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Libertarianism Had Its Moment But Is Ill-Equipped For The Task Of Saving America
The Federalist ^ | 11/15/2023 | Brian Hawkins

Posted on 11/15/2023 10:12:25 AM PST by SeekAndFind

Our cultural decadence and institutional rot can only be remedied by a movement unafraid to assert virtue throughout society.

One item stood out at last week’s Republican presidential primary debate: There was not an explicitly nor implicitly identified libertarian candidate. Ron Paul represented the libertarian faction in Republican debates in 2008 and 2012, and his son Rand Paul assumed the mantle in 2016. Prior libertarian-leaning Republican primary candidates include Barry Goldwater in 1964, Jack Kemp in 1988, and Steve Forbes in 1996 and 2000, yet no such candidate can claim the position in this year’s Republican primary. The lack of a libertarian candidate is emblematic of the right’s shift away from free-market fundamentalism and toward a more robust social conservatism.

My own ideological evolution is demonstrative of the right’s shift away from libertarianism. Eight years ago, The Federalist published my essay making the Christian case for libertarianism. At the time, libertarianism seemed ascendant in contemporary politics. The New York Times wondered aloud if America’s “libertarian moment” had arrived, and Time Magazine featured Sen. Rand Paul on its cover describing him as “The Most Interesting Man in Politics.” But libertarianism’s political triumph was short-lived.

There are many possible reasons for this shift away from libertarianism, but among the most decisive were the disruptive events of the Covid-19 pandemic. America’s response to the pandemic exposed two fundamental truths that libertarianism was ill-equipped to answer: First, our institutions have been seized by ideological activists who have weaponized them against core American values; second, the left is on an evangelizing mission to impose its values across society unless resisted.

Institutions Are Broken

Covid exposed the deep moral rot of key institutions, such as academia, journalism, science and medicine, and corporations, among many others. In a liberal society, these institutions play a vital role in tempering concentrated political power by serving as neutral actors leveraging their unique expertise and interests to better society. During the pandemic, however, these institutions revealed themselves as political activists weaponizing their unique positions of authority to enact the left’s political agenda.

This rot was evident when public health officials published a public letter during the height of the pandemic insisting that the George Floyd riots did not violate their previously asserted guidance against mass gatherings because the rioters were rioting for a supposedly virtuous cause. This letter exposed those bureaucrats as mere political activists rather than the neutral experts they claim to be.

When critical race theory (CRT) became a polarizing, mainstream issue, many libertarians claimed CRT was protected by academic freedom. But that’s not true. Public school curriculums are inherently political because public officials ultimately decide what is taught in a public school. But for decades, curricula have been developed by progressives leading to a left-wing indoctrination of students evident in declining civic knowledge and patriotism.

The activist takeover of institutions allows leftists an additional avenue to exercise political power without ever explicitly enacting legislation. Therefore, conservatives must be willing to cripple their ability to exercise power by either externally dismantling these institutions or through their own hostile takeover. Neutrality toward these corrupt institutions will only allow the left to continue to subvert conservatives’ political interests.

The Left Won’t Leave You Alone

Recent years have also made it clear that the left won’t leave you alone. Leftists have a missionary zeal to impose their mores upon society. Again, the George Floyd riots are demonstrative. In their aftermath, the left demanded that you demonstrate your solidarity with leftist social causes or else you’re complicit in systemic racism.

Lavishly funded “diversity, equity, and inclusion” consultants infiltrated corporate boardrooms to inject racial identity politics into the workplace. Then the left came for your children, secretly using public schools to compel children into experimental mutilation under the guise of gender theory. Parents who objected to this radicalism were deemed domestic terrorists or threatened by Child Protective Services. There is nowhere to hide. Leftists insist on your acquiescence.

The left’s cultural aggression is a product of the right’s refusal to assert our own cultural values. Adherence to a neutral public sphere under the guise of secularism only creates a vacuum for the left to leverage the powers of the state to promote their own values. When the state stopped promoting traditional Christian values, the left filled the void by promoting cultural Marxism.

A less libertarian conservatism must leverage tools such as public school curricula, public television, military ethics training, and other professional training in the bureaucracy, etc. to educate Americans on traditional virtues.

Liberty Requires Virtue

Institutional rot and the left’s missionary zeal thus resurface a timeless wisdom: Liberty requires virtue. Absent said virtue, institutions and culture will inevitably culminate in tyranny and social disorder. In recent years, conservatives have relearned that a culture cannot sustain degradation without catastrophic effects to individual liberty. By contrast, libertarianism is at best agnostic on the need for a state to cultivate individual virtue.

Social righteousness as a prerequisite for liberty is an insight our Founding Fathers understood. In his farewell address, George Washington implored that America must be a virtuous nation for the republic to endure. He wrote:

… And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

Of course, libertarians and the left will accuse conservatives of wanting to enact a Christian theocracy, but that’s a lazy smear. Again, George Washington is illustrative. In his first annual address to Congress, President Washington wrote that Americans must understand the difference between order and oppression, and also liberty and licentiousness. He wrote:

… by teaching the people themselves to know and to value their own rights; to discern and provide against invasions of them; to distinguish between oppression and the necessary exercise of lawful authority; between burthens proceeding from a disregard to their convenience and those resulting from the inevitable exigencies of Society; to discriminate the spirit of Liberty from that of licentiousness, cherishing the first, avoiding the last…

Libertarianism fails to heed Washington’s advice by mistaking all encroachments on personal behavior as oppression. On the contrary, the conservative appreciates that in a free society, the state must proactively promote social virtue to prevent society from descending into cultural degradation. Disorder and licentiousness inevitably result in tyranny.

A New Libertarian-Conservative Fusionism

Despite these critiques, libertarianism still offers a lot to the right. The free market remains the greatest path toward material prosperity, and the right’s ability to promote wealth creation is among our biggest political advantages that should not be ceded. But of course, conservatism’s goal is about more than material wealth. Rather, it’s about shaping the conditions for human fulfillment. Any such new fusionism between libertarians and conservatives requires finding libertarian solutions to conservative objectives.

For example, among the right’s policy priorities is to rebuild the natural family. While this can be done via the tax code through an expanded earned income tax credit, or paid family leave policies, libertarians might help deregulate childcare services to drive down the cost of childcare.

Surely there are plenty of ways libertarians and conservatives can and should find common cause, but any shared agenda between libertarians and conservatives must aim toward retaking institutions, restoring social virtue, and rebuilding the family. Absent those objectives, libertarianism offers little to the right in our current political moment. America’s current state is characterized by cultural decadence and institutional rot that can only be remedied by an aggressive conservative agenda unafraid to assert its values throughout society.


Brian Hawkins is the policy coordinator at the American Legislative Exchange Council. Brian graduated from Azusa Pacific University in 2011 with a BA in political science. Upon graduation, Brian commissioned into the U.S. Army, where he deployed to South Korea and Afghanistan. The views expressed are his own.


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; Philosophy
KEYWORDS: conservatism; libertarianism
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To: SeekAndFind

The problem is, society can’t force people to be virtuous. In fact, in our modern Western societies, we no longer even have a common consensus on what constitutes virtue, or how we could determine that.

So you are still putting the cart before the horse.


21 posted on 11/15/2023 12:01:38 PM PST by Boogieman
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To: Wuli

“You can have pure Libertrianism...”

Notice he took care to emphasize the lower-case “l” when he spelled “libertarianism”? That’s usually a sign someone isn’t advocating “pure Libertarianism”.


22 posted on 11/15/2023 12:03:02 PM PST by Boogieman
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To: SeekAndFind

Libertarianism is appealing to the young...until they grow up.

It might work if everyone in the society had an IQ of 120. It’s not going to work in a multicultural society like the USA.


23 posted on 11/15/2023 12:03:23 PM PST by LongWayHome
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To: SeekAndFind

(l)ibertarianism is the bulwark against both the left and right’s control of the people via government power.

______________________________________________________

I typically agree with virtually everything you post, but libertarianism has been a poor bulwark against what the US has become. If there is any one ideology that has been soundly defeated as of the 21st century it is libertarianism.


24 posted on 11/15/2023 12:10:03 PM PST by Bishop_Malachi (Liberal Socialism - A philosophy which advocates spreading a low standard of living equally.)
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To: SeekAndFind

Libertarianism is simply conservatism without moral values.


25 posted on 11/15/2023 12:11:22 PM PST by Responsibility2nd (A truth that’s told with bad intent, Beats all the lies you can invent ~ Wm. Blake)
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To: SeekAndFind
Rather, it’s about shaping the conditions for human fulfillment.

It doesn't sound awful. Except for the folks that will find your "conditions" to be inadequate or torture. Then you are back to picking who wins and who loses again like any other wannabe god... aka, fascist. Once you determine that it is "good" for government to "shape" conditions, you are not too far away philosophically from gassing anyone that doesn't fit with your vision or is perceived as an impediment to it becoming reality.

26 posted on 11/15/2023 12:16:59 PM PST by L,TOWM (An upraised middle finger is my virtue signal.)
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To: Bishop_Malachi
I would make the case that in some ways, there is an undercurrent of libertarianism that is stronger today than it has been in decades. I would offer two pieces of evidence for this:

1. The massive decline in public trust in our governing institutions.

2. The remarkable growth in the numbers of parents who are now home-schooling their kids.

27 posted on 11/15/2023 1:05:36 PM PST by Alberta's Child (If something in government doesn’t make sense, you can be sure it makes dollars.)
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To: All

Libertarian politics has always been the bulwark of failure.

It simply dilutes and divides the Republican vote in elections and within Congress.


28 posted on 11/15/2023 1:19:09 PM PST by rbmillerjr (Reagan Conservative: Economic Freedom, Peace through Strength, American Values- De Oppresso Liber)
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To: Alberta's Child

The perfect setup is a mix between the bible and Libertarianism (maybe there is no difference)

2 Thessalonians 3:10 - ‘for even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: if a man will not work, he shall not eat.’

It’s going to be pretty hard to work while you are bent over at the waist on fentanyl.


29 posted on 11/15/2023 1:40:29 PM PST by nitzy (I wonder if the telescreens in 1984 were first called "free Obamascreens")
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To: SeekAndFind

The LP as a party was never really all that viable. I knew this back when I was still a member.

The philosophy is sound though.

As to the GOP... WTF is a “social conservative”? What do any kind of socialism and conservatism have to do with each other? The answer is easy... nothing. RINO’s and Morality Police like a bigger, more intrusive government than even the staunchest Marxist... they just want that control over areas THEY want to control.

Little “l”ibertarianism kinda just wants people to rise and fall under their own merits without all the guiderails, safety nets, “it’s for your own good” Nanny State regs, etc... Free market capitalism writ large.

As for morality and that much freedom... Are you “moral” because the government put a gun to your head? Are you “free” because someone else forced you to their beliefs?

We’ve discussed these issues ad nauseum while the Democrats have run this Country off a cliff with the help of some “reach across the aisle” RINO’s... We are fiddling while our modern Rome burns...

So sure... let’s hash all this shit out again...


30 posted on 11/15/2023 1:50:17 PM PST by Dead Corpse (A Psalm in napalm...)
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To: Wuli
Not practical, not feasible in this world.

To me pure Libertarianism is “wouldn’t it be nice if” pie in the sky Utopia. Cannot exist.

Which system is practical and feasible in this world? Communism?

It exists and seems to be kicking ass around the globe.

I think Libertarianism would be doing even better. Maybe it wouldn't be "pure Libertarian" but we also aren't seeing "pure Communist" either.

I would gladly settle for "really freaking Libertarian" if "pure Libertarian wasn't achievable".

31 posted on 11/15/2023 1:54:35 PM PST by nitzy (I wonder if the telescreens in 1984 were first called "free Obamascreens")
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To: nitzy

I’d settle for 75% libertarianism and 25% conservatism.

Free markets and a caretaker government limited by some kind of a document. Like some kind of charter or contract laying out what it can and cannot do.

Maybe we could even include a list of things we think people need to be able to live free and equitable lives... like a “starter set” but we could leave it open ended.

IOW... We already have it, we just stopped using it almost as soon as the ink was dry on the vellum...


32 posted on 11/15/2023 2:03:06 PM PST by Dead Corpse (A Psalm in napalm...)
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To: SeekAndFind

Back during the Ford/Carter election, I was a Libertarian. That was before I realized how many people were as dishonest and amoral as they really were. Libertarianism relies on honesty and personal honor, which are in more limited supply than I knew at that time.


33 posted on 11/15/2023 2:47:39 PM PST by VanShuyten ("...that all the donkeys were dead. I know nothing as to the fate of the less valuable animals)
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To: SeekAndFind

They used to say that Daniel Boone moved west as soon as he could see smoke from a neighbor’s fire.

There was a real libertarian.

And when we live piled up on top of each other as we do now, libertarianism doesn’t work.

“When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe.” - Thomas Jefferson


34 posted on 11/15/2023 2:56:59 PM PST by x (¡Risankizum Abrzaa!)
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To: nitzy

Galatians 5:13
For, brethren, ye have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another


35 posted on 11/15/2023 3:36:24 PM PST by Theophilus (It's far easier to rig a jury than an election)
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To: SeekAndFind

If you create the mechanisms by which government can “improve” or “correct” our culture, those mechanisms will soon be employed in the cause of tyranny.


36 posted on 11/15/2023 6:15:13 PM PST by csn vinnie
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To: SeekAndFind

He’s correct about full-out libertaranism being inadequate to solve our problems, because you can’t fix a problem you can’t see, but we need to move in a more liberty-oriented direction.


37 posted on 05/28/2024 9:53:53 AM PDT by TBP (Decent people cannot fathom the amoral cruelty of the Biden regime.)
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