Please Stop Taking Libertarianism Seriously
Kevin’s great a good post about why it’s pointless for Democrats to even pretend we’ve got a chance of courting libertarian voters :
Libertarians may say they favor liberal social policies — and they do — but when push comes to shove most of them will toss the social stuff overboard in a heartbeat in favor of a dedication to economic libertarianism. What really gets their hearts pounding is big government and regulation of the free market. They’re against ‘em.And let’s face it: Democrats just can’t credibly claim to be on their side. We like labor unions, we support environmental regulation and consumer safety laws, we think anti-poverty programs are great, we favor safety net programs like Social Security and national healthcare, and we’re not allergic to imposing the taxes to pay for all this stuff. You can try all day long to find a few grains of libertarian economic doctrine in the Democratic Party platform, but why bother? You’re not going to convince anyone, least of all the libertarians themselves, that we’re on their side.
Kevin goes on to break libertarians into two camps. The economic libertarians and the social libertarians, but it seems to me the more obvious split is between real libertarians and fake libertarians.
On the fake side, you’ve got wankers like Glenn Reynolds and Bruce Tinsley, who are clearly conservatives but adopt a “I didn’t leave them, they left me” attitude when the public starts to figure out that the thieves and assholes that they voted for turn out to be…thieves and assholes. These fake libertarians like to pretend that they have the moral and intellectual high ground when, in fact, they’re falling for transparent rhetorical bullshit like the rest of the more gullible 51% of Americans. Voting for George W. Bush twice doesn’t make you a genius, it makes you a fool.
As far as the real libertarians are concerned, I think Kevin gives them too much credit. Yes, the 200-300 principled libertarians out there actually have a consistent worldview, but all the high-minded talk about free markets and deregulation hides an even simpler truth. Libertarians just don’t want to pay for shit. They’re like the annoying friend that you go out to dinner with who doesn’t believe in tipping. That’s why, even though most libertarians will throw caveats into their arguments that of course we need police departments and a military, they still embrace loony ideas like abolishing the IRS. Anything that lowers their taxes and gives them more freedom will be openly embraced by the libertarian movement. Everybody else can go fend for themselves.
Either way, both camps of libertarianism reek of selfishness. If Republicans want to appeal to the egomania of voters who are willing to throw away personal freedom to have lower taxes and the corporate-crafted illusion of freer markets, then screw ‘em both. As far as I’m concerned, libertarians were wrong in the past, they’re wrong now, and pretending they could be right in the future only feeds their self-importance. Let the jerks and the people too dumb to realize they’re getting played run off into their own self-important playground of unproven economic and political science theories. The Democrats should just write off that pseudo-intellectual portion of the electorate the way they wrote off southern racists in the sixties (and, no, I’m not equating libertarianism with racism). I don’t want to be part of the “looking out for number one” party, I want to be part of the “looking out for everyone” party.
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Are we confusing Libertarians (big L) with libertarians as a whole? Not all libertarians go all gung-ho about laissez-faire economics…libertarian socilaists and principled Anarchists (not the psuedo/free market anarchists) come to mind.
libertarianism is far apart from what you seem to be describing.
Or did you mean only that sort of self described libertarianism that pervades this nation?
Comment by Kage no Kami — October 13, 2006 @ 11:09 am
Huzzah! Yes, the Democrats would accomplish a lot by giving up on the Pay-Less Party, but certain libertarian ideas are very important components of American political and economic liberties. So one must be careful. But in general, Greg, you have hit the nail on the head. Social liberty matters less to organized Libertarianism than rollback of taxes and government regulations. In the real world, that translates into Enron writ large, which is exactly what the Bush people have given us.
P.S. Is anybody else doing the MoveOn.org phone call thing? I would love it if someone (Greg) would write about that.
Comment by joe — October 13, 2006 @ 11:26 am
Word Greg. Seriously.
Comment by Ross — October 13, 2006 @ 11:56 am
I respectfully disagree and think Democrats/Progressives should support libertarian values. We’ve all read the facts that more tax dollars go to Washington from blue states while more federal aid flows to the red states. Democrats should embrace and become the federalist party. Here’s an old article which changed my mind:
http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Content?oid=19813
What will happen to the fly-over states when federal aid is abandoned and Washington has very little power? It certainly runs contrary to Cheney’s notion of a unitary executive.
Comment by Gunther — October 13, 2006 @ 12:35 pm
Which is why “libertarianism” is so popular among avid internet users. The internet is full of free shit, but in general it’s free because you just don’t know who’s paying the bill, and much of the time the original bill was paid by the public sector (government or universities). Libertarians love it because it looks like it’s driven by free market capitalism, when in reality it has much more in common with socialism, or maybe collectivist anarchism.
Comment by Cris — October 13, 2006 @ 1:54 pm
Fine, but I agree more with what Greg is saying: Democrats should support Democratic values. It happens that those values include a strong respect for the civil liberties and personal freedom of the individual, which overlaps with libertarianism.
What I want is for Democrats to have a clear set of values and a clear set of policies in pursuing those values, and stop worrying about who else’s values they should pretend to adopt in order to get their votes.
Comment by Cris — October 13, 2006 @ 2:24 pm
The IRS is just a collection system. While Libertarians would like to see the IRS abolished, they would impose a less costly system. Instead of collecting money from your paycheck all year long and then adjusting the balance every april, they would monitor all year how much you owe and then collect it all in one lump sum. That’s the nuts and bolts of it, anyway. Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX) explains it a lot better than I do.
Comment by Sarah Gillespie — February 28, 2007 @ 11:12 am