My latest essay is on the confusion of the libertarians. The theme is that the left is no longer reliably libertarian on social issues and the right is no longer reliably libertarian on economic issues. For example,
The most ardent progressives now look upon a Haidt or a Pinker as at best suspect and at worst unacceptable. Their traditional liberalism, like libertarianism, is anathema to the contemporary progressive.
Possibly related: Daniel Klein argues that Libertarian Party candidates reduce liberty by drawing votes away from Republicans.
But, frankly, recent events have reinforced in me a deeper feeling that the Democrat Party is a left-wing party in an illiberal sense that spans generations and continents. The concern goes beyond sizing up positions on the issues; it reaches to broader norms of honest government, civility, and fair play, norms upon which liberty depends.
I feel surer than ever before that the Libertarian Party reduces liberty.
Daniel Klein’s argument has been made for many decades now. Yet the Republicans keep trying harder every election to become less appealing to anyone with libertarian inclinations. Given the small size of the LP and the extremely low vote totals that Libertarian candidates receive, it would be hard to convince me that this activism redirected towards the GOP would show any improvement.
He says, “I don’t see the LP as significant to the diffusion of libertarian thought and sentiment;”
Maybe, but compared to what? The GOP? The Republican Party is significant to the diffusion of thought that is absolutely anti-libertarian. A libertarian devoting his energies to the GOP would have as much chance of making a difference as my vote does on election day.
I’m not suggesting that devoting effort or money to the LP is the most effective way to advance libertarian ideas. Despite the presence of the LP, I’m sure that far more time, money, and effort have been spent trying to do so through the GOP. The results are atrocious.
With respect to “extremely low vote totals”: in a number of 2016 contests, the Libertarian candidate got more votes than the difference between the Republican and the Democrat.
Example: here in NH, Republican Kelly Ayotte lost to Democrat Maggie Hassan by about 1000 votes out of about 330,000. Two libertarian candidates (one LP, the other “independent”) got over 30.000 votes.
I wonder if Kelly thinks, “Gee, if only I’d bothered to make some libertarian noises during the campaign to entice just a few percent of those voters to vote for me instead…”
Well, if she doesn’t think that, she should.
Because there are no trade offs here? For any one libertarian vote she may attract, are you confident that she wouldn’t lose a republican-leaning or democrat-leaning voter?
Good point. It could be that “making some libertarian noises” would have been a net negative, even in the Live Free Or Die state.
Her voting record during her term in office went from (in my view) from “not bad” to “not very good”. (See, e.g., her FreedomWorks scorecard.) Certainly this strategy didn’t appeal to enough voters to let her beat her Democrat opponent.
Liberty was essentially lost when rights to heal were given to a select few, and those rights effectively diminished everyone’s else’s time value. Today’s Republican agenda is mostly about preserving the rights of their constituents to this limited set of providers at all costs.
Yes, the GOP is set to dismantle the USDA, any day now.
And so many fervent proposals to end property zoning. And eliminate licensing for lawyers.
Meanwhile, the US Chamber of Commerce appears to have become a mouthpiece for the Communist Party of China.
And yes, the Donks are no better.
Regarding Klein’s argument, I’d suggest that the best approach for people with predominantly libertarian inclinations is something like “Register Republican, vote libertarian”.
If the R’s can confidently count on the votes of libertarians, then they have no incentive to court them. Given that, they’re likely to focus their efforts on winning votes from others—say, from blue-collar voters who want protective tariffs, or Christians who won’t support a candidate who doesn’t loudly support the repeal of Roe, Lawrence, and Obergefell.
On the other hand, libertarians who don’t vote in the Republican primary lose much of their power to influence the choice of candidates for the general election, which increases the likelihood that a protectionist or a Christian-values candidate will get the nomination.
Thus I’d say: vote in the Republican primary, trying to get the most libertarian possible candidate on the general-election ballot; but don’t feel obligated to vote for a Republican who’s only slightly less awful than the Democratic candidate, and, in such a case, vote for the Libertarian when available, to indicate the direction in which the R’s need to move in order to recapture your vote.
I would say that Libertarian intellectuals still punch far above their weight with regard to real influence over right-wing politics especially at the elite and establishment levels, and in the legal community. I don’t think libertarians ever had much influence over progressives – it’s very much more the other way around – and when there is agreement, it’s basically by coincidence of the “strange bedfellows” / “bootleggers and baptists” variety. “The last temptation is the greatest treason: to do the right deed for the wrong reason.”
But it’s different on the right. Assessing the direction of recent trends is probably the wrong way to look at it – one would want to know the counterfactual – how still worse things would be without that Libertarian influence – and that gap, which I believe is large, would measure the libertarianess of our moment.
Which raises the question of where libertarians should invest their political advocacy energies. If they do so with the left, probably they will have no impact. If they do so on the right, they will have impact, so long as they don’t alienate the kind of politician and voter most likely to be receptive to libertarian messages.
Unfortunately, I think most prominent libertarians, especially the new crop of younger commentators, are doing almost the exact opposite.
In answering your question, I think it would be well for Libertarians to keep in mind that so long as government is some form of electoral democracy and the voting population is reasonably large, the libertarian point of view appears like it will only ever at best be a minority view point.
This makes Dan Klein’s conclusions all the more reasonable to me because it’s a practical rather than pure approach to politics.
Otherwise, you get a lot of bitter, young libertarians, as you point out, who complain about Christian-value voters (whatever that might mean), and leave a sense of mutual distrust and disrespect with conservative voters in their wake.
Indeed — especially the Niskanenites.
Kling is not passing the ideological Turing Test here.
Trump deliberately outraged the prominent free trade pundits, and they are determined to brand Trump as anti-free trade, but I don’t think that is true. Remember, that Trump hired Larry Kudlow who genuinely supports what Trump is doing. Free trade pundits have always supported large tariffs as long as they are branded as sanctions, which is purely semantic.
Next, on the budget, the Trump Administration floated aggressive budget cuts, but ultimately faced political pressure, and chose not to spend political capital on that fight. The Trump Administration hasn’t prioritized federal fiscal responsibility, but they do support it. Trump and the GOP pushed health care reforms that featured large cost growth controls, but that got shot down.
He also hired Peter Navarro and Wilbur Ross and let Gary Cohn walk.
I recently read Bob Woodward’s book on the Trump administration, which makes it abundantly clear Trump is the exact opposite of free trade.
Note, the book wasn’t a one-sided negative picture of Trump. For example, on the treason – witch hunt spectrum re: Russia, I’d say the book moved me a bit towards the “witch hunt” end. But either way, Trump definitely isn’t pro free trade.
I find it telling that we all assume the Libertarians are pulling votes from the Republicans, but not pulling votes from the Democrats. If libertarians are “liberal on social issues, conservative on economic issues” as Arnold says, shouldn’t they be getting votes from fiscally conservative Democrats?
As for not running/running in elections, if you don’t run, you can’t win. You can’t even build up to a victory. I live in British Columbia, and our Conservative party doesn’t even run candidates in the general election! Instead they support the Liberal candidates, hoping to deny the NDP victory. I dare say they’re correct in the short term, but they’ve given up all hope for the long term in exchange for a few crumbs.
I have voted for a social liberal/fiscal conservative running under the R tag in the past. He actually governed like he said he would and I voted for him again. But now it seems they may talk the talk but when it comes down to it 98% of their votes are with the Republican party. So what do I get for supporting them? Worse than nothing.
Isn’t the libertarian moment sort like the Brazil economic moment or the Clippers moment? Every decade we see the libertarians gaining political support and then it disappears for 7 – 8 years. We really did see huge emotional support for Ron Paul in 2012 but Rand Paul’s run crashed and burned. (I always thought Ron Paul’s strength was his country doctor image that Rand clearly does not have.)
1) I still think the biggest issue of libertarians is they combine the image of Laura Wilder and Jon Galt. In reality Jon Galt’s economic creative destruction always weakens the image of Laura Wilder libertarian community.
2) And doesn’t the Jon Galt of the world turn into the Taggarts in ten years? Who was the most successful person in the 1990s? Bill Gates and he appears the definition of a Taggart. What about the 2000s? Mark Zuckenbery and he is already down the Taggart road. Also, most modern Jon Galts have one or two great ideas but over generations they are replaced.
3) Where is the most successful Libertarian nation? Some might say Singapore but that is weird nation-city. I guess the US in the Gilded Age come close but that is before a lot of modern realities and lots of open land.
4) I probably sympathetic to the Daniel Klein arguments in the modern Trump conservatism but it also means the decline of religion.
Too much economics, not enough love and sex.
The Rep party, like any party in a democracy, is dependent most on its voters. The single biggest group of Rep voters are the pro-life Christians. Most Libertarians are, thru intellectual superiority, anti-Christian. And, despite actual DNA science, most Libs support women who choose to murder their totally innocent unborn fetal babies, even tho these always have different DNA. The fetal baby is not actually a part of a woman’s body, altho inside a woman–often even having a different blood group.
Klein is correct about the tribal group rights Dems who are against the “broader norms of honest government, civility, and fair play, norms upon which liberty depends.” These are based on Christian values (in Europe & America) — attacks on Christianity are, inevitably, attacks against these values; similar to attacks against Bourgeois values so popular among the college indoctrinated.
Most Christians are NOT Randroids nor Free Marketeers. But only a little less lazy than non-Christians, so would rather vote for the gov’t to have a social safety net rather than not having one.
Heinlein was great in imagining, in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, how a Lib society in a higher tech society might work. But of all my college beliefs, the one I now think was most wrong is the belief in “responsible promiscuity”.
Should Drunk Driving be legal? This might be the difference between 1 in 10,000,000 (1 in ten million) vs 1 in 10,000 (1 in ten thousand) about causing a fatal accident, that trip. (around 100 car deaths each day total). The pure Lib answer is “no”, because the many drunks who drive, less safely but without accident, aren’t hurting anybody, so shouldn’t be punished until / after they do hurt somebody. Because an accident is “so much” more likely with drinking, most folks accept gov’t force to punish people for a crime of “increasing risk” to others. Drinkers don’t believe they will be “caught” having an accident — it won’t happen to them. They’re both right, still low probability yet also wrong — much higher risk of accident than non-drinkers.
Promiscuity causes heartbreak. Very very often. Not as damaging physically as a car crash, but still bad. I see the #MeToo movement, and a lot of rage of a lot of women, as rage against heartbreaks due to the promiscuity culture — which many of the raging women support (because they blame Trump, or Reps, or men, or capitalism, or something else).
Libs “won” the promiscuity culture war — but “All’s fair in love and war”. Losing in love can, and does, cause losers to stop being honest, stop being civil, stop playing fair, stop obeying the norms upon which Liberty depends.
Women do NOT react to promiscuity the same as men — it’s not possible for any culture to have “equal rights” for men and women with equal cultural happiness. Unequal, but acceptable and reasonable “rights” has, in the past, led to higher amounts of normal happiness for both men and women. Since “equal rights” means less happiness, there will be constant cultural arguments about it — with Dems very often NOT “preaching what they actually practice”, which is often closer to what the more Christians advocate.