Will the Right Find Libertarianism?

The Atlantic ^ | Mar 18 2010 | Wendy Kaminer

[presidio9]

"Freedom" has long been a right-wing rallying cry for self-identified patriots ranging from John Birchers to tea party protesters to increasingly extreme members of the Republican establishment. They're particularly passionate about the freedom to own and openly carry guns and freedom from federal taxation (but not necessarily federal benefits). Otherwise, their most consistent attachments to freedom tend to be rhetorical, unless freedom means restricting reproductive choice, same-sex relationships, medical marijuana, or sexually explicit speech and permitting discrimination against people who do not acknowledge Jesus as their savior. For some prominent conservatives -- like John McCain, Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, and Dick Cheney -- freedom also entails the establishment of a national security state empowered to arrest and imprison summarily people suspected of terrorism and to spy on people suspected of nothing in particular, thanks to a ubiquitous but largely invisible surveillance system.

There are, of course, exceptions to this statism. The CATO Institute, generally associated with the right because of its commitment to free markets, is equally, if less notoriously, committed to civil liberty. CATO is unusual in its consistent libertarianism, which means, however, that (like Reason magazine), it is a creature of neither the right nor the left. A recent CATO report estimates that some 14 percent of Americans also qualify as libertarian, meaning that they're fiscally conservative and socially liberal (although it's unclear if fiscal conservatives who believe "the less government the better" are willing to surrender their own government benefits, from Pell grants to Medicare).

Libertarians are labile voters,

[Leisler]

Oh, conservatives were vehement ideological and political opponents. Right.

[Ken H]

1. Do you think states should be able decide issues such as medical marijuana under the Tenth Amendment, or do you think fedgov should have authority under the Commerce Clause to shut them down?

2. You wrote the following on another thread recently:

Is it your business what adults chose to do to their bodies? Would Jefferson and Hamilton have agreed with you?

So tell us, is it the government's business what adults do to their bodies?

[Skepolitic]

It will take one heck of a lot of “authority” for you to ever impose this agenda on conservative Americans.

I don't want to impose an agenda on anybody.

And, I don't acknowledge the righteousness of anybody else to impose anything upon me.

As a practical matter, I do acknowedge the threat of the violence that governments use to enforce the their edicts. Otherwise, I would not file a Form 1040 every year and my census return this year. Similarly, I would never attempt to import Jack Daniels or a Bible into Saudi Arabia or Jung Chiang's Mao: The Unknown Story into the People's Republic of China.

[ansel12]

I don’t know what your post meant, you didn’t say anything.

[spintreebob]

The original article focused on pragmatism.. how people vote and why.

The philosophical issues are really quite irrelevant to the pragmatic.

The simple fact is that in blue and purple districts, which is most districts from park district to statewide, neither conservative nor libertarian can win without the other.

Consider the moderate alternative. With moderates support is a one-way street. Conservatives and/or libertarians are expected to support moderates. But moderates are not expected to support, and do not support, conservatives or libertarians.

But most, but not all, of the time, conservatives and libertarians support each other in a two-way street. That is pragmatism.

Furthermore, the image of the attention starved wacko libertarian is not at all what most libertarians are.

Here in Illinois, those who would self-identify libertarian or score libertarian in the little quiz are 80% or more pro-life, pro-traditional family. We get along fine with the other 20% but they are not us.

A lot of the mis-understanding is in the emphasis of single issue conservatives (life) and single issue libertarians (drugs).

Most libertarians and most conservatives are multi-issue, life, guns, taxes, spending, borrowing, eminent domain, regulations, etc. The multi-issue conservatives and multi-issue libertarians, which is most of us don’t have the problems that the single issue people do.

[Fiji Hill]

Oh, conservatives were vehement ideological and political opponents

Indeed, they were--Conservative leaders such as Senators Robert A. Taft (R-Ohio), William Jenner (R-Ind.), and Pat McCarran (D-Nev.), Human Events publisher Frank Hanighen, and polemicists such as John T. Flynn, Garet Garret, Felix Morley, and William Henry Chamberlin were vigorous opponents of liberal interventionist schemes.

[ansel12]

Talking to libertarians is like trying to pin down mercury, they want it to mean whatever they want it to mean.

Anybody could play that game and the left often does, as they have so successfully pushed the leftist agenda in bits and pieces onto America, especially the positions that the libertarians support, like abortion, homosexuality and feminism, and immigration by peasents. The culture and traditions of America have been under attack by open leftists, liberals and then “libertarians” for many generations.

[dcwusmc]

And I am for getting rid of the FDA, since, there being no Constitutional authority for it to exist, it is an illegal agency! So who ya gonna get to regulate your drugs? Maybe Underwriters’ Labs? Let the Free Market deal with that issue and leave government OUT of it. More government regulation is a LIBERAL and Progressive position, NOT a Conservative one, OR libertarian.

[Skepolitic]

presidio9 asserts, regarding Ronald Reagan, that "He tries as hard as he can to say something nice about libertarianism."

Here's an excerpt from http://reason.com/archives/1975/07/01/inside-ronald-reagan

REASON: Governor Reagan, you have been quoted in the press as saying that you’re doing a lot of speaking now on behalf of the philosophy of conservatism and libertarianism. Is there a difference between the two?

REAGAN: If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. I think conservatism is really a misnomer just as liberalism is a misnomer for the liberals–if we were back in the days of the Revolution, so-called conservatives today would be the Liberals and the liberals would be the Tories. The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is.

Anybody who's interested in the truth of the matter should read the entire interview.

I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism.

It doesn't seem like Ronald Reagan strained very hard when he said that. In fact, he didn't remotely disagree with the REASON interviewer's statement that he was "speaking now on behalf of the philosophy of conservatism and libertarianism". If anything, Reagan is uncomfortable with having to use the "misnomer" of "conservative" because he considers himself a classical Liberal.

Does presidio9 have some inside knowledge about this interview, or is he just making an assertion from ignorance?

[ansel12]

You pretend that conservatives and libertarians are on equal footing within conservatism, where do you think that nationally, libertarians fall in church attendance?

Do you think that on average the self described libertarians are regular church goers?

[Leisler]

Leaders? Of what? I can find a handful of people for or against anything. I must of missed the big leader election convention. When are are they going to be held this year?

[dcwusmc]

No, it’s because you have nothing to rebut. Nonsense and Barbra Streisand are not worth the effort, and that’s ALL your posts have consisted of so far on this thread.

[Fiji Hill]

I was referring to the years immediately following World War II—and I thought you were, too.

[Skepolitic]

I don’t know what your post meant, you didn’t say anything.

I did, however, write something in my post and, unfortunately, you don't know what it means. I'm afraid I can't help you.

[aruanan]

Indeed, they were--Conservative leaders such as Senators Robert A. Taft (R-Ohio), William Jenner (R-Ind.), and Pat McCarran (D-Nev.), Human Events publisher Frank Hanighen, and polemicists such as John T. Flynn, Garet Garret, Felix Morley, and William Henry Chamberlin were vigorous opponents of liberal interventionist schemes.

Those who claim that conservative politics is an example of an ideology don't know the meaning of ideology or conservative politics. The word has come to mean "a system of political thought," but that loses the original distinction as a means of using reason, free of religion or aristocracy, to devise a system that will ensure equality and justice for all men.

Conservative politics is based on known quantities of what man actually is, of lessons learned through long experience in a real world. It is about as ideological in nature as mechanical engineering.

Ideological politics begins not with man as he actually is but with man as the ideologue believes he ought to be or could be if only the ideologue and his followers had enough time, money, or power to make them that way.

Since time, money, and power are all limited and since the ideologue has never been successful in accumulating any of the latter two through persuading enough people to make any difference (because at every stage of effort his product is defective and he relies chiefly on spinning a fairy tale of a perfect future), he aims to take control of a government in any way he can so that he can exercise power both to coerce the masses toward immanentizing the eschaton and to extort money from them to pay for it.

Since his world view is by definition in conflict with reality, the degree to which he is able to use state power to force people to conform to it is the degree to which people will be dehumanized and oppressed.

[ansel12]

Well to help, instead of making another empty post, you could have clarified the first one.

I take it that you support the libertarian agenda and just do not want to admit it.

[dcwusmc]

So you favor big government as long as it does the things YOU want it to do and not what the Liberals want it to do... is that a correct way of seeing your comment? It doesn’t matter to you that there is no authority granted FedGov to do YOUR bidding, just so long as you can push YOUR agenda on the nation, right?

So what, exactly, makes you one bit different from Nancy Pelousy? Or Obambi? I mean, total government is total government no matter WHAT you call it. That most of us here want MUCH SMALLER government overall than you do should tell you SOMETHING. Like maybe you’re on the wrong site yourself.

A TRUE political spectrum runs from a total ABSENCE of government on the Right to TOTAL government on the Left and most of us here, libertarians and Paulites included, are FAR to the right of YOU, and much closer to our Founders than you apparently ever thought of being.

[supercat]

The small l libertarian position is generally to revoke Roe v. Wade and return the issue to the states.

If someone shoots and kills a vandal on his property during the night, is it a righteous shoot or is it murder? Should the federal government be involved in the determination?

The vast majority of abortions could be construed as self-defense on the part of the woman. Different states would vary in the level of risk the woman would have to face from pregnancy to justify such a claim. I really don't see the issue as much different from those posed in the vandal-shooting case above, where state authority is well established.

[Above My Pay Grade]

The right did “find” Libertarianism and we find it to be a childish, reckless, immoral, dangerous political philosophy that steals certain aspects of Conservatism while neglecting other equally important ones.

Libertarianism is Conservatism without a brain.

A Liberal utopia would be a nanny state that treats all citizens like irresponsible 4 year olds. A Libertarian utopia would be a state run by irresponsible 4 year olds.

[Fiji Hill]

Those who claim that conservative politics is an example of an ideology don't know the meaning of ideology or conservative politics.

Indeed. Russell Kirk made the same argument in A Program For Conservatives (Chicago: Regnery, 1954).