Posted on 12/12/2006 7:37:39 AM PST by Small-L
For many years, those who consider themselves to be libertarians have been fairly reliable members of the Republican coalition. Although no libertarian would consider himself or herself to be entirely in agreement with either major party, they have historically sided with the GOP. But the relationship today seems more deeply strained than any time in the last 30 years, and a divorce may be forthcoming.
Basically, libertarians are allied with the right on economic issues and the left on everything else. They believe in the free market and freedom of choice in areas such as drugs, and favor a noninterventionist foreign policy. Consequently, someone who is a libertarian could prefer to ally with the right or the left, depending on what set of issues is most important to him or her.
I first became aware of the libertarian philosophy in 1969, when there was a big split in a college-based group called Young Americans for Freedom, which was supposed to be the right-wing alternative to the left's Students for a Democratic Society. The libertarians broke with those who considered themselves traditionalists -- conservatives in the mold of Edmund Burke and Russell Kirk.
The problem for the libertarians was that they didn't want to conserve anything. Whereas the conservatives prized order and continuity, the libertarians were radicals favoring change. The traditionalists in YAF viewed the libertarians with horror, like the Jacobins of the French Revolution, who destroyed the existing order without putting anything in its place, leading to a reign of terror.
The libertarians countered by associating themselves with the American revolutionary tradition of Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry and others. The true conservative, they argued, must defend both the bad and the good in the existing order. But what if there are deep problems in government and society that require change? The conservative traditionalist has little to offer.
In 1969, the key issue was obviously the Vietnam War. The traditionalists supported it, the libertarians opposed it. But drugs were also an important issue dividing the groups. Libertarians believe people have the right to do what they want with their own bodies, even if they end up hurting themselves in the process. Traditionalists take a more Puritanical approach, believing that people must be protected against their own folly.
Consequently, when I first became acquainted with libertarianism, most libertarians tended to associate with those on the left, where they had more in common. But with the end of the Vietnam War and the huge rise of inflation and other economic problems in the 1970s, libertarians mostly tended to drift rightward.
In the 1970s, the left was clueless about how to fix the economy. They had no idea what was causing inflation and insisted on dealing instead with its symptoms through wage and price controls. The left at that time was also highly sympathetic to socialism and often favor nationalization of businesses like the Penn Central Railroad when bankruptcy threatened.
The right at least understood that excessive money growth by the Federal Reserve caused inflation, and that socialism and nationalization were crazy. So most libertarians moved into the Republican Party, which then had leaders like Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan, who spoke their language and had libertarian sympathies.
With the passing of the older generation of Republican leaders who were at least sympathetic to the libertarian message, a new generation of Puritans have taken over the party. They seem to want nothing more than to impose Draconian new laws against drugs, gambling, pornography and other alleged vices. The new Republican Puritans don't trust people or believe that they have the right to do as they please as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else. They want the government to impose itself on peoples' lives and deny them freedom of choice.
At the same time, the Iraq War has aroused the isolationist impulse among libertarians. Only a tiny number of them supported the war in the first place, and they have all now recanted. Moreover, Republicans have lost whatever credibility they once had on economics by indulging in an orgy spending and corruption, and by becoming very unreliable allies on issues such as free trade and government regulation of the economy.
Consequently, many libertarians are drifting back once again to the left, where they find more compatible allies on some of the key issues of the day. And a few on the left are reaching out to libertarians, or at least trying to open a dialogue where there really hasn't been one for a long time.
Libertarians probably don't represent more than 10 percent of the electorate at most and are easy for political consultants to ignore. But they are represented in much larger percentages among opinion leaders and thus have influence disproportionate to their numbers. Republicans will miss them if they leave the party en masse.
Wow. I didn't know that libertarians were for:
bigger, more intrusive government
gun-control
affirmative action
expansive government "healthcare"
abortion funding
activist courts and judges
embryonic stem cell research funding
government monopoly schools
Nanny-state control over environmental issues (and everything else)
Social Security
invasive use of eminent domain
etc., etc., etc....
jw
I'm afraid you misread my post.
Whole lotta hand ringing over a whole lot of nobodies.
Yea. Give us the suitcases. Good luck getting the House, or the Senate for that matter, after the divorce.
L
Newt wrote a platform and shamed republicans into supporting it. It was enormously successful politically. Republicans threw Newt and his platform into the garbage. Americans threw Republicans into the garbage.
That fictional person wouldn't be a Libertarian.
L
Thank you for making my point.
Care to discuss the GOP's departure from Reagan's or Newt's philosophies of government? Perhaps a discussion of why the Republican Party campaigned on and even had planks calling for the elimination of the Departments of Commerce, Education, and Housing and Urban Development while the current GOP expanded them by 82%, 101% and 59% respectively. Or maybe you can explain the conservative principles behind the Medicare Drug program, NCLB, or the 29,000+ earmarks.
Guess what Scooter, we did.
How do you like us now?
Enjoy the minority Johnieboy.
Get used to it.
L
"Yea. Give us the suitcases. Good luck getting the House, or the Senate for that matter, after the divorce."
As well as those Senate seats the LP caused us too.
Good job that the LP did bringing us all together, huh?
Well written Wary. I think you and I can agree on the role of government vs. the role of the church.
The entire thought process of liberaltarianism is warped. Less taxation, tax and legalize drugs. Govt is meant to only protect the people, open borders for all. Right to life, kill the unborn at will. Right to bear arms, I am sure there is some bullet tax there. Then when you disagree with them it is all lies and that we are all kool-aid drinkers. Frankly I have come to find out that libertarians fal into three different groups.
A. Liberals who feel taxes are too high
B. Conservatives who got caught doing an illegal act and were convicted, ie dopesmokers, cocaine users etc.
C. Anarchists who want the destruction of most forms of centralized authority.
You're the ones who keep telling us about that "big tent".
Next time try bringing the walls and the ceiling. Maybe we'll be able to find it.
L
What part of RR do you feel was warped? Or his platform in '84 and '88? Or Newt's Contract for America?
Judging by a lot of posts on this thread, it goes a lot farther than that, they're not just saying "it's your fault," they're saying "get lost and stay lost." Maybe they'll get their wish.
The fact that so many freepers consider individual freedom, personal liberty and limited government to be "liberal" constructs goes a long way toward explaining why libertarians might think twice about voting Republican.
Wow, I just love these sweeping generalizations. And the insults. Those are especially fun. I wonder why it might be that you say that the libertarians can't be be relied upon for votes for the republican candidates? It wouldn't possibly be the sweeping generalizations, the easy dismissal, or the insults, would it? Nahhhh.
Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
Mark
"I'm afraid you misread my post."
OK, sorry if I did. I'll have to reread them.
... keep up the puritan-mercantilist-militarist nonsense and they bloody-well will. see what a few dozen thousand of them can do to electoral results nationwide? stop trying to make the G.O.P. party into the G.O.D. party whose symbol is a cross made out of missiles painted with dollar signs and wrapped in the star of David.
>>Good, all Loserdopians get out and stop pretending to be conservatives<<
Ultimately, they are all just labels. Nobody fits any of them perfectly.
I think the libertarian position on gay marriage is that marriage is a religious institution and government has no business sanctioning any variety of it.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.