Posted on 03/06/2012 12:29:39 PM PST by Timber Rattler
Recent momentous events at Cato have drudged up some age-old questions about libertarianism and politics: how should libertarians interact with politics and political candidates? Should libertarians compromise “full freedom” by promoting half-measures in the form of less-than-perfect candidates who are better than the alternatives on some matters but perhaps worse on others?
Many of the most long-standing divisions within libertarianism are partially a result of different answers to these questions. Some regard all interactions with politics and politicians as inherently corrupting and a tacit endorsement of governmental oppression. Others feel that a refusal to engage in politics is a one-way-ticket to irrelevancy that ultimately guarantees a less-free society. They claim that while utopian dreams of a political discourse built on ideas and bereft of partisanship are fine, political change happens through politics and politicians, and to deny this is to be obstinate.
(Excerpt) Read more at libertarianism.org ...
Personally, I do no think librarians should be involved in any political discussions.
Recent momentous events at Cato have drudged up some age-old questions about libertarianism and politics: how should libertarians interact with politics and political candidates? Should libertarians compromise “full freedom” by promoting half-measures in the form of less-than-perfect candidates who are better than the alternatives on some matters but perhaps worse on others?
Many of the most long-standing divisions within libertarianism are partially a result of different answers to these questions. Some regard all interactions with politics and politicians as inherently corrupting and a tacit endorsement of governmental oppression. Others feel that a refusal to engage in politics is a one-way-ticket to irrelevancy that ultimately guarantees a less-free society. They claim that while utopian dreams of a political discourse built on ideas and bereft of partisanship are fine, political change happens through politics and politicians, and to deny this is to be obstinate.
I believe both methodologies are needed. In an age of increasing politicization it becomes more and more necessary to “win” libertarian goals through politics. It is crucial, however, that concessions to politics do not compromise the libertarian message that political choice must be limited in its reach. If we only focus on the next election, this message may be lost and politics will take over, perhaps forever.
“Liberty” is not the ideology of an interest group; it is the baseline of the human experience. But encroachments on liberty will inevitably manufacture interest groups that seek out compromises in order to preserve liberty in limited areas. Thus, a city considering licensing cab drivers creates an interest group that fights to maintain a free market in taxis. After licensing is instilled, the interest group lives on, fighting new regulations, passing their own regulations, and defending certain interests of cab drivers.
As more and more areas of life are politicized, this type of politically oriented behavior becomes increasingly necessary. We move so far away from the baseline of liberty that political mobilization is required in nearly every area of our lives: to marry who we want to marry, to get the medical treatment that may save our life or relieve our constant pain, to choose a health-care plan that does not violate our conscience, or even to drink raw milk. In the process, the struggle to preserve the baseline of the human dignity—human liberty—are sub-divided into battles over the mundane—such as the freedom for children to start a lemonade stand. This is how the fight for human dignity is trivialized and advocates for liberty are balkanized. This is how politics takes over the fight for liberty.
I do not blame anyone who fights for liberty through politics. In fact, I encourage it when it is needed. If your honest business is threatened with extinction due to a new prohibition or regulation, then any politicians pushing the rule should be opposed in the political arena.
But while such fights are perhaps the frontline of the fight for liberty, they are not the baseline. Those fighting for the baseline should constantly remind us that political squabbles over taxi licenses are second-best solutions to a problem that is far more pervasive than licensing: the increasing politicization of human life and the compromising of human dignity that results from that politicization. When there are no more zones where political control is forbidden—your mind, your body, your family, your property, etc.—then there will be no liberty. The fight for liberty has both a short and a long game and, just like football, both should be part of the strategy. But, unlike other political persuasions, focusing too much on the short game actually undermines some of our core principles: that there should be little or no political involvement in certain areas of life. Above all else, libertarians should have long memories that can point out how political concessions of the past paved the way for crises in the present, and we should also be able to show that we made this argument in the past, but no one listened to us. Otherwise, if our past is filled with political concessions, then our message will be substantially weakened, if not totally lost.
Trevor Burrus is a legal associate at the Cato Institute. Get the latest from Trevor by following him on Facebook.
I think libertarians should take over the democrat party.
Form a party, write a platform and keep their childish fantasies among themselves.
That would save us from those deep political arguments such as, “”Open borders are fine, and free, we just eliminate social programs, and then no one will want to come here except for a few excellent people, see how easy politics are? Next complicated issue please.””
And they wouldn’t be involved but for a media industry, both extremes, so intent on constantly stirring up controversy that they always provide a ready venue, a hungry camera. Same crap we see out of the middle east and out of Washington every five minutes
Refraining from telling other liberty lovers that they’re “statists” and “are afraid of freedom” for not supporting a full and immediate legalisation of crack cocaine would be a good place for libertarians to start if they’re really serious about interacting with the political system.
They should sit in their caves and contemplate their belly buttons.
ya wanna know what this small “l” libertarian is doing?? I will not cast a vote for anyone running for a public that:
Has voted in the past for big government.
Has shown a willingness to bypass the constitution to win votes.
Is a supported, either now or has been, of the nanny state.
with this in mind, the only candidate left in the race for president is Nwet.
All others are at the best socialists
unless you are talking about mcromney, here the only difference is that one is white and has an r after his name...
social conservatives should be alligned with Libertarians more often than they are
What is needed is not so much more laws and rules but more people who do not so much more laws and rules because His rules are written on their hearts.©Wuli 2012
social conservatives should be alligned with Libertarians more often than they are
What is needed is not so much more laws and rules but more people who do not so much more laws and rules because His rules are written on their hearts.©Wuli 2012
Libertarians support polygamy and homosexual marriage, social conservatives don’t.
“Libertarians support polygamy and homosexual marriage, social conservatives don’t.”
Libertarians are found across the spectrum on these issues; like many other conservatives.
Just like members of the GOP vs GOP party positions, Libertraians do not necessarily fall in line with the views of the Libertarian Party (much like most Catholics who do practice some form of contraception outside of their church’s teaching).
Besides, Libertarianism in politics is less about the moral position of an individual Libertarian as it is their beliefs regardiing the limitations of secular law.
The political question is not always the moral question.
The Conservative political question goes to the requirements of law in order to (1) maintain security, deter crime, and establish civil order, as well as (2) the limitations of law in order to preserve Liberty.
The moral question is larger and assumes we can, and ought to, choose to act for the good without secular law having to be used to mandate what is good in every detail of life. The more that secular law is the source of mandating what is “good” the less it is by the human conscience that true good is chosen, and the law gravitates to corrupting good for the mere benefit of the secular regime of law.
Within Conservatism at large both the social conservative moral priority and the Liberterian legal priority must be addressed. Conservatism needs them both and needs both the philisophical contest between them and the willingness to reach a workable balance that respects both the side of “moral order” and the side of Liberty, recognizing the limitations of law and the endless ability of action by individuals and free associations in a free society.
Secular law is the state. Libertarians are not ambivalent about their disdain for the intrusions of the state against Liberty. That’s a philosophical position regarding the use of secular law. SOME (not all) social conservativs are philosophically ambivalent about the state, calling it a tyrant when it offends their values but not always opposed to using it to establish law to not merely respect their values but mandate them; much like the secular humanists try to do now.
The true Libertarian, when it comes to how far the law can go to mandate what is “legal” from a moral point of view, is neither pro or con toward the moral values of either the social conservative or the secular humanist. Th true Libertarian seeks for the law to more often be an agnostic - neither pro or con - and expects that the law ought to, and the institutions of the state ought to be neither proactively for or proactively against; letting the social dynamics of individuals and all of society’s free associations to work for and establish MORE of the social and moral norms of the society, outside of legal mandates. That’s not a position against the moral values of social conservatives; it’s a position about how we use, or refuse to use, the secular law to comvert every moral position to a legal (state authority) position.
No they aren't, any politician promoting polygamy and homosexual marriage would not be a conservative, and any libertarian wanting to forbid them would not be a libertarian.
“No they aren’t, any politician promoting polygamy and homosexual marriage would not be a conservative, and any libertarian wanting to forbid them would not be a libertarian.”
To not desire to put the law against something, is not, on an individua basis, a desire to “promote or advocate” something as morally right, or what one ought to do.
For example: The law permits people to smoke cigarettes. I think it is not only bad for their health but morally wrong, but I oppose the law making all cigarette smoking illegal. That is not a postion that seeks to promote or advocate smoking. It is a position that respects limits to the law, if Liberty is to be protected - i.e. Libertarian.
I.E. hard lefty that pushes the radical agenda of the left and thinks that relabeling it libertarian tricks conservatives.
The libertarian Supreme court, i.e. the Earl Warren court, the most beloved court in history to the lefties, despised by conservatives, and fairly credited by them as being the most destructive.
There is little about the Warren court that I would call Libertarian.
Yet The Warren court is famous for being liberal and “libertarian”, and is described as such.
Could you provide some cases which would support your theory? Saying “described as such” doesn’t make your case. Who describes it as such? What basis do they have in saying so?
I’ll cite something. Roe v. Wade and its companion case, Doe v. Bolton, transferred the question of whether or not abortion was murder or not from the states to decide to the federal government, supercedeing the authority of the states in favor of a massive centralized power.
It is likely that as a conservative, you would, for example, not see a massive central government that uses its power to do what, in your mind, would be good as an intrusion. Therefore, if the massive centralized government used its power in matters of authority where it constitutionally doesn’t belong, for example, regulating marriage or abortion, you wouldn’t see it as a problem. However, when the opposite happens, you would see it as intrusion. Likewise, a court which makes abortion legal no matter how it does this is probably seen by you as libertarian, when it is in fact the complete opposite of libertarianism.
The fact of the matter is that there are four federal crimes mentioned in the constitution. Piracy, treason, counterfiting, and slaveholding. Everything else should be left to the states to handle under the 10th amendment, including murder. If there is a similar federal crime, it is simply overlap and redundant. Abortion should be a state crime. The remedy for the big government anti-libertarian Roe v. Wade / Doe v. Bolton would be for state governments to nullify the decision as unconstitutional and to implement state laws which consider abortion as murder.
I’ll cite you an example of the remedy. In the 1850s, Wisconsin was a free state where slaveholding was illegal, even though the federal law (which supercedes state law, right?) made slaveholding legal. Consequently the Underground Railroad brought many escaping slaves to the state of Wisconsin. At the time, there was a federal law known as the Fugitive Slave Act. The act stated that escaped slaves would be rounded up by the state where they escaped to and sent back to their owners. The act subsidized slaveholding, because in theory, the cost of rounding up escaped slaves and buying new ones would eventually cost more than the cost of employing workers, which would end the instution of slavery peacefully and without a War Between the States or hundreds of thousands dead. Wisconsin decided to have nothing to do with the Fugitive Slave Act, nullifying it and declaring that any federal authorities who apprehended escaped slaves in their state would be charged with kidnapping. Illinois, home of Lincoln, on the other hand, not only complied with the Act but decided that any free blacks who entered Illinois would be apprehended, taken to Kentucky, and sold into slavery.
That was a long way to get to it but the point is that any decision that centralizes authority cannot be described as libertarian. The most famous decision of the Warren court is anti-libertarian. I guess I’m confused by your post. Could you elaborate?
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