At the risk of further contributing to a debate I’ve recently come to hate, I can’t help but muse on the whole recent “liberaltarian” conundrum. It’s an issue I feel like I’ve been reading incessantly about since David Boaz at Cato published “The Libertarian Vote” in October, and with Brink Lindsey’s coining of a term, “liberaltarianism,” the issue has tipped into downright blogosphere frenzy, with every good libertarian blogger and commenter wonking off about it.
Democrats and Libertarians will now hold hands and skip through fields of legalized marijuana while it rains civil liberties!
A Democrat and Libertarian alliance will make Milton Friedman weep acid rain over the Beltway!
And so on and so forth ….
I think James Markels at AFF got to the crux of the matter in his commentary today about “purity-test libertarianism,” which he described as “the insufferable way that libertarians squabble amongst themselves to prove who is more consistent or pure in their ideology.”
There’s been a lot of this going on lately, and particularly vitriolic were some of the responses to David Weigel’s post about a Libertarian/Democrat alliance over on Reason Magazine’s blog. The mere suggestion that a Dem-Lib alliance might not be the Worst Thing Ever got Weigel accused of being a “Democratic shill” unworthy of deigning to call himself a libertarian …
I know that the Republican Party has traditionally been the institutionalized home of small-L libertarian voters, but it makes me cringe to see the more liberal-leaning libertarians berated and out-ideologized by smarmier-than-thou purity test libertarians.
The Republican Party has “security moms” and Christian fundamentalists and good old boys and Reaganites; the Democrats claim middle-class populists and lofty hippies and upper-crusty intellectuals. The point being, each party encompasses a range of individuals and groups with various social, political and economic agendas. So why can’t libertarians, as a group, agree to do the same?
I think it can be boiled down to an argument I was having with a friend of mine while drinking beer in the mall a few weeks back. We were discussing the issue of gay marriage, and he just didn’t understand why it seemed so important to me. He supported gays’ right to marry, but a politician’s views on this issue just didn’t really matter that much to him, and the same with several other social policies. He was going to vote for the most fiscally conservative candidates possible, regardless of anything else. I, on the other hand, am much more concerned with social and civil issues, and no amount of amazing tax policy could ever make me vote for a candidate that was anti-homosexual, anti-choice, etc. I’m a libertarian because I believe the government should stay out of our living rooms and bedrooms. He’s a libertarian mostly because he thinks the government should stay out of our wallets.
There’s a place for both positions within the libertarian label. At the core, social libertarians and economic libertarians share the underlying belief that the government should, in general, leave us alone. In a perfect world, I would support the entire range of libertarian positions, economic and social, but when forced to choose between the two, my priority is social policy, which means I’m always going to skew Democrat. If your priority is economic, you’re going to skew Republican. It’s as simple as that.
In-fighting amongst libertarians about who’s too-Democrat or too-Republican isn’t going to help anything. The PTLs may vote a straight-libertarian ticket (or not vote at all), but most of us are going to have to choose between two separate-but-equal enemies when voting. And that’s okay.
“I, on the other hand, am much more concerned with social and civil issues, and no amount of amazing tax policy could ever make me vote for a candidate that was anti-homosexual, anti-choice, etc. I’m a libertarian because I believe the government should stay out of our living rooms and bedrooms. He’s a libertarian mostly because he thinks the government should stay out of our wallets.”
No, no, no… that’s not what I said at all! And I most def never argued that “fiscal” issues should be more important than “social” ones. I don’t even think there’s any meaningful difference b/n ‘economic’ freedom and ‘personal/social’ freedom.
What I told you is that I don’t think government should be involved in marriage, period. I can think of no good reason for the government to be in the business of defining/subsidizing/regulating marriage at all. Marriage should be an entirely private matter between the two people involved. The government shouldn’t recognize any distinction between married and unmarried people, and it certainly shouldn’t discriminate against non-married persons by giving special benefits to married persons.
That’s all I was saying at the bar. I don’t think there’s anything especially liberal or libertarian about a government regulated marriage scheme, so I don’t get too excited about that system being expanded.
Nice Post.
That was well said. Always appreciate your indepth views. Keep up the great work!
John