al-tarians, and most modern liberals on the issue of “limited” government at least insofar as we are discussing the welfare state and the legitimacy of the government’s authority to tax and spend. 

But to get the full idea, it’s really worth reading all three posts. 

One conclusion that I draw from Wilkinson’s posts, and which I think was implicit in much of my writings on this subject, is that the real difference between libertarians and modern American liberals is over the competence of the government to regulate in a way that does not unnecessarily infringe upon individual freedom.  It is this concept of regulation, far more so than the issue of the legitimacy of a social safety net, that has the greatest effect on economic liberty.

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Amongst several others, Ross Douthat has some really good thoughts on my arguments for a more liberal libertarianism.  So good are a lot of these responses that I could probably spend the next month discussing them (don’t worry, I won’t).   But Ross’ points are probably the most comprehensive.  I can’t do Ross’ post justice by just block-quoting, so read the whole thing.  But his points amount to:

1.  My conception of liber-al-tarianism has a lot in common with the ideas he and Reihan Salam propose in Grand New Party, at least on economic policy, so there’s a good basis for reform conservatives and reform-minded libertarians to work together to reform the American Right.

2.  While liberals and libertarians have an awful lot in common on principle, that’s true of most Americans; the differences on implementation are the real problem.

3a.  Deneen, Dreher, and Larison-style traditionalist conservativism would not come to dominate the Right if libertarians left because the “appeal of dynamism, to borrow from Virginia Postrel, is too pervasive to admit of an effective political coalition organized in opposition to it”

3b.  Instead, the Right would become even more the Party of Rush Limbaugh, who is very much a liberal/dynamist on economics. 

4.  Meanwhile, it is highly unlikely that a libertarianism absorbed into liberalism would have much effect at all on liberalism.  More likely, it would just result in a national-scale California.

On points 1 and 2, I completely agree.  On point 4, I also actually agree – at least for the near future, which was a central point of my first foray into this arena the other day.  And I also think he’s right, at least in the short-term, that the departure of libertarians from the Right (though I jump to add that this is not quite the same as joining the Left) would make the GOP even more the party of talk radio.

Where I disagree is in the long-run.  I also disagree that a more traditional conservatism would fail to be a politically viable alternative to liberalism. 

An essential element of why I think this is that libertarian-conservative fusionism, despite (I’d say because of) several decades of political strength, has ultimately corrupted both worldviews to the point that it has formed this kind of incoherent, inflexible dogmatism that more or less lays claim to being a master ideology of the Right – even though it is barely representative of any of the ideologies that make up the Right.  

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Downblog, Chris puts together a fantastic post that quite well explains the ways in which modern liberalism and classical liberalism (ie, libertarianism) have a tremendous amount in common at the fundamental “first principles” level, at least if you accept the definition of modern liberalism contained within Chris’ post.  As I note in the comments, arguably the only “first principle” on which libertarians and liberals fundamentally disagree is that of “taste for governance” – and even that is less a first principle than it is a means to the achievement of first principles.  So the differences between an open-minded liberal and an open-minded libertarian should ultimately be resolvable, because both liberals and libertarians generally share a similar vision of a morally just society, even if some policies advocated by either group arguably fail to achieve or even outright undermine these goals.

And yet to many, the differences on policy prescriptions between libertarianism and liberalism seem even larger than the differences on policy prescriptions between conservatism and libertarianism.  Why?  The answer is, I think, quite simply the messy problem of coalition politics in a two-party system.  In such a system, the various ideologies that make up each coalition will inevitably cross-pollinate as they unite behind a handful of core issues on which the constituent ideologies have a unity of interest.  But, as I’ve argued time and again over the last year and a half, eventually those core issues fade to the background and one or more of the constituent groups gradually leaves the coalition and maybe even joins the other coalition, starting the cycle anew.

I argued earlier that the current political alignment has corrupted libertarianism in a way that has caused it to forget too much of its classically liberal roots (this is true even though it has also helped give libertarians influence in excess of our numbers, that being the Catch-22 of coalition politics), and that libertarianism at this point needs to find a way to sever its ties with conservatism. 

But it’s also important to recognize the way that libertarianism has corrupted conservatism to a fairly large extent, resulting in a “movement conservatism” that is ideologically incoherent.  “Conservatism,” at least as it was historically defined, represented a political philosophy that existed to put the brakes on social and economic upheaval.  It was not an ideology that was per se opposed to any kind of cultural change; but it was an ideology that insisted upon respect for long-established cultural, societal, and political traditions, and upon stability as a moral imperative.  Obviously, these are not values that are at the core of a libertarianism built around the maximization of individual freedom.

And yet, libertarians and conservatives for a very long while – even before there was a term for “libertarian” – made natural coalition partners against a New Deal coalition that must have seemed hell-bent on imposing fairly radical changes that were also anathema to core libertarian principles on economic freedom.  And with the subsequent looming threat of international Communism, a valid raison d’etre for the alliance remained.  But after the fall of the Berlin Wall?  Not much.  And yet the coalition largely remained in tact, perhaps mostly because of the way that cross-pollination had obscured the fundamental philosophical differences between libertarians and the dominant varieties of conservatism.

So why should libertarians remain in the fold if there is no longer much cause to ally themselves with conservatives?  Ross Douthat and Jonah Goldberg have suggested that leaving would deprive the coalition of the Right of its most intellectual component, making it more explicitly anti-intellectual, nationalist, and nativist, while failing to exert much influence on the coalition of the Right. 

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Earlier, Freddie pointed to an excellent run-down of the various problems with the utterly thoughtless piece of legislation known as the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act. 

No sooner did he post that than I learned that, after months of pleas from the small business community, the New York Times (the so-called paper of record) finally decided to cover some of the central elements of the legislation.  Except that it was not an article discussing the potential costs of the legislation; nor was it even an article discussing the debate over the legislation at all.  No.  It was an unsigned editorial.  Alleging that CPSIA hasn’t been enforced aggressively enough, and that therefore the commissioner of the CPSC must go.   Any reading of the editorial makes clear that the Times did not bother to research what the law actually says or how it is supposed to be implemented.  Instead, it appears that they merely regurgitated the talking points of the handful of Dem politicians and interest groups who continue to support the law in the face of overwhelming evidence that it is an abject lesson in the problem of unintended consequences.

Not surprisingly, Walter Olson is angry.  He zones in on one particularly offensive paragraph of the editorial and destroys it. 

Well, I’m pretty angry myself.  So I think it’s worth doing a full fisking of this stinking heap of ignorance.  The editorial starts:

The American International Toy Fair in New York City this week has offered the newest and most tantalizing playthings in the world: walking plastic bugs, 3-D coloring sets, even Barbie, now 50 and wearing a golden outfit for the occasion. Yet one question hovered over the fair and its glittering new gizmos. Can the federal government assure consumers that the toys are safe?

Knowing a little bit about the Toy Fair, I can assure you, loyal readers, that the actual question hanging over the Fair was “Does anyone have any idea how you are going to comply with this law when it goes completely into effect without going out of business?”

As many parents, and ultimately manufacturers, learned the hard way, the Bush administration did not make the safety of toys and other products a priority. That led to the recall of millions of toys — some because of lead paint, others because of hazards such as small and powerful magnets that children swallowed. The Obama administration now has an opportunity to fill that regulatory gap by appointing new leadership for the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

So the problem here is that the Bush Administration failed to enforce existing safety laws, thereby leading to the recall of millions of toys?  Now, I’m no fan of the Bush Administration, but this seems a little silly.  How does the Times think that these toys were recalled?  Isn’t the remedy for a prohibited product getting on the market to recall it and to penalize the importer?  And isn’t that precisely what happened? And how many injuries were reported as a result of these products getting recalled?  The answer is one (sadly it was a death) – except that the product that caused that death was perfectly legal under the then-existing standards, and is actually still legal under the new CPSIA standards since it was made for an adult.

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Jonah Goldberg argues that a left-libertarian fusionism is not only doomed to failure but is in fact likely to lead to a less libertarian, more “statist” society:

As for it being undesirable, I am consistently amazed when liberals and libertarians (and even some conservatives) want the right to abandon its dogmatic aversion to statism in favor of some more nuanced and compassionate gumbo or some kind of rightwing progressivism. If the right ever loses its anti-statism, we will have a race-to-the-bottom between two statist parties, one cosmopolitan and socialistic one nativistic and nationalistic. Neither is very appealing to me. And bipartisan consensus between nationalists and socialists is never pretty.

If Will can persuade progressives to be more libertarian, huzzah and wahoo. But I fear liberaltarianism — if it ever makes it out alive from Will and Brink’s drawing board — is more likely to become a mechanism for making libertarianism more progressive, without  getting much, if anything, in return. If libertarians think they’re treated like cheap dates in the Republican tent, just wait until they spend some time in the Democratic tent.

Will Wilkinson and John Schwenkler respond, arguing that at the end of the day, anyone other than an anarchist is a “statist” of some sort, that the real distinction between liberals, libertarians, and conservatives is simply over the type of state we want.  Thus, Goldberg’s premise, that conservatives have a “dogmatic aversion to statism,” is demonstrably false. 

Wilkinson and Schwenkler are obviously correct in their assertion, but I think they miss Goldberg’s point, which seems to be more that liberals really aren’t any less statist than conservatives on social issues and are demonstrably more statist – and becoming more so - on economic issues (though John correctly notes that conservatives have become more statist on military issues and civil liberties).   Goldberg’s bigger point thus seems to be that conservatives are fundamentally opposed to the growth of government, and in fact want to shrink it, while liberals are fundamentally supportive of the growth of government; he notes, somewhat correctly, that conservatives outside of Congress opposed much of the Bush-era growth of the federal government and that therefore it’s not entirely fair to lump conservatism in with the performance of GOP politicians.  On the other hand Goldberg alleges that not only have Dem politicians become ever-more statist, but that this change is representative of liberalism as a whole. 

I know enough liberals at this point to know that Dem politicians really are not much more representative of liberal attitudes towards government than Republican politicians are of conservative attitudes.  But that aside, I think Goldberg’s argument still winds up largely missing the point. 

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Scott and Chris each take issue with my post on Liberaltarianism in a Liberal Age, Scott on the grounds that a coalition of liberals and libertarians holds the greatest promise for advancing a libertarian agenda, Chris on the more substantive grounds that libertarianism does not offer a way of providing social safety nets in an era of increased marketization (of which libertarians obviously approve). 

Despite the vastly different viewpoints of these critiques, I think they both help suggest why the concept of liberaltarianism is so essential even as I think it has taken a massive body blow the last few months due to the turn of influential liberals back towards support of broad brush regulation such as the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act, a general belief that all or nearly all deregulation is undesirable, and a general belief that any government spending is – almost by definition – good, “stimulative” spending. 

Ultimately, as I suggested in my earlier post, I think libertarianism will be best off if broadly defined libertarians become regular swing voters to whom both parties are willing to regularly pander.  However, I expect that at various points in time, libertarians will find relatively long-term alliances with the Left or the Right to be appropriate much as the libertarian alliance with the Right was generally deemed politically beneficial for much of the last 50 years or so. 

But in order for libertarians to more consistently act as political free agents, or even to sign on to a coalition with the political Left, something else will need to happen to free libertarian philosophy from the predispositions that have resulted from such a lengthy alliance with the political Right.  

I would propose, then, that the “something” to which I refer is “liberaltarianism,” “soft Hayek” as Jim Henley calls it, or “actual Hayek” as I like to call it.  The promise of this derivation of modern libertarianism is not that it attempts to paint libertarianism in a light that is palatable to modern liberals/Progressives, which our friend Kip rightly fears; instead, its promise is that it can help to rescue the fundamental worldview of libertarianism from the prejudices instilled in it by such a lengthy alliance with the Right.

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Robert Stacy McCain has a scathing post that seeks to permanently douse the concept of a left-libertarian coalition ever being a real possibility, which includes this little bit:

As a political impulse, the sort of libertarianism that scoffs at creationism and traditional marriage wields limited influence, because it appeals chiefly to a dissenting sect of the intelligentsia. It’s a sort of free-market heresy of progressivism, with no significant popular following nor any real prospect of gaining one, because most Ordinary Americans who strongly believe in economic freedom are deeply traditionalist. And most anti-traditionalists — the feminists, the gay militants, the “world peace” utopians — are deeply committed to the statist economic vision of the Democratic Party.

Yikes.  Now, of course, McCain is being somewhat hyperbolic in his characterization of the coalition of the political Left.  But in many ways there is a fair amount of truth to McCain’s fundamental point, which is that the response of the political Left to the economic crisis has dramatically undermined the basis for any theoretical coalition of “liberaltarians.”  To be sure, McCain thinks that the entire concept of such an alliance is a “luxury” that never had any chance at success, but the more pertinent issue is the role of the economic crisis in exploiting the divide between liberalism and libertarianism/classical liberalism.  This is a particularly difficult truth for me, as I have repeatedly gone on record predicting that “libertarians,” broadly defined, are likely to continue their recent trend towards the Democratic Party in terms of their voting habits.  Heck, I even put my money (and daughter’s toys) on the line by making a bet to this effect with John Schwenkler.

One of the things that has happened in the early days of the Obama Administration has been some fairly good (but by no means great) steps in the direction of restoring civil liberties and reigning in executive power.   While this is something libertarians such as me have absolutely cheered, the reality is that these issues were a major part of what was pushing libertarianism to the left in recent years.  As victories have been earned on those fronts, the entire basis for that move leftward is getting removed (although history tells us that we’re not about to see a complete restoration of civil liberties and balance of power anytime soon, either). 

To be sure, really good bases remain for a left-libertarian coalition on certain specific issues, especially the War on Drugs.  And I still fully agree with the great FA Hayek, whose opus Road to Serfdom describes many of those we now call liberals as essentially misled classical liberals (that we now call libertarians).  And that says nothing of his essay “Why I Am Not a Conservative” – still relevant nearly half a century later.

So I still think that, at some point in time, progressives and libertarians will be reunited within a political coalition separate and distinct from conservatives.  But at a minimum the progressive response to the financial crisis, with its finger-pointing for the crisis almost solely at deregulation and its use of the stimulus bill as a means for implementing all sorts of pet projects that have little to do with stimulus even under a Keynesian analysis, has brought the economic divide between liberals and libertarians to the forefront in a way unseen for decades.

To be sure, I think conservatives - especially conservative politicians – have played a role in the whole situation, both by saddling us with massive debt in the name of the War on Terror and by repeatedly (and falsely) campaigning on the idea of Obama as a socialist (and thereby turning an unwinnable election into a de facto referendum on socialism).   But the fact is that the political Left, led by Congress, is now using this opportunity to implement wide-reaching policies that are anathema to libertarianism. 

Simply put, it appears that liberals and Progressives, at least the influential ones, have once again taken up the mantle that regulation is always (or almost always) good, and so is just about any form of non-military government spending.   As Virginia Postrel notes discussing the refusal of influential progressives to concern themselves with the effects of the abysmal, horrible, no good Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act:

Unfortunately, once you are ideologically committed to the idea of regulation, you can’t say that a given regulation is bad–or, worse, that maybe doing nothing new would have been the best course.

And this is the problem the rebirth of dogmatic support for regulation has created for any liberaltarian coalition.  Rather than consider ways of achieving liberal ends (which are usually shared by liberals and libertarians alike) that may have incorporated libertarian thinking or were at the very least highly targeted, progressive politicians have been choosing extraordinarily broad and intrusive means of achieving those ends.  This is not to say that those politicians ever really cared what libertarians thought; only that this route of action has undermined any possibility of a significant percentage of libertarians (again broadly defined as fiscally conservative and socially liberal) becoming intermediate-to-long-term members of the Dem coaltion.  [Read more →]

This is a Public Service Announcement: if you are really intent on exposing political enemies as liars, do not UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES go after someone who has made a career doing exactly that.  Hilarity will ensue, embarrassing, embarassing hilarity.  One might even call the result “Humiliations galore!” with a Spanish accent.

Also a bad idea: hotlinking to said better’s website.  Presidentially-inspired phalluses may ensue.

And, finally, to continue the Princess Bride theme, I offer this paraphrase:

Vizzini: “HACKER!”

Inigo Montoya: “You keep using that word.  I do not think it means what you think it means.”

Well played, Mr. Balko.  Well played.

H/T: Patrick at Popehat.

Responding to E.D.’s post last week, Roque Nuevo wrote:

“the world generally” agrees that national sovereignty, pluralism, respect for individual rights are also “good for the world generally.”

This is absolutely a fair point, though I think this list should also include internal security and stability (and I suspect Roque would agree). 

But this is also a point that poses major problems for creating appropriate foreign policy, and really in international relations more generally.  The first problem, which I’m not going to address at length here, is that it is quite apparent that Western conceptions of things like “individual rights” are very different from other such conceptions.  If, as I do (and as Roque presumably does as well), you think the Western conceptions of those things are fundamentally correct, then really there’s no agreement here at all – at best, non-Western countries are paying lip service to Western values and at worst we’re talking about fundamentally different concepts.  If you take the view that no conception is clearly correct, then the agreement is merely on semantics and we’re still talking about fundamentally different concepts.

But the second problem is the one that is relevant to the question of formulating good rules for American interventionism.  That problem is that these values (national sovereignty, pluralism, individual rights, security, and stability) are often at conflict with each other when it comes to formulating foreign policy.   These conflicts were much less apparent during the Cold War, when there was a general consensus in both the public and the foreign policy community that the goal of American foreign policy was to contain the Soviet Union.  The threat of the Soviet Union was quite literally existential, and if collateral damage was done to one of the other values in the process of containing the Soviets, then almost everyone would agree it was an acceptable loss (we tend to forget that it took years before the Vietnam War began to become unpopular).   Even now, to the extent that our Cold War actions have contributed to current problems, I think it’s hard to argue that the world would have been better off had we not made every effort to win the Cold War….even if some of those specific efforts were less successful than others or in retrospect were clearly unwise.   Moreover, because the threat of the Soviet Union was literally existential, it was easier to accept a narrative in which some actions that would otherwise be undemocratic and contrary to normal principles of Western small “l” liberalism were necessary to preserve Western liberalism writ large.

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I interrupt the League’s normal conversational blogging to participate in a grand, two year old tradition of the blogosphere: Blogroll Amnesty Day.   The story of the tradition is best told by others, most notably Jon Swift and skippy the bush kangaroo.  But the bottom line is that today is a day to celebrate all the little blogs who fight for attention in the dark corners of the blogosphere.

Because of how beautifully and quickly this site has taken off, it makes it a particularly good vehicle for this day in a way that my old humble abode could not be.  Alas, the nature of this site makes an extensive blogroll rather impossible to maintain, but that does not mean that we ignore our fellow travellers in these dark corners of the blogosphere.

So, without further ado….

For starters, there is our good friend Libby at the Impolitic who shares this site’s hope for an eventual kind of Blogtopia.

Then of course, there’s the invaluable crew at the Newshoggers, including this piece in which Cernig displays his characteristic Scotsman’s skepticism about the success of the recent elections in Iraq.

Honorary Ordinary Will at Dispatches synthesizes our ongoing thread on Roe v. Wade with Peter Hitchens’ recent verbal assault on homosexuality and expresses skepticism at the thought of neutral political arrangements on cultural issues.

The always-informative Max Socol at Some Political offers up some conflicted opinions on the issue of the alleged use of white phosphorus by Israeli troops in the recent Gaza campaign.

The pensive William Bradford takes on pop-Darwinism (as opposed to actual Darwinism) and questions its practical usefulness.

Ezra of the libertarian(ish) Popehat bemoans the fall of local socialism (no, really).

And, last but by no means least, occasional contributor to my old site and good friend Tony of Rolling Doughnut takes both parties to task for their behavior on the stimulus.

Reading through this whole, excellent series on atheism, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, etc. has been an extremely worthwhile experience.   As I wrote in the comments to Chris’ post (you have no idea how much I’m loving that we have a student of theology in our little crew here):

I’m reminded of the old – and classic – Simpsons episode with Stephen Jay Gould, in which the judge orders “religion to stay five hundred yards away from science,” but in which Gould acknowledges that he was unwilling to test whether the apparent bones of an angel were real or fake. I’ve long thought this was one of the most poignant Simpsons episodes; I also think it (ie, the episode as a whole) does a good job illustrating the way in which faith (which as you correctly note is synonymous in many ways with trust) should not – and cannot – attempt to masquerade as science, even as science should not – and cannot -seek to take the place of religion.

I think this old Simpsons reference gets to the crux of the problem, not only with respect to overly evangelistic atheists, but also to overly evangelical, uhh, evangelicals.  It also explains why I think the Flying Spaghetti Monster, in its original incarnation in the context of the Kansas Intelligent Design debate, was perfectly within the realm of legitimate dialogue…and why its occasional subsequent use as a way of mocking religion is not.

I think Chris is absolutely correct when he writes that “faith=trust,” and that “I’ve never met a human who does not trust in something or someone.”  This, to me, is the central issue – ultimately, even the most hardcore atheist must put a certain amount of blind trust in SOMETHING, even if that trust is something as fundamental to atheism as the idea that reality exists and can be understood purely through rationality.

But whereever one chooses to place their trust, the fact is that whether that trust is properly placed is more or less unfalsifiable, and not subject to scientific proof or disproof.  For the religious person, there is simply no way to prove through science that god exists or does not exist – as long as there is something in the universe that cannot rationally be explained, there is a basis for trusting in the existence of god.  For the atheist, there is likewise simply no way to prove through science that god exists or does not exist – as long as a scientific or rational explanation for anything in the universe is theoretically possible, there is a basis to trust in the ability of reason to explain everything, and no basis to trust in the existence of god.

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Larison argues, contra Linker (and me), that overturning Roe wouldn’t end the culture wars with respect to abortion, but would instead merely decentralize them and make pro-life voters even more solidly Republican:

It would decentralize the culture war and make it part of democratic debate in each state, which means that the issue would retreat from debates in presidential elections and in Congress but become even more intense as an issue in state legislative and gubernatorial elections. It might be for the next few decades that most states would maintain legalized abortion with few restrictions, but the pressure to change that in many states would be constant and intense. The more politicized and involved in the democratic process a contentious issue becomes, the more it becomes the basis for identity politics and polarization. There is certain “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” quality to this: keeping the issue as a matter for the judiciary and keeping Roe in place generates tremendous opposition and perpetuates the culture war, but overturning Roe would probably intensify the culture war.

I take Larison’s point, but I’m not convinced.  The problem I have with this argument is that it ignores the way in which Roe (and now Casey)’s arbitrary line drawing has the effect of uniting both the pro-life and pro-choice sides of the issue.  As I said in my previous post on this issue, this line drawing ensures that the federal courts are going to have to continue revisiting Roe almost ad infinitum, which guarantees that the issue will remain on center stage in the culture wars for decades to come, even as it continues to accelerate the politicization of the judiciary.   

But it also does something else: by drawing arbitrary lines, Roe ensures that everyone with an opinion must either identify as “pro-choice” or “pro-life,” even though as a policy matter, very few Americans favor unfettered access to abortion or near-absolute restrictions on abortion.  By casting the debate as “pro-choice” vs. “pro-life,” Roe ensures that the only voices with influence in the debate are these relatively few absolutists, who more or less win by default the portions of the mushy middle that are on their side of the arbitrary Roe/Casey lines.

If you overturn Roe and send the issue back to the states, you put an end to this.  In most places, the pro-choice and pro-life absolutists will no longer find themselves with quite as much power, as the majority in the mushy middle will wind up crafting most state regulations.  Simply put, sending abortion back to the states would have the effect of drastically reducing the unity that exists within the two identity groups. 

In some states, you would no doubt wind up with the absolutists of one variety or another dominating the debate and securing pretty clear victories.  But in those states, it’s probably safe to assume that the number of absolutists on the losing side will be very small and not terribly vocal to begin with.  This means that even in those states that implement the most extreme policies (of one variety or another), there really won’t be the amount of contentiousness that we see on the issue on a national scale, where the absolutists of both sides are more or less in equilibrium.

And while you can certainly expect the pro-choice movement to mount a pretty vocal campaign to reinstate Roe, this campaign will be unlikely to succeed and I think will peter out within a few years.  First, any decision overturning Roe would of necessity present a legal clarity that would more or less remove the issue from the federal courts system, thereby preventing any serious challenges to the new regime that would have a legitimate chance to reinstate Roe.  Second is the fact that in the states where the bulk of pro-choicers reside, the pro-choice side would likely achieve quite satisfactory legislative results, lessening the motive to vocally push to reinstate Roe. 

But, as I suggest above, the most important thing is that sending abortion back to the states would drastically split both the “pro-choice” and “pro-life” sides of the debate, as those majority in the mushy middle no longer will need to identify strictly with either side.