Posted on 11/11/2013 10:35:15 AM PST by Kaslin
Yesterday, Derek Hunter declared that libertarianism has entirely lost its meaning, that the party has devolved into a catch-all for people who want to criticize the government without doing anything about it. He also assumed that any Republican candidate would be better than a Democrat for classical liberals.
Hunter could not be more wrong. The Libertarian Party is still the face of “individual responsibility, small government, and free markets,” but how the LP arranges those priorities is changing. The Party needs to represent its constituency, appeal to young voters who largely have experience with Ron Paul, and has to emphasize its social liberalism to appeal to the broader American public. In doing so, the Libertarian Party is sharpening its policy prescriptions while becoming more inclusive, but that doesn’t mean the philosophy is meaningless or is standing at the sidelines.
Let’s have a look at some numbers of the people who call themselves “libertarian.” A few weeks ago, a think tank called the Public Religion Research Institute released a big data report on those who describe themselves as “libertarian.” There are some big consistencies; for example, 96 percent oppose Obamacare. But what is most striking is that a majority (39 percent) consider themselves “moderates”—not conservatives or liberals.
To be sure, this report notes that most libertarians are registered Republicans (45 percent). However, more libertarians are independent (35 percent), third party (15 percent), or Democrats (five percent) when combined. It is a misinterpretation of libertarian values to assume that all would vastly prefer Republican candidates. If we were just looking at party affiliation, Republican libertarians do not represent even half of the libertarian demographic.
So when Hunter exclaims that McCain would have been better than Obama, or Cuccinelli better than Sarvis or McAuliffe, he is speaking for himself, not for all libertarians. To ask libertarians to vote Republican reinforces only one purity test: Hunters’ own. Hunter seems to think that free markets is all libertarianism is about, and he’s happy to snuggle into bed with conservatism. Libertarians are the wrong audience for his kind of policy prescriptions.
The Libertarian Party needs to build its base with young people as well. These folks are the people who have the time and energy to canvass. Above anything else, they are at the core of what will guarantee a future for the Libertarian Party of tomorrow.
Know what libertarian young people like? The young guns of the Tea Party, and even Ron Paul. No one can expect them to get behind the elders who insult their heroes as “wacko birds.” The Libertarian Party is smart to try to include Millennials as much as possible, even if celebrities popular with Millennials ignorantly give themselves the “libertarian” title, like Bill Maher (who really considers him a libertarian anyway?). In fact, I think one of the most important people teaching Millennials to question government is a self-identified liberal: Jon Stewart. We can’t give and take away the libertarian title, so we should take the positive publicity and use it to our advantage.
Millennials are, as a whole, especially socially liberal, but the rest of America is following. A majority of Americans favor legalizing marijuana. More than half of the country supports gay marriage. An additional bulk want there to be a way for illegal immigrants to stay in this country. Like it or not, social issues are the best way to attract new people to the Libertarian Party, especially if they’re young. Sure, prostitution and raw milk might not be the top of everyone’s agenda, but these ideas reach far more people than free-market fundamentalism. What is best for the Libertarian Party is to advertise how mainstream it could be. If the Libertarian Party seems more blue, that’s because it’s a reaction to what Americans prioritize.
So what’s happening here? Libertarianism is rebranding itself to be more inclusive. Now more than ever, it is accepting of LGBT people, encourages women to have a voice, and has different social media groups targeted to different minorities. Inclusivity is the best way for libertarianism to grow. Hunter’s exclusivity will only be the death of libertarianism in America.
But what of all of our think tanks and libertarian blogs and magazines? Changing hearts and minds does not happen overnight, but there are still successes everywhere. The Competitive Enterprise Institute was fundamental in blocking food labeling measures in Washington. Nick Gillespie seems to have a new editorial in a major newspaper every day. The Institute for Justice and the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education fight for fiscal and civil liberties and have regular wins. Libertarians are far from doing nothing.
If anyone should be compromising on their ideals, it should be people like Hunter. He does not have the authority to determine what is and isn’t best for liberty. Libertarians are happy to leave that to individuals to decide for themselves.
For the most part, yes.
Ahem, well, it turns out that the Holy See didn't like American (19th-century) liberalism, didn't like its Congregationalist and Calvinist roots (in "the priesthood of the believer", a Protestant doctrine) and liberal (now conservative) devotion to the Liberty Interest of the American People, and most of all, the revolutionary existential threat it raised to the Spanish Empire, which as you'll recall was almost a co-branded operation of His Most Catholic Majesty and Holy Mother Church. But by the time of the Congress of Vienna, South and Central America were crawling with young Spaniards and criollos (New World ethnic Iberians) who'd read the French philosophes and imbibed hellish ideas from the intellectuals of the salon movement.
And so the Holy See sat down secretly with the representatives of Austria-Hungary (Prince Metternich) and Imperial Russia to explore ways to counter rising American influence and interest in freethinking among the endangered souls of New Spain, and the result was the secret codicils of the Congress of Vienna.
And so Great Britain and the United States promptly sat down and negotiated the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, which promulgated what we nowadays call the Monroe Doctrine, which was an anti-Spanish, anti-European (at least as far as the Continental Powers), and anti-papist, liberal (conservative) document. We proclaimed the freedom of the New World from Old World influence and occupation, so there! Never mind that the British Empire and the Royal Navy were the principal guarantors of the spirit of the document.
[You, replying] Sure there is. Maybe not right away, but it will happen.
Not really. Potential corruption, which extends to everyone not sealed into the Church Triumphant (saints in Heaven), is not the same thing as the thing itself, held in hand.
And just to clarify, and palliate people who may have reasonably inferred I was arguing for Bushism and crony RiNOism, McKinleyism and all that, I am also interested, like other conservatives, of undoing the damage to society inflicted by 100 years of Fabianism and especially Stalinism carried forward sub rosa by agents of influence.
Bottom line is that I am an ordoliberal, that is to say a 19th-century liberal who differs from classical, marketarian liberals (the market cures all ills) by insisting on a good police force to chase around and jail gonefs like Mike Milken, Carlo Ponzi, Scott Rothstein, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Ebbers, Ken Lay, and their ilk. The market only works when there isn't somebody's fat thumb on the scales.
Given that there is a Big Government, what should we expect them to do, beyond incrementally undoing what a century's worth of corrupt doing (beginning with the Federal Reserve System in 1913) has wrought?
It will be enough if Congress abolishes an ideological henchtoad agency or lard-fat Department in every session.
The problem is too damned much power concentrated in the hands of a relative few
Yes, I quite agree; but I shouldn't throw the Tea Party babies out with the corrupt RiNO bathwater, or smear them with the stink of Karl Rove. Let them work, let them reduce appropriations and shrink agencies of the Executive Branch, and begin the laborious correction of the the Supreme Court's numerous thin-air ukases and notoriously penumbrous decree laws throughout the last 60 years.
[You] I explicitly exclude the political attribute, but you insist I’m making a false moral assertion based on party policy. Give it up.
I looked very carefully, and I don't see where you "explicitly exclude the political attribute". Rather, it seems you explicitly included the politics of the contending parties by saying that it doesn't matter which politica the Big Government is driven by. I replied and protested afresh my original post to our FRiend, that it absolutely matters who organizes the government and leads it, and what their principia are.
My post to him was not to worry about the Right, but about the Left. Real Tea Party people want to shrink and confine Government to its constitutional role. I didn't say, but added later, that their idea of proper government would be to begin a program of reduction of the scope and claimed powers of FedGov.
In #152, you state the following falsehood:
>> “There is no moral equivalence there, and yet you pronounced |big government run by bad liberals| = |big government run by conservatives|.”
I never made the pronouncement you described. Furthermore, with respect to my “regardless of who’s driving it” condition, why do you inject a comparison including two “drivers”? Where’s the third “driver”? Are you suggesting no other “drivers” could exist but the two you compared?
You aren't getting the point, and I am beginning to think that failure is intentional.
Let me try one more time.
It is not my desire to impose my church on anyone. What I want to avoid is a situation where actions are mandated for me and the members of my church which are in direct conflict with well over 1500 years of church doctrine. Mandating that I buy insurance which covers abortion is such an act, one which I will resist. Whatever. it. takes.
To have secular mores imposed on my religion is every bit as bad as the reverse.
Right now we conservatives are fighting gay marriage while libertarians are fighting for it, some libertarians here are trying the bizarre strategy of diverting the actual politics and political discussion into fantasy discussions of America suddenly ending marriage entirely as we know it, and merely letting everyone make up their own definitions, as long as they call it a “religion”.
No one is making new law for your church in regards to marriage, but your argument would cover Islam, and cults, gay churches, Satanic churches, anything and everything called a religion, unless part of this goofy fantasy is that America is going to become a Catholic theocracy somehow, as has been promoted by whacko libertarians on this thread
Libertarians fight us on DOMA, constitutional amendments, and all of our efforts to oppose gay marriage, they oppose the Christian voters, and social conservative republicans, and now, to counter conservatives on conservative sites, they are talking fantastical gibberish about the American voters suddenly being open to making marriage only for people who belong to religions.
Exactly so. I heard Dennis Prager discuss this last week, and he was of roughly the same opinion. Specifically, he said that there are 2 ways to skin the cat of statism: one is by winning elections against statists, and then rolling back their policies; the second is to convince people that statism is morally and practically wrong. Prager went to great lengths to indicate that he loved libertarianism as an idea, as a means of persuasion, but that he also viewed the Libertarian Party (and others of similar views with different names) as unwittig pawns of the statists, the candidates who were (in his opinion) driven more by ego than by a desire to defeat collectivism and statism.
I concur. No Libertarian has ever won a major election. OTOH, many libertarians have, running under the banner of the Republican Party...Rand Paul and Ron Paul being 2 well-known examples. Damn, we've actually got a libertarian (not Libertarian) Senator - one who gets a pretty good amount of face time to convince people to vote against statism and collectivism...and he's not alone!
In no way do I impugn the motives of those who are libertarian in outlook or philosophy (as mentioned, I'm basically one of you) - but to advocate a 3rd party to advance such ideas is, IMHO, a self-defeating exercise. Me, I'm a libertarian at heart, but I understand that to really affect policy you have to, you know, ACTUALLY WIN ELECTIONS! Going down with guns blazing is still going down. Splitting votes of people that are 80%+ like-minded is sheer stupidity, and the best example of that was Teddy Roosevelt running against Taft in 1912. Together they garnered
No true libertarian supports government regulation & licensing of marriage.
bkmk
As a matter of fact, you did, and I even quoted you.
No matter, I'm good with what I posted, I stand by my statement(s), and I think we're done here.
Done? You never started with a sound argument.
Sorry, I’m not sure whom ‘Rachel’ pertains. If you’re asking do I tow the party line? In as much as you may for the (R) or whomever you are affiliated. IMHO, the (L) has 95% platform I endorse, but I vote and donate to whom I think best represents the 1) Constitution and 2) the individual (me).
As to the quote provided, it’s a mixed bag. For me, one follows the Rule of Law (when passed and in-sync with the Const.). States are still able to do as they wish (again, as long as in line w/ the Const.)...50 experiments and one is able and willing to vote w/ their feet and $$.
Most of the quote seems to be a mangle of talking points and gibberish (womans’ voice, targeted minority groups??)
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