Posted on 05/09/2014 6:19:54 PM PDT by RKBA Democrat
For a country where the national flag flies from front porches and convenience stores and where children recite the Pledge of Allegiance each morning at school, we’re remarkably resistant to the notion of being governed. In the fall of 2013, the Pew Research Center found that only three in ten Americans trust the federal government to do what’s right ‘most of the time’. The self-conception of most Americans, with their visions of pioneers and plucky underdogs fighting for independence, is all about freedom. The flip side of that vision, however, is all about distrusting government.
And ‘government’, in US political discourse, is ideological. The right claims that excessive government hampers the ability of companies to create jobs; the left that it protects the public from the worst excesses of businesses. The divide is patently artificial: the vast majority of government economic policy draws no fire from conservatives. Still, by setting up ‘government’ as a dirty word in their anti-Democrat campaigns, the Republicans can claim freedom as their brand.
But if you really want to talk about what it means to oppose the government, the place to start isn’t with Republicans. It’s with the one group in the US political landscape that absolutely promises to take our rhetoric about freedom seriously: libertarians. Libertarians really do believe that government is the problem, as Ronald Reagan said back in 1981, and they’ve decided to get rid of it, or at least shrink it dramatically.
Enter Liberty Forum – an annual conference organised by the Free State Project, a group of activists who are trying to get 20,000 libertarians to move to the state of New Hampshire, where I live. These are people who gladly pit themselves not just against the welfare state or the regulation of business, but against military spending, state-funded schools, federal highways and government-issued money.
The Free State Project began life in 2001 with a call-to-arms by Jason Sorens, then a political science PhD student at Yale. Sorens suggested that a few thousand activists could radically change the political balance in the small state. ‘Once we’ve taken over the state government, we can slash state and local budgets, which make up a sizeable proportion of the tax and regulatory burden we face every day,’ he wrote. ‘Furthermore, we can eliminate substantial federal interference by refusing to take highway funds and the strings attached to them.’
Sorens’ views — which focus on problems with taxes and regulations and don’t dispute the government’s role in protecting commerce and conducting foreign policy – suggest a more-Republican-than-the-Republicans sort of outlook. But some people who’ve responded to his call subscribe to an entirely different ideology: an anarchism that sees government as a tool of wealthy capitalists. The rest fall somewhere in between. Free Staters say that what brings them together is a common belief that government is the opposite of freedom.
The crowd that gathered in February for Liberty Forum 2014 at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Nashua was a pretty good reflection of the US libertarian movement: mainly male, and overwhelmingly white. A few people openly carried guns, which is thoroughly legal in New Hampshire.
One of the first speakers, Aaron Day, a Republican activist and member of the Free State Project board, railed against government plans to expand Medicaid. His PowerPoint flashed images comparing President Barack Obama’s health insurance reforms to the Soviet famine of the 1930s, when Stalin shipped away Ukraine’s wheat, leaving its people to starve. Day announced he’d be running for state Republican Party chair and called for everyone in the audience to seek local office. If I was looking for the embodiment of right-wing libertarianism, here he was, a true believer in cutting the government down to size from within – starting with programmes that benefit the poor.
I meet conservatives who’ve moved towards a live-and-let-live attitude that calls for government to stay out of issues such as sex and drugs
Johnna and Cory Bartholomew, a couple from California who sat among the crowd watching Day, plan to join the influx to New Hampshire soon. Even at a glance, it’s not hard to recognise the Bartholomews as a military couple, despite the pink streaks in Johnna’s hair. Cory wears a crew cut, and both of them radiate a friendliness rooted in bedrock self-confidence. For their 20th anniversary, they visited Hawai’i. This year, for their 30th, they flew east for Liberty Forum, as a sort of final test before moving to the state.
The Bartholomews met as Mormon students at Brigham Young University in Utah. Over the years, their conservatism on social issues dropped away and they left the Church. Cory doesn’t like to call himself an atheist. As an Air Force pilot whose job revolves around technology, he prefers ‘scientist’ – a believer in the empirically provable. ‘I’m not a person of faith,’ he says, ‘I’m a person of “show me”.’ I end up hearing many such stories at Liberty Forum: conservatives who say they’ve slowly drifted from a focus on social issues towards a live-and-let-live attitude that calls for government to stay out of issues such as sex and drugs. But if Aaron Day comes across as essentially right-wing, the Bartholomews seem different. For one thing, they talk more about free speech than taxes.
‘Our kids grew up hearing us talk about politics,’ Cory told me. When they were small, he and Johnna had their three children memorise the preamble to the US Constitution, with its promise to ‘secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity’. Now in their 20s, two of their boys have taken up political activism against government overreach. They’ll protest against police cameras that photograph drivers’ licences at traffic lights, or they’ll hold up signs warning drivers about a drunk-driving checkpoint ahead.
One day in 2011, the brothers donned the Guy Fawkes masks made famous by Anonymous and held up a huge sign bearing the message ‘Taxes=Theft’ on a highway overpass. They got arrested after refusing to show their IDs to the cops. Eventually, two charges against them, relating to posting a sign on government property and wearing masks while committing a crime, were dropped. They ended up sentenced to probation for ‘delaying an officer’. To Johnna, the conviction was typical of a justice system that, despite its rhetoric, has little real respect for free speech: ‘We think “I have this little box of treasure called my rights,” but the moment you bring one of those out and try to exercise it, people are afraid.’
Their sons had already signed on for the Free State Project when the Bartholomews decided to follow their lead. Johnna says that her upbringing in the Mormon Church, founded by families who crossed a continent for their faith, inspires them and makes leaving their daughter and Johnna’s mother behind seem more manageable. ‘If you really believe in something and want to be part of something, then you leave; you leave what you’re used to and you may go somewhere you’re not so comfortable.’ This is, of course, what the Free State Project depends on – people willing to adopt a frontiering mentality so that they’ll leap cross-country to get beyond the current political landscape.
The Free State Project draws recruits with a mishmash of different philosophies, which isn’t surprising given libertarianism’s history. By some accounts, the first thinker to describe himself as libertarian was Joseph Déjacque, a mid-19th-century French anarcho-communist writer. Déjacque’s beef wasn’t just with government, but with capitalist bosses and religious hierarchies. Any kind of authority was an assault on individual autonomy. He even opposed families, with their elevation of husband above wife and parents above children. For about a century, this is what people meant when they said “libertarianism”: a far-left vision of autonomous individuals working as equals.
Then, beginning in the 1950s, a new definition of ‘libertarianism’ emerged in America, defining its love of freedom in ways that directly contradicted Déjacque. The new philosophy drew on the classical liberalism of Thomas Jefferson, filtered through an economic lens that made property rights central. This was the libertarianism of the Cato Institute think tank, formed in 1977 by economist Murray Rothbard, corporate right-wing superstar Charles Koch, and Edward Crane, a leader of the then-fledgling Libertarian Party. Here, the government was faulted not for standing with capital against the people but for getting in the way of progress by promoting socialist welfare systems.
To get a better handle on what sort of libertarianism was at play at Liberty Forum, I asked attendees what their ideal society would look like. The answer, for the most part, was that it would be completely different from the world we know. Drugs and prostitution would be legal. Education and medical care would be market commodities or gifts. In the absence of government support, individuals would be forced to help each other. Without liability protection or the ability to lobby for favours from the state, corporations as we know them would disappear in favour of smaller, more dynamic companies. The vision is so distant and theoretical that even Déjacque-style anarchists and Cato-esque reformers can work side by side in the same movement.
A good thing about working with libertarians is that no one expects to coerce you into participating in something you don’t approve of
James Davis, who plans to move his family to New Hampshire this fall, believes in a libertarianism that looks a bit like Déjacque’s: he wants to free regular people from oppressive institutions. When his first child was born, Davis and his wife got interested in parenting theories that advocate giving children as much freedom as possible. ‘We came upon these ideas of philosophical libertarianism,’ he said. ‘If people don’t trust adults, how can they trust children?’ The couple took over the management of a foundering summer camp in upstate New York and applied their ideas about freedom to it, giving campers as much leeway as possible to make their own choices. It’s the sort of vision that progressives have promoted for decades through democratic schools such as Summerhill, in Suffolk, England, and also one that many Free Staters embrace by home schooling their children and letting them help organise their own educations.
Philosophically, Davis doesn’t believe in government-funded benefits for the poor – drawn from taxation and backed up by prisons and guns. Having worked in non-profit organisations, he’s convinced that in a post-government society people will come through to help the needy without prodding. But he believes that society is a long way off. For now, he’s moving to New Hampshire to be among a community of people who want to improve the world through voluntary action. ‘I suspect it’ll be much like living anywhere,’ he said, ‘but around people who inspire me to be better.’ Davis doesn’t necessarily expect to encounter like minds everywhere, but says that a good thing about working with libertarians is that no one expects to coerce you into participating in something you don’t approve of.
The Bartholomews share Davis’s notion of building a better world outside government mechanisms. As a member of a local school board in California, Johnna recalls being faced with the question of whether to borrow money to pay for desperately needed repairs on a school. ‘I said, definitely, this school needs help, but we haven’t asked one business, we haven’t asked one person, to voluntarily give us one dollar.’
To long-time New Hampshire libertarian Jack Shimek, that focus on voluntary methods is the key to libertarianism. Shimek got interested in politics as a college student in Texas around 1969, a time when young US men worried less that the government would tax them too much than that it would ship them off to a jungle battlefield where they would die. A friend introduced him to Ayn Rand’s philosophy of radical, selfish individualism. Within a few years, he had moved to New York City and into Déjacque’s branch of libertarianism, to argue that the authoritarianism of capitalist bosses is inextricably connected to government tyranny.
Ayn Rand’s Objectivism contained a ‘fatal flaw’, says Shimek. She confused capitalism, a system that gives wealthy owners control over workers, with free markets, which depend on individual autonomy. ‘Capitalists are always in favour of keeping their piece of the pie through political power,’ Shimek told me. ‘When General Motors screws up, it has enough power to convince the government to bail it out.’ Another thing corporations can do, he says, is flood libertarian think tanks and magazines with money: ‘The libertarian movement, originally radical, was invaded by conservative reformers.’ Behind that, says Shimek, are corporate funders with an agenda: ‘They [just] want it to decrease regulation on them, they want it to lower taxes on them.’
Shimek was already living in New Hampshire when Jason Sorens’s idea of a Free State Project took hold. He was thrilled with the influx of people into the tiny libertarian community, but not with the focus on running for office and voting. ‘I said, wait a minute, we’re libertarians, we don’t believe in government.’
For libertarians, Bitcoin is a technology with the potential to circumvent a lot of what’s wrong with the world
At Liberty Forum, Shimek runs Alt Expo, an unofficial series of alternative programmes, with topics such as organic farming and local currencies. The idea is not to confront the government but to live outside it as much as possible. If the power of the state comes from coercion, creating alternatives uses a different kind of power, based in example and persuasion. Though this year’s Alt Expo was sparsely attended, Shimek said it had been a success anyway, because the official programming is now full of these kinds of ideas.
Plenty of people at Liberty Forum think electoral politics is a drag. Carla Gericke, president of the Free State Project, told me she finds politics ‘soul-numbing’. Sessions on farming and gardening – concrete methods of evading government-subsidised industrial agriculture – drew bigger audiences than the ones about lobbying or running for office. Ditto for presentations about technology, which expand the vision of voluntary action beyond government to a global scale. One session is run by two cousins with a start-up who envision a post-industrial economy where individuals trade goods, services and labour online, through portals such as Uber and Airbnb. Everyone is talking about Bitcoin. In the mainstream, the cyber currency comes up mostly as a curiosity, but at Liberty Forum it’s a technology with potential to circumvent a lot of what’s wrong with the world. At one session, panelists wax poetic about paying friends for rides, patronising local businesses, and buying clothes from Australia without taxes, credit card fees, or any contact with the global web of government and private banks.
At another tech sessions, Jeffrey Tucker draws huge crowds. He wears a suit, bow tie, and a mischievous expression, and is prone to phrases such as ‘outrunning troglodyte systems of power’. Tucker points to his smartphone as the symbol of a new society, one with frictionless information exchange, free online education and peer-to-peer lending. To Tucker’s mind, technology is transforming both corporate structures and banking, and politics simply doesn’t much matter. The goal is simply to circumvent dull and lumbering government bureaucrats. ‘We’re going to displace all the institutions of the state,’ he promises gleefully.
By the second-to-last night of the forum, Cory Bartholomew has snapped selfies with a handful of people he calls his ‘liberty heroes’. People such as Cody Wilson, who helped invent the first plastic guns that can be produced on 3D printers, and Thomas Drake and Jesselyn Radack, former government employees who became whistle-blowers, exposing domestic government surveillance and the illegal interrogation of terror suspects. Their stories make Cory wonder if he was naive about the military earlier in his career.
Other delegates flock to an unofficial party at the Quill, a private club and meeting space inside an unmarked storefront in Manchester, New Hampshire. Downstairs, dance music plays and colourful lights throb between the old ceiling beams. Antigone Darling, a slight, 20-something podcaster who’s the host of the party, hands out sex toys to anyone in her audience who yells loud enough: one to Amanda Billyrock, an anarchist who became a libertarian star after she met allegations of drunk driving with counter-allegations of police misconduct; another to ‘Objectivist Girl’, who wears dramatic eye make-up and makes videos explaining the philosophy of Ayn Rand.
Upstairs, a late-night dinner is for sale: grass-fed beef burger with grass-fed bacon and broccoli slaw salad – technically illegal since the cook refuses to get a food service permit. A group of young men stand in a circle talking about their tech start-up, a company that facilitates the use of Bitcoin.
J J Schlessinger, the Quill’s manager, explains a plan to distribute blankets to homeless people who live near the club. He’s also interested in discouraging vandals, not by calling the cops but by keeping an eye on them, maybe asking if their mothers would approve of what they’re doing. Schlessinger uses the word love a lot. He runs the Quill out of love, and wants to help his neighbours with love. The important thing, he says, is for people to reach out to each other in person, not delegate the job to government.
It’s easy to see the Free State Project as a sort of outsize version of the government-hating right. There are issues that libertarians and the left oppose together – high defence spending, corporate subsidies – but they are hard to get at: mostly legislated at the federal level and protected by wealthy interests. It’s much easier to get elected to the local school board and slash local budgets, or to lobby the state legislature against the expansion of health benefits. Republican Party-style libertarians are thus much more visible, and they spend a lot of time trying to cut taxes and reduce spending, invoking the revolutionary spirit of 1776 as they go.
But, looking at the party at the Quill, there’s the suggestion of another American myth: the one about pioneers, often bearing wildly idealistic notions, who come together to build new institutions. Anyone with a passing knowledge of US history knows how fraught with missteps and malice the realities of that process have been, but the myth is a powerful one: if we distrust the government, then we have to trust each other. It’s a notion around which anarchists, Republicans and almost anyone else can find common ground, given sufficient optimism about building a new society.
As Liberty Forum winds down, Johnna and Cory Bartholomew are excited about moving. Johnna’s just seen a panel of volunteers who started charitable organisations to encourage self-sufficiency, and she thinks it’s something she’d like to do. This is the thing, ultimately, that seems to bring people to the Free State Project. They become libertarians because they hate taxes, or fear a police state, or distrust collusion between the state and corporate power. But they move to New Hampshire because they want, more than any of these things, to build something new together.
That’s not a very impressive defense of Objectivism. Keep attacking that God-shaped straw man. I think you can beat it.
btw, have to correct you there (post 166).. They SAY they are conservative, yet go against at least half of what we believe (moral value) :/
The “hodge podge” of positions was about addressing positions I saw you accuse libertarians of being on the wrong side. So, no hodge podge, just a response.
Um, I never said I was OK with gays in the military. I said there was no place for ANY sexuality in it. I do not care if someone is gay in the privacy of their own home, just not, as I stated, in the military. I am starting to get the impression that you want to outlaw homosexuality, using the force of government. If I am wrong, let’s hear your solution. I have gleaned from your posts that government power should be used to advance YOUR wishes. How are you any different than the Dem/Fascists out there?
I did address civil unions, they should be recognized because they are a function of government. I thought that was self-explanatory. Should the government not recognize them? Then what would be the point?
I know many libertarians who agree with me on national defense and abortion. This is why I cannot understand your irrational hatred for libertarians. We agree on may issues.
As far as child porn is concerned, I do not stand with the Party on that or many other issues. I tell you what. I will judge you based on what the Republican Party does, and you can continue to judge all libertarians on what the Libertarian Party does...deal? because that is what you are doing to us libertarians right now.
Describing the positions of libertarianism is not an accusation, it is what libertarianism stands for.
If you want homosexuals banned by law from the military, then I misunderstood you, but I didn’t, you merely said that you want them to hide their homosexuality, but don’t try to talk about no “sexuality” in the military, the military is a hot bed of sexuality, it is full of aggressive and physically fit young people, overwhelmingly male.
We are past civil unions, now we are trying to block Obama’s recognition of gay marriage at the federal level, so you can drop that.
At some point you have to realize that no one cares about whether you yourself are a pure libertarian, or fall short on your commitment to your ideology, the discussion is about libertarianism itself, and it’s war against conservatism, not you.
It is silly to compare the tiny, pure, libertarian party that was founded by the libertarians to PERFECTLY reflect their libertarian ideals, and which is carefully maintained and kept on the true path of libertarian purity, with the two huge, vast, all encompassing, historical national parties in a two party system.
A libertarian party platform is a meeting of pure libertarians, concentrating on expressing libertarian purity on paper, not winning presidential elections and satisfying 60 million voters.
By the way, on your home page you describe yourself as a republican, and a conservative, are you either/both?
If you are, then why are you coming on as a member of the libertarian movement?
I thought I was talking to a libertarian.
Ok, then you must favor amnesty. You know since the Party does.
I served in the military...have you? I know there are lots of young fit people. But there is this thing called DISCIPLINE.. or following orders. Maybe you should read up on it. I know that sounds condescending, but I go where your remarks take me. When I served, outward sexuality was forbidden. And it worked, so don’t tell me it can’t. That’s defeatist and sounds like you are saying if people are going to violate the rules anyway then there shouldn’t be any. So, you are on the wrong side yet again...
I will drop NOTHING. Who says we are past civil unions? Obama himself just became pro gay marriage over the past couple of years. Nothing is set in stone and this is a solution to the problem.
I also do not care if you are a pure conservative, which I am guessing you are not as you seem to love using government power. Yes, this discussion is about libertarianism itself. And you have once again failed to see that it is NOT monolithic just as conservatism is not. But you have to try to make it that way so you have some boogey man to fight and whine about. If you cannot see that then you are not nearly as smart or politically savvy as you believe yourself to be.
I will say this however. The Libertarian Party was founded with certain principles in mind. While I do not agree with some of their prescriptions, as I have already explained, I will at least say they are true to their small government principles. Can the Republican Party say that? Can you? Right now you and your ilk are part of the statist problem. So keep villifying everyone else and gloss over your own faults. It works for 6 year olds, why not you too.
“By the way, on your home page you describe yourself as a republican, and a conservative, are you either/both?
If you are, then why are you coming on as a member of the libertarian movement?
I thought I was talking to a libertarian.”
Because I may be a registered Republican, but am having a hard time supporting the party these days. I am conservative on many issues but have a strong libertarian streak.
On election day, I vote for the most “Constitutionally correct” candidate who can win. I do not like throwing my vote away. In most cases this causes me to vote Republican, but not all. However, I will say I NEVER vote Dem.
A lot of what you say, I don’t even know what it means, for instance this “”When I served, outward sexuality was forbidden.””
I’m a two time vet, I have no idea what that means, we never hid our sexuality, we were randy paratroopers and soldiers, all the men in my family are vets, Navy, Army, Marines, I don’t know what you are talking about “outward sexuality was forbidden”, we reveled in it, openly, we sang songs about it in basic and AIT, and at Jump School and on morning runs and marches, the sergeants and officers sang them, led them, we couldn’t bring hookers to the barracks though.
Homosexuals are either in or out, so far you say ‘in’, as long as they can hide that they are homosexual, well that was true under George Washington, you only got kicked out if someone discovered you were homosexual, in other words, it was against the law to lie to get in.
If you don’t want gay marriage and abortion at the federal level, do you want the laws changed, or kept as they are?
I am a pretty pure conservative, it is you that rejects it and has moved left into libertarianism, and you are a republican as well.
What have I posted that is “statist”, would you quote it for me?
What does that mean?
By the way, you don't know the libertarian position on immigration, do you?
As far as you, as a member of the republican party, continually smearing me as being a republican, well that is just weird, and especially weird since I have never been a republican.
Well, let’s make it simpler. When I served you were not allowed to fraternize with the opposite sex on base or while on duty. Is that clear enough? In other words, you could not have sex. That is outward sexuality, need me to draw a picture? And, since we were disciplined we did not do it.
I do not care about songs or whatever nonsense you are talking about. Who cares? Songs...really?! This is not about that. This is about open homosexuality, right? Ban the behavior and problem solved. Unless that is not enough for you and you want to conduct witch hunts to flush them out. By the way, that would be a statist position, just in case you need me to explain it further.
Well, if I don’t want something done at the federal level, that is what it means. So if the feds are currently doing it, I want it changed. If not it is fine to be left as it is. What is with these moronic questions? Are you being purposely obtuse?
I guarantee you that you are the leftie. You seem to want to use the government to solve all of your problems. How about you answer some questions.
If you don’t want homosexuals in the military, and they are following orders and not being open about it, how do you propose to get rid of them? Your posts concerning this are what I consider statist because I know what you want the solution to be, even if you won’t admit it yourself. I also think that if you had your way, no state could recognize a civil union, no state could have any laws on their books that although constitutional, may collide with what you deem to be acceptable.
I am done with this conversation because you seem to want to focus on homosexuality, and quite frankly I do not care enough about it to continue. I proposed a solution so if you want to continue to blather on about it you can do it alone.
I know the libertarian position on immigration better than you do. Which is why in one of my previous posts I explained how I differ from it. Did you read that or are you just making things up now?
I have never been a member of the Libertarian party, but you seem to want to smear me because of what their party platform says. I am just giving you a taste of your own medicine, returning what you are doing to me. Or are you too good for that? Better than the rest of us and not subject to being held to your own standards?
I know the Libertarian party position on immigration better than you do. Which is why in one of my previous posts I explained how I differ from it. Did you read that or are you just making things up now?
I have never been a member of the Libertarian party, but you seem to want to smear me because of what their party platform says. I am just giving you a taste of your own medicine, returning what you are doing to me. Or are you too good for that? Better than the rest of us and not subject to being held to your own standards?
I don’t know what you are up to,
But the difference between you and me, is that I do not play games.
You Do not know your people;s position on immigration.
Care to guess?
The same way George Washington did?
Very interesting post.
Well, next time I see a worthy article that might bring the trolls out of the woodwork, I’ll just start with a request that they not be fed.
Just a belated note of appreciation for your this post.
Thank you so very kindly.
This means that those of us who donate to the FReepathons are SUBSIDIZING these lying, false-witness-bearing creeps who willfully DECIEVE themselves and others about what small-l libertarian principle represents in America today, in that our donations have to cover for the potential donors who understandably don't want to give money to a forum where they are overwhelmed with insults so foul as to accuse them of complete lack of honor and decency, and of engaging in utter depravity, accusations that at one time would have been settled in duels.
This small handful has the potential of destroying Free Republic, so I can only wish every small-l libertarian Christian conservative FReeper would simply SKIP PAST any post authored by this very tiny minority (on this thread, only five individuals) when the topic is libertarianism (these few FReepers are quite reasonable and "right" on other topics; it is only libertarianism that sets them completely, rabidly, viciously unhinged), and do everything possible to encourage and enlist more new FReepers to find that indeed, small-l libertarianism is something that UNITES most of us, that these dweebs are best IGNORED because they are a minority, not the the bullying faux-majority that simply tries to outshout and insult with despicable lies the level-headed clear majority.
“No it isn’t at all, you don’t think that libertarianism is largely based on opposing the social conservatism and national defense positions of conservatism?”
Not at all. Small “l” libertarianism doesn’t “oppose” conservatism, but rather supports personal freedom, the basis for our country’s founding and form of government.
National defense is one thing, world policeman and nation-building are quite another.
Libertarian conservatives want a government so small and constrained, as to lack resources to impose upon personal freedoms.
Your version of “conservatism,” like Obama’s, needs a big well funded government, to monitor and meddle in peoples’ lives, finances, church attendance, other nations’ internal affairs & external, etc.
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