Category Archives: Libertarianism

William Shatner at FreedomFest 2017 in Las Vegas Friday night. Credit: Emile Doak/The American Conservative

Is there a free mind? Are our minds free? Are we programmed by something up there to follow our fate? Or are we programmed by Mom and Dad at a very early age? So is there free will? Do we make choices?

So wondered William Shatner during his July 21 speech at the annual Las Vegas convention of libertarians and other free-marketeers called FreedomFest. He urged the audience to stick to its principles, not compromise as he says he did when he directed Star Trek V by giving up on his original vision of having the real God attack the crew with an army of lava men in the films climax.

Compromising principles is a mistake, suggested Shatner. Nobody can tell you what to do. Somewhere inside us is a core.

Is William Shatner a libertarian, you might ask? If not, whats he doing there? Well, it seems more like hes an environmentalist worried about overpopulationand hes a Canadian, of coursebut hes also expressed some populist longings for someone to sweep away the bureaucrats and make American democracy work again. And he avoids commenting on Donald Trump. Maybe call Shatner a frustrated technocratic populist? Sounds like sort of a Reform Party guy to me, leavened by an inevitable Star Trek-veteran love of science and education.

None of this makes him too much weirder than a previous FreedomFest speaker who went on to bigger things, namely Donald Trump. I suppose the question is how big you want the libertarian tent to be. You probably want a tent big enough to let in optimists who still believe we can invent and build things, but not a tent so big that it lets all the carny-barkers inside. A friend of mine in Colorado reports seeing someone flying around downtown Denver with a jetpack a couple weeks ago, so we know futuristic technological progress is officially going strong, but I worry more about unrealistic promises in politics these days.

I noticed some people joking online that theyd love to hear Shatner tell the assembled libertarians to get a life in the fashion of his notorious 1986 Saturday Night Live sketch about obsessive Trekkie conventioneers. I probably would have laughed harder at that joke myself a decade or two ago, when it seemed that the worst thing that could happen to the libertarian movement is that it might get too screechy and radical and alienate mainstream Americans. Everybody relax, I would have thought.

Nowadays, I worry more that in American politics, even the most radical road always leads back to the same mushy centrist middle, with a few highly predictable TV pundits guarding that middle against the emergence of any truly new ideas. So, if Shatner is unlikely to express a precise, coherent philosophical argument, I should at least root for him to leave crowds slightly confused, even if he says something stupid. That can spur thought. It beats sticking to safely-ambiguous, nigh-universal sentiments that are deployed as if to build coalitions but are really used mainly to make the speaker himself seem as non-threatening as possible, often boosting his career without doing much to shore up the hypothetical broader coalition. Absent utopian unanimity, one should root for competition, always.

Im beginning to feel the same way about fictional continuity in Star Trek, to my surprise.

A sci-fi geek, I have been as eager as anyone over the years to see massive fictional continuities like that of the Star Trek universe or the DC Comics universe kept perfectly consistent. Inevitably, though, things fall apart eventually. New writers and new producers like Star Trek/Star Wars director J.J. Abrams come along and cavalierly decide theres a certain scene they want to depict or a character they want to bring back, and out goes the whole timestream as were asked to pretend vast swaths of prior fictional history never happened. I used to think this process was as heartbreaking as watching footage of the old Penn Station being demolished.

But there comes a point when you realize that the hope of maintaining a consistent continuityor a large political coalitionis probably rooted in a misguided optimism. The editors are too busy to care about all the details, and the politicians and most popular pundits are too busy or corrupt to care about philosophical purity. So, then the disappointed idealist starts to root for chaos. Perhaps thats a little of what happened in November 2016.

Let my fellow libertarians fight viciously and devolve into factions (pausing to enjoy the occasional near-meaningless Shatner speech or other entertainment). Like small and decentralized states, the factionalism might afford a better chance for truth to survive out there somewhere than would one bland, homogeneous consensus version of the philosophy with all the rough edges polished and gleaming.

And if the new Star Trek: Discovery TV series comes out this fall and has a throwaway line in it suggesting that this timeline may replace both the Abrams films and all the TV material we know from the 60s and 90s, well, now Im okay with that possibility, too. I am preemptively embracing that anarchic conclusion before the monarchShatnerhas a chance to insult us all again. Let a hundred Omicron Ceti III flowers bloom.

In Vegas terms, until we really hit the jackpot, Im grateful so long as we can keep rolling the dice.

Todd Seavey is the author of Libertarianism for Beginners. He writes for SpliceToday.com and can be found on Twitter at @ToddSeavey.

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Is Star Trek Icon William Shatner a Libertarian? | The American ... - The American Conservative

"Conservatives and libertarians were always portrayed as the shrill and unhappy guys, and the left and liberals were always the people who are having fun," says Greg Gutfeld, host of Fox News' The Greg Gutfeld Show, co-host of The Five, former host of Red Eye, bestselling author, and Reason magazine intern reject.

"What you're seeing now is a lot more fun on the libertarian and right side than you've ever seen on the left."

Gutfeld sat down with Reason's Nick Gillespie to discuss his "ugly libertarianism," Donald Trump's love of Red Eye, why he was excited about the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, and why Trump's comments on the campaign trail were best understood in the context of a Comedy Central roast.

The interview took place on stage at Freedom Fest 2017, an annual gathering for libertarians in Las Vegas.

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Greg Gutfeld: Trump Turned Liberals Into Dean Wormer [Podcast] - Reason (blog)

Nancy MacLeans Democracy in Chains portrays the late economist James Buchanan as a central figure in the modern libertarian movement. An individual can be influential in different ways; he can be an institution-builder, inspire strategy, or directly influence other activists and movement intellectuals with his ideas. MacLean suggests that Buchanan was a supremely important institution-builder and strategy-inspirer, though I think she greatly exaggerates his role in both spheres.

But what of his direct influence on activists and movement intellectuals? As I noted in my first post on the book, my impression is that Buchanan was a peripheral or tangential figure in the development of modern libertarianism. It eventually occurred to me that there is at least one objective contemporary indicator that I am right.

In 1988, Liberty Magazine surveyed its readers regarding which important figures influenced their political views. Liberty was a small-circulation libertarian magazine that, unlike the outreach Reason magazine, was written to appeal to activist libertarians, the sort of people who work at think tanks, who are active in the Libertarian Party, or who promote libertarian causes like drug legalization. It wasnt a scientific survey but still provides some interesting data.

Buchanan won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1986. MacLean claims that this advanced the cause as nothing else had to that point. Strange that hard-core activist libertarians didnt notice. The editors explained how they chose the names on the survey list: The names were chosen during the editorial meeting attended by Cox, Bradford, Holmes and Virkkala. An attempt was made to include on the list the most important contributors to libertarian thought, as well as figures believed by the editors to be influential among libertarians, and some individuals about whose influence that the editors were simply curious. James Buchanan wasnt on the list.

This could have been an oversight, but apparently not. Readers wrote in several names multiple times, including such now-forgotten figures as Robert Ringer, and even Buchanans sometime collaborator, Gordon Tullock. Buchanan wasnt among the write-ins, either.

For the curious, the most influential modern libertarians, in order, were Ayn Rand, Murray Rothbard, Ludwig von Mises, F.A. Hayek and Milton Friedman. Note that contrary to MacLeans (almost entirely undocumented) suggestion that libertarianism was motivated to a large degree by Southern hostility to desegregation in general and Brown v. Board of Education in particular, none of these figures were Southerners, 60 percent of them were European refugees, 80 percent (all but Hayek, who had Jewish relatives) were Jews, and all lived in Chicago or New York.

Its also worth noting that despite MacLeans tracing of libertarianisms lineage to John Calhoun, he also unlike other historical figures such as Locke, Jefferson and abolitionist Lysander Spooner does not appear on the list.

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How influential was James Buchanan among libertarians? - Washington Post

When Michigan native Mitt Romney (also the owner of a Ken doll bouffant) was the candidate, Republicans didnt stand a chance. His home state remained the cornerstone of the Democrats vaunted blue wall that gave them a lock on the electoral college. Before Trump, no Republican presidential candidate had won the state in nearly 30 years. Romney lost it by nine points to Barack Obama.

Kid Rock supported both Romney and Trump and identifies himself with the more libertarian wing of the party. But being from Detroit and having a long-term business relationship with Chevrolet, one would probably be safe to assume that his libertarianism probably extends to free speech and skepticism of foreign military misadventures rather than to the free trade absolutism and open borders of think-tank libertarians. In other words, the common sense American libertarianism that says, you mind your business and Ill mind mine.

When they read the lyrics to some of Kid Rocks early songs the pearl-clutchers will bemoan the lost virtue of the Republican Party (Oh, the language!), but voters just want someone who represents their interests and gets the job done. Less talk, more action. The return of rough around the edges citizen-politicians may offend the delicate sensibilities of our ruling class, but its what Americas Founders wanted and what the times demand.

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Goodbye, Joe Scarborough. Hello, Kid Rock. - Hot Air

For libertarians in modern day politics, there has been more commotion regarding the proper stance on borders than ever before. This confusion has focused on the debate between whether we should be proponents of open or closed borders, and depending on who you ask, you get completely conflicting answers.

Why this topic causes so much confusion among libertarians is a complete mystery, as the debate regarding the proper stance on borders has been self-evident for almost 50 years now. So self-evident in fact, that Murray Rothbard barely even addressed it in For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto, spending less than a handful of its few hundred pages discussing it. Why it has been so prominent lately though can be attributed to a few things.

Lets start with the overall increase in skepticism shown towards immigration, as it will certainly be brought up as a criticism later.

Nationalism has always been something promoted by the state, with an irrational fear of foreigners likewise trailing close behind. Immigration, however, has always been and still is an overall net benefit to an economy. For starters, immigrants do not steal peoples jobs, because unless you own the company, you do not own your job. Instead, they fill in the gaps left by most natives. In America, immigrants tend to be either exceedingly high or low skilled, complementing the majority of American workers who fall somewhere in the middle. Not only are immigrants less likely to commit crimes than natives, but research also shows that in America, immigrants are assimilating better than ever before. And although we can agree that we have a massively overblown welfare state, immigrants as a whole pay more in then they receive.

Part of the reason this illogical cynicism has been exacerbated in libertarian circles is due to the influx of both Democrats and Republicans abandoning their respective party, choosing to identify as libertarian with no real knowledge of its specifics.

These individuals, ranging from members of the alt-right all the way to full-blown communists, have caused the focus of the issue to be distorted. The open and closed borders distinction serves only to confuse most people through their subjective definitions, misleading many into arguing over inconsequential details. They have in essence academized libertarianism unnecessarily, much like what modern progressives have done with inequality and racism. Thus, taking a settled debate and adding excessive details, oftentimes complicating it to the point of arriving at the opposite answers.

Ironically, Rothbard predicted this would happen, and in For a New Liberty no less. In it, he refers to these groups through the borrowed Marxist terms of left-wing sectarians and right-wing opportunists, and wrote the following:

The critics of libertarian extremist principles are the analog of the Marxian right-wing opportunists. The major problem with the opportunists is that by confining themselves strictly to gradual and practical programs, programs that stand a good chance of immediate adoption, they are in grave danger of completely losing sight of the ultimate objective, the libertarian goal. He who confines himself to calling for a two percent reduction in taxes helps to bury the ultimate goal of abolition of taxation altogether. By concentrating on the immediate means, he helps liquidate the ultimate goal, and therefore the point of being libertarian in the first place. if libertarians refuse to hold aloft the banner of the pure principle, of the ultimate goal, who will? The answer is no one.

With that in mind, we can better understand the libertarian stance on borders, which is the complete abolition of state-owned property, followed by a strict adherence to private property rights. There is no adaptation of government involvement in any issue surrounding libertarianism, and borders are no different. Every issue brought up by the sectarians and opportunists to muddy the waters does not hold water themselves. Claiming the need for government to close borders to combat a problem brought on by the state requires the abandonment of the libertarian foundation. Wed no sooner advocate for the government to nationalize our health industry to solve the current insurance death spiral, brought about through a previous intrusion of government.

Likewise, the idea of handing the state more power to solve a state-sponsored problem is antithetical to libertarianism. It disregards both the truth that government cannot perform even the most menial tasks as efficiently as the market can, as well as the key argument that any authority the state is granted is never willingly given back. Instead, we should combat the states expansion and advocate its dissolution, specifically the policies aggravating the problems at hand, as aggressively as possible at each turn. For example, we may agree that the state is currently subsidizing immigration to the detriment of its citizens well-being, however, giving more authority to the state to solve this matter for reasons of pragmatism only further incentivizes the state to cause crises in other sectors so that it may usurp more authority in its resolution.

But, even the great Murray Rothbard fought vigorously with himself over this, going back and forth later in life. If this tells us nothing else, it means that until such a time where it is the individual property owners choice, the border debate is done a gross injustice when reduced to the polarizing false dichotomy of open or closed.

What solutions can we advocate in the meantime then?

Rather than fall prey to the circular logic of initial state expansion as a means of reaching the goal of abolition, we should spend our time calling out the problems the state is guilty of promoting and educating those we can of the discernable solutions the market provides. With regard to borders, this means calling for the immediate end to all the things currently being provided at the federal level possessing negative incentives. These include subsidized and preferential immigration policies, tax-funded border walls, and above all else, the welfare-warfare state. Similarly, the focus should also be put on decentralization, until the point where the authority resides in each private property owner, as mentioned earlier. We can fight to accomplish these things simultaneously.

Now, to some that are too entrenched in the debate to digest this truth, this may sound contradictory. But we must be vigilant not to allow the aforementioned opportunists to usher in more state power, so that they may wield it for their own ends. We can think of this in simpler terms through another analogy borrowed from Rothbard. We all believe in freedom of speech, yet we know from his teachings that this does not include the ability to yell fire in a theater, or disrupt a service in a private hall. While we want these rights upheld, surely, we would not advocate for the state to establish a Ministry of Speech to achieve that end, as we know it would end up being a complete contradiction of its intended purpose. Likewise, we want private property rights, however, advocating that the state undertakes its implementation through monopolistic tactics should be seen as clearly self-defeating at this point.

The recent election process, however, has shown us that people are yearning for a change from the traditional solutions put forth by government. If we could reunite behind this foundational principle instead of tearing one another down through petty infighting, theres no doubt we could crush any misconception or delusion the left or right throws at us, while simultaneously influencing an untold number of people toward our cause as they witness the veracity of our arguments when put up against the current status quo.

Featured image: http://www.tapwires.com

This post was written by Thomas J. Eckert.

The views expressed here belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect our views and opinions.

Thomas J. Eckert is college grad with an interest in politics. He studies economics and history and writes in his spare time on political and economic current events.

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Today's Libertarians Got the Border Debate Wrong The Lowdown on Liberty - Being Libertarian (satire)

July 12 2017

by Charlotte Allen

Democracy in Chains.

That's the book's title. Must be about the Iron Curtain or Cuba--or to bring us up to date, Venezuela, right?

Not so. The subtitle of the book, witten by Duke University historian Nancy MacLean is The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America.

Oh. The main theme of the book, according to what I've read, is that well-funded libertarians eager to impose economic inequality and serve the interests of rich white men are ganging up to get the courts to enforce those un-democratic institutions called property rights. You know, like preventing your home from being seized by the city you live in because the city council decides to replace it with some condos that never get built. Oh wait! Kelo vs. City of New London went the other way! The Supreme Court ruled that the displaced homeowner, nurse Susette Kelo, had to suck it up because the condo plan served a "public purpose"--so yay, democracy! What's McLean's problem?

Her problem, it turns out, are those perennial liberal arch-villains, billionaires Charles and David Koch, who fund a lot of libertarian think tanks and university research centers employing libertarian professors..

So naturally, liberals have been out of their minds with praise for Democracy in Chains. "This sixty-year campaign to make libertarianism mainstream and eventually take the government itself is at the heart of Democracy in Chains. . . . If you're worried about what all this means for America's future, you should be," gushes NPR, which is funded by us taxpayers, so it's democracy.

But not everyone is onboard the Chains train. David Bernstein, a law professor at George Mason University, writing in the Washington Post, argued that MacLean simply got a lot of her facts wrong, especially about James Buchanan, a libertarian economist who got a Nobel prize in 1986 for his "public choice" theory--the idea that government bureaucrats aren't neutral public servants but have a vested interest in keeping their bureaucracies big and powerful (MacLean argued that Buchanan was the architect of a movement to make libertarianism mainstream):

I only met Buchanan once, at an Institute for Humane Studies gathering for young libertarian academics around 20 years ago. The devil himself (Charles Koch) was there. Buchanan gave the keynote address. What did this arch defender of inequality and wealth talk about? He gave a lengthy defense of high inheritance taxes, necessary, in his view, to prevent the emergence of a permanent oligarchy. Not surprisingly, perhaps, Democracy in Chains fails to note Buchanans strong support of inheritance taxes. [Update: He in fact publicly supported a 100% inheritance tax.]...

Furthermore, MacLean tries to claim that libertarians backed Southern resistance to court-imposed racial desegregation as part of a "noble quest to preserve states' rights and economic liberty." Her sole publicly available citation is to an article by libertarian Frank Chodorov that she says criticized the Supreme Court's 1954 school-desegregation decision, Brown vs. Board of Education. In fact, as Bernstein points out, the article by Chodorov praises the Brown ruling as "in line with what is deepest and strongest and most generous in our historical tradition."

Bernstein was not the only scholar to take MacLean to task for mischaracterizing a range of libertarian thinker and their ideas. So now, according to Inside Higher Edication, MacLean is claiming an evil radical right conspiracy is at foot to discredit her book, financed of course (if indirectly) by none other than...the Koch brothers! So she apparently did what every liberal professor does when faced with an evil radical-right conspiracy: go on the Internet to get her liberal professor friends to write rave reviews of her book on Amazon:

In a social media postthat MacLean did not authenticate to Inside Higher Ed, but which hasbeen widely shared online by her supporters, she allegedly asked friends and colleagues to help defend her book against an apparentcoordinated attack.

I really, really need your help, MacLean is said to have written. This will sound nutty, I know, but its actually happening: the Koch operatives and the riders of their academic gravy train, as James Buchanan called it, are working very hard to kill Democracy in Chains -- and to destroy my reputation (as they have done to climate change scientists and others bearing inconvenient truth).

By using thePost blog posts, the notesays, critics"make it appear to the ordinary web surfer that the [newspaper] itself is trashing my book when its really the Koch team of professors who dont disclose their conflicts of interest and the operatives who work full-time for their project to shackle our democracy. The other side was getting top placement because their team was clicking and reclicking and sending embedded links, and the velocity of their activity drove up their links. (It should be noted that the blogs in question are affiliated with the Post, but authors' views are solely their own.)

The notesuggests that supporters can help by googling MacLean and her book and clicking on real listings to push them above allegedlypaid returns, and promoting as "helpful"Amazon reviews that appear authentic. "The operatives are juking the Amazon stats so that their hit jobs (by people who in nearly every case never read the book) come up first by the number of 'helpful'votes," it says. MacLean alsowarned readers about a propaganda-style wiki page set up by someone with a pseudonym.

People: this is real, the postreads. I wont be the last they set out to get."

Inside Higher Ed further reports:

MacLean did not respond to a request for hard evidence of the Amazon review gaming.

Bernstein, meanwhile, has called MacLeans allegations fanciful and potentially libelous." Although George Mason, many of whose law and economics professors are libertarians, has been the beneficiary of millions of dollars' worth of Koch funding, Bernstein told Inside Higher Ed that no one "urged me, asked me, beseeched me, paid me or otherwise tried to influence me to blog about the book.

The one thing to be said about MacLean's alleged social-media plea is that it sounds about as conspiracy-obsessed as her book. At the risk of sounding conspiracy-obsessed myself, I can't help thinking there's a plot afoot to make libertarians pariahs in the academic community.

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Fanning the Flames of Liberal Paranoia About Libertarians - Independent Women's Forum

There are so many reasons to be a Libertarian in this day and age. In a nation where Republicans and Democrats each advocate for big government in their own ways, the Libertarian Party is the one true representation of pure liberty.

Libertarians promote freedom, capitalism, private property rights, and more. Likewise, Libertarians oppose unnecessary wars, statism, taxes, and the like.

People who subscribe to libertarianism believe each American is entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, so long as they do not infringe upon the rights of others. Espousing libertarianism will help the citizens of this nation cherish the values that America was originally founded on.

According to the Free Republic, one of the core creeds of our Founding Fathers stated that life and liberty are secure only as long as the rights of property are secure.

In essence, property rights are as follows: Americans reserve the rights to create and use goods, earn income from their productions, and distribute the goods to others if they so choose. This is a critical component of capitalism.

Detractors of capitalism assert that it is an unfair system which favors the wealthy and privileged. In reality, capitalism favors individuals who are able to produce marketable goods and services. Capitalism has engendered many Americans to escape the crippling bonds of poverty.

Libertarians are staunch defenders of a capitalist society because we realize the importance and necessity of Americans being able to engender their own wealth and success as opposed to receiving crippling government handouts.

Contrary to what many radical liberals preach, nobody is entitled to someone elses income. Becoming a libertarian opens ones eyes to all of the existing possibilities and opportunities available to those who are willing to work hard.

Just as libertarians embrace property rights, liberty, and capitalism, we also vehemently oppose destructive and anti-American forces such as wars, statism, and crippling taxes. These toxic influences are direct extensions of big government.

As stated on the foreign policy page of the Libertarian Partys official website, Libertarians aspire for America to steer clear of war. In doing so, countless fatalities and injuries will be prevented.

Quite frankly, a plethora of wars are preventable and many politicians enter them due to matters like ego.

If the United States is attacked, this nation reserves the right to defend ourselves, but if not, our leaders have no business antagonizing other countries. Imagine if everyone applied this train of thought in their daily lives. The promotion of peacefulness and individualism embodies libertarianism.

Statism and taxation are additional forces that libertarians oppose due to their devastating impacts on Americans. In essence, the state is a part of the government. From the time of its conception, the government was always meant to be controlled by the people of this nation, not vice versa. Also, taxation is merely an offshoot of statism.

Those in favor of taxation often claim that this practice is the only way in which our roads could be built or maintained. These people underestimate the power of self-interest, which Libertarian Prepper accurately pinpointed.

Business owners, shipping companies, and other free market forces will voluntary pitch in to ensure the upkeep of our roads. Additionally, roads maintained out of self-interest would most likely not be plagued with pot holes and other hazards.

Taxation is unnecessary and it steals hard earned proceeds from working Americans.

Whether or not one chooses to embrace libertarianism is entirely up to the individual. However, the decision to subscribe to a liberty minded ideology will provide a more productive worldview, encourage the pursuit of success, and prevent unnecessary conflicts.

Becoming a libertarian emboldens each and every person to embrace individualism and ultimately realize that pure liberty is what America was originally founded on.

Gabrielle Seunagal is an intelligent, witty, and iconic libertarian. She is very proud to be self-employed and happily works full time as a freelance writer. In her spare time, Gabrielle loves to read, travel, eat out, and go on adventures. You can follow her on Twitter @ClassySnobbb.

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Embracing Libertarianism Will Make You a Better American - Being Libertarian

Cliff Hyra has a ready answer for anyone who thinks being governor is not an entry-level job: Roughly one-fourth of the country's current governors started their political careers that way. One of them, in fact, serves as governor of Virginia. (Whether Terry McAuliffe qualifies as an argument for gubernatorial neophytes or against them is an open question.)

Wisely, Hyrathe Libertarian Party's candidate for governor of Virginia this yeardoes not bring up another example of a novice: Donald Trump, who holds the most important elected position in the world without any prior political experience. Trump's approval ratings in Virginia continue to dangle below 40 percent.

But Trump does neuter arguments Libertarians often confront, such as the notion that people will not vote for a political outsider. And the criticism that Libertarian candidates are ill-prepared for officea stereotype Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson reinforced last year with his infamous Aleppo Moment. That was embarrassing, but Trump makes Johnson look like a walking encyclopedia.

The Trump era also confounds other received wisdom, such as the supposed immutability of ideological groups. A recent Cato Institute study on "The 5 Types of Trump Voters" finds that almost 20 percent hold essentially progressive views on economic and social issues. Some of the fiercest Trump critics, on the other hand, are traditional conservatives of the National Review variety. "Never-Trump Republicans" make up a significant segment of the political populace.

This has led to a fair amount of speculation about a potential re-alignment of America's political parties. Libertarians, who generally sound like Republicans on economics and Democrats on social issues, should be able to benefit from such a realignment by forming a coalition from both parties who favor limited government across a broad swath of issues.

Nice theory, anyway. It hasn't worked out so well in practice. ("Just like libertarianism itself!" cackle Statler and Waldorf from the Muppet Show balcony.) Even in elections where Libertarians have had a chance to break into the big leagues because the two major-party candidates turned off so many voters, they have come up short.

It happened last year, when Johnsona former Republican and two-time governorreceived only 3 percent of the vote. And it happened four years ago, when Libertarian gubernatorial candidate Robert Sarvis won 6.5 percent of the vote for governor of Virginia against McAuliffe and the GOP's Ken Cuccinelli.

If Libertarians can't break 10 percent (or even five) in elections like those, it's hard to see how they can make a bigger splash any other time. Which isn't to say the party is doomed to irrelevance. New Hampshire now has three sitting Libertarians in the state legislature. And even candidates who have no chance of winning can still make an impact by steering public discourse down different avenues. Just ask Bernie Sanders.

Yet Sanders was no neophyte. He was an established politician offering an alternative to dissatisfied party loyalists. Virginians already have had two of those this year: Tom Perriello on the left and Corey Stewart on the right. Periello carried the Sanders flag in the Democratic primary and got trounced. Stewart, a Trumpian to the core, carried the Confederate flag in the GOP primary and almost won.

That is bad news for the Virginia GOP, but it could be worse news for Hyrawho, on his campaign website, describes himself as "socially inclusive." In his acceptance speech at the Libertarian Party nominating event, Hyra also stressed the virtues of "unlimted freedom and"please note"respect."

Social inclusion and respect were not exactly high among Stewart's campaign themes. And Republicans who are turned off by the Stewart wing of the party can simply vote for their establishment nominee, Ed Gillespie.

Still, Hyra is performing a signal service simply by running. Like Sarvis before him, he is palpably smart, with an undergrad degree in aerospace engineering and a career as an intellectual-property lawyer.

He is straight-laced, which can only do good for the Libertarian Party's image. And he thinks people are tired of partisan rancor, and therefore might be open to someone who focuses on "ideas, not teams or tribal affiliation." He is "not an ideologue by an means," he says. "Incrementalism is sort of my calling card... I don't worry about privatizing the roads." If a policy works, then "we should be open to it."

Hyra has crafted a platform tailored to promote innovation and economic growth: End the state's BPOL tax, which applies to the first dollar of business revenue, rather than the first dollar of profit. Repeal certain occupational licensing requirements. Cut personal income taxes. Expand charter schools. Repeal the Certificate of Public Need regime in health care. Legalize marijuana. Roll back regulations that hinder the growth of the food and beverage industry.

And focus on respect. "Respect is at the heart of libertarianism," he said in an interview on Wednesday: Just because you think someone else is wrong doesn't mean you should impose your will on them. It's important, Hyra says, to have "respect for people no matter how different they are."

That's a message Virginians probably respect in turn. Whether the regard translates into votes, however, could be a different story.

This column originally appeared in the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

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Can Libertarian Cliff Hyra Make a Dent in the Virginia Governor's ... - Reason

Brink Lindsey of the Cato Institute recently wrote an article arguing that libertarians should abandon any arguments regarding natural rights. As Lindsey sees it, the concept of natural rights is an intellectual dead end and that adherence to natural rights arguments should be abandoned. His perspective can largely be boiled down into two categories: strategic pragmatism and the inadequacy of the natural rights doctrine in constructing a libertarian legal order.

Libertarians always have and always will debate strategy. This question is not very interesting to me as it can ultimately only be answered empirically. Lindsey argues that Instead of spinning utopias, libertarians should focus instead on the humbler but more constructive task of making the world we actually inhabit a better place. Im very open to this argument, and as soon as the Cato Institute can demonstrate that it has actually effected change in government policy in a libertarian direction, I am willing to consider capitulating to Lindseys arguments for a more pragmatic strategy. As of yet, however, his constructive approach to libertarianism has had no more reductive effects in government than the purist approach to libertarianism he loves to attack, so it is objectively impossible for him to proclaim his views to be any less utopian than the radicals who stubbornly cling to their principles.

More interesting to me is the claim that natural rights are insufficient in determining a full-blown, operational legal order. This statement is interesting because I was not aware that any natural-rights libertarian scholar ever claimed that it could. Lindsey argues that the problem lies not with the concept of natural rights, but in that concepts overextension because these principles fail to determine the specific guidelines upon which all disputes would be precisely adjudicated.

The first correction that must be made to Lindseys argument is that no serious libertarian thinker argues that natural rights are the beginning and end of libertarian legal theory. What these principles allow us to do is to establish, first, a property ethic and, from this, a theory of justice. Hans Hermann Hoppe offers what is arguably the most complete natural rights doctrine known as his Argumentation Ethics. Even natural rights libertarians who do not accept the ethics of argumentation generally agree on the principles it purports to prove: The Private Property Ethic (or, the Libertarian Property Ethic) and its logical derivative the Non-Aggression Principle, which we may call the libertarian theory of justice.

This forms an ethical basis for libertarianism without which we would have no means of determining what constitutes a libertarian position to begin with. In fairness, Lindsey is not claiming that natural rights are necessarily wrong; he is just saying that libertarians should abandon these ideas whether they are correct or not for pragmatic reasons, of course.

Brink Lindsey may desire a libertarian community that is held together only by a label representing a hodgepodge of contradictory political positions after all, this is the formula that has made the Republican and Democratic parties so successful! but we nave purists often desire something more consistent and principled to associate ourselves with, and there is no means of establishing principles aside from ethical philosophy. What the ethical philosophy of natural rights allows us to do is direct our own individual behavior according to libertarian principles and to prescribe political solutions that are ethically consistent with these principles. This does not mean that there is a precisely determined, canonical position on every conceivable issue for libertarians, but these disagreements stem from the fact that ethical philosophy can (and should) be debated. But it cannot be dismissed altogether.

However, Lindsey is correct in arguing that the establishment of this theory of justice is insufficient in determining legal structure and answering certain questions regarding positive law. He does concede that more sophisticated presentations of radical libertarianism do take note of some of these complexities but adds the caveat that they present these open questions as minor blank spaces in an otherwise determinate legal structure, to be filled in by custom or common-law jurisprudence. The problem with his objection is that this demands natural rights theory to be something more than it is intended to be. Thus, it isnt the natural rights libertarians who are overextending the theory of natural rights; it is Brink Lindsey who is doing so.

Natural rights libertarian theorists such as Murray Rothbard and Hans Hermann Hoppe also combine ethical principles with the economic methodology of Ludwig von Mises praxeology to determine what economic system is most compatible with the Private Property Ethic in maximizing prosperity (they determine, as anarcho-capitalists, that a purely free market is the most compatible with this end), and they derive from this economic framework the most compatible legal framework that, combined with the libertarian theory of justice, will most effectively handle disputes. The complete libertarian political framework provides both an ethical and a pragmatic answer to political questions, but Brink Lindsey appears to live in a world in which a libertarian must choose to deal exclusively with one category or the other. This one-sided approach to libertarianism is neither desirable nor possible (after all, even if one were to make an exclusively pragmatic argument, as Lindsey advises, then the assumption of any goodness of the results of the policies prescribed tacitly depend on some ethical value judgment to begin with).

Economic theory does not empower us to determine the specific manner in which a legal system will manifest in a given society. It simply tells us that on the assumption that human beings value peace above conflict institutions will emerge that will best facilitate the administration of justice according to the preferences of consumers. This is the economic basis for private courts.

Concomitant to private courts is the establishment of private law, which legal theorists will refer to as common law. As previously quoted, Lindsey assumes that no libertarian has ever offered any answer as to how common law will fill in the blank spaces of the otherwise determinate legal structure. This may be the case if one confines himself to the world of the Cato Institute, as Brink Lindsey appears to do in citing only Cato Institute adjunct scholars in reference to his arguments. But if he were to venture out into the wider libertarian world, Lindsey would find a plethora of scholarship on the issue of common law jurisprudence. Edward Stringham edited an entire collection of scholarly articles regarding anarchic legal theory. Bruce Benson has been conducting scholarship in this field since the 1980s, and his work The Enterprise of Law details the centuries-long Anglo-Saxon history of private dispute adjudication (this work is nearly three decades old, so it may be fair that Lindsey has not yet had time to read it). Even one of the Cato Institutes own senior fellows, John Hasnas, has written a great deal on the establishment of common law through the tort system!

Common law systems throughout history do not address rights violations in a uniform way, and it would be absurd to suggest that any theoretical system of private courts would do so either. However, what can be said is that in the absence of a coercive government, courts will manifest, there will exist an avenue for bringing perceived rights violations in front of an arbiter, and there will be a mechanism through which restitution can be enforced. Lindsey is perplexed by the fact that natural rights doctrines fail to determine the nuances of questions such as the specific boundaries of property rights (in a previous article attacking the Non-Aggression Principle, he asks How far below the surface should property rights in land extend? How high into the sky?), the extent to which a person may lawfully go in defending his or her property, or the precise magnitude of restitution paid to a victim in specific circumstances. These questions, of course, cannot be answered through natural rights theory (except for maybe the property rights one), but it is not a failure of the concept of natural rights that it cannot answer questions that lie beyond its scope! Such questions can only be answered by the individual arbiters in a given system (anarchic or not), and in the case of private law, a natural rights libertarian is in the position to contract with arbitration firms that best conform to libertarian ethics.

This last point was addressed in a simple but profound article by Ben Powell. In You Are an Anarchist. The Question Is How Often? Dr. Powell points out that, even for people who are classically liberal for natural rights reasons, No system will perfect human morality. And, because it is costly to monitor and prevent deviant behavior, some such behavior will exist under any governance system. So even a well-functioning anarchy would still have rights violations. The question remains one of comparative institutions. It would be nave to assume that even the purist libertarian political system (say, anarchy) would usher in a state of perfect and universal adherence to the Non-Aggression Principle; nirvana is not for this world. Muggers will still mug, and killers will still kill. The question is not how do we avoid these rights violations completely? The question is merely what society would best deal with them? What society would minimize rights violations? The natural rights philosophy does not give us the answers to how all the precise nuances of a legal structure will manifest, but it does give us a means of judging whatever legal systems emerge in the absence of government.

But to even ask these questions, one must first establish and defend the concept of rights at all. The libertarians who adhere to natural rights doctrines are simply arguing that in order to make the world we inhabit a better place, we have to have some means of establishing what that actually is, and that necessitates an ethical philosophy. These libertarians are not arguing for natural rights because they are libertarian; rather, they are libertarian because they recognize natural rights. Ignoring these ethics does not make libertarianism more practical, it just eliminates libertarianism altogether. All that is left in Brink Lindseys pragmatic world is the arbitrary political position that government should be smaller to some vague extent, and this would be good for reasons we have no means of offering.

Only in the world of Brink Lindsey is this approach to libertarianism more determinate than the philosophy of natural rights.

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Natural-Law Libertarianism And The Pursuit Of Justice - The Liberty Conservative

A section of the cover of Hobbes Leviathan with engraving by Abraham Bosse, 1651. Image via Wikipedia.

At first glance the fact that Donald Trump and Theresa Mays neo-Conservative agenda mixes a libertarian ideology with a strong authoritarian streak seems contradictory. In the United States we see Trump using an autocratic executive order to mandate that two rules for business must be repealed for each new one enacted in Congress. In Britain a similar mantra of a bonfire of red tape is accompanied by the attempt to use the Royal Prerogative to force through Brexit decisions. But autocracy was built into Libertarianism when it first appeared centuries ago!

It is not just in religious texts that people die and get buried only to be resurrected and live a far more celebrated second life; or at least their works do. It happened to the composer J.S. Bach, whose music disappeared for over a century before it was resurrected by Felix Mendelssohn in the mid Nineteenth Century. It also happened to a man who died just before Bach was born, the seventeenth century political philosopher Thomas Hobbes.

Ironically for one of the founders of liberal and libertarian thinking, (along with John Locke) a primary aim of Hobbes was a defence of sovereign power and autocratic government. Hobbes works include Leviathan, published in 1651 in which he developed his Social Contract Theory.

His efforts were largely aimed at opposing the radical politics which emerged during the English Civil War of the previous decade (partly as a result of the radical Leveller group) and the theories of the High Republicans during the English Commonwealth of the early 1650s (1).

Strangely, although Hobbes ideas were applicable to a Royalist settlement as well as the Council of State of their bitter opponent Parliamentarian Oliver Cromwell, both sides found his views unpalatable. So, just like the work of the composer Bach, Hobbes theories fell into obscurity for over a century to be revived during the debate over American Independence in the 1770s.

So what lay behind Hobbes insistence on an absolute monarch? It comes from Hobbes concept of society which viewed people atomistically, in perpetual motion trying to gain economic advantage and influence over each other. From this a natural structure to society emerges with individuals all seeking their own best interests.

But if society is of this nature, what stops it falling apart in some kind of anarchic fight for ultimate power? Why, none other than a universally accepted absolute sovereign charged with passing and enforcing laws to ensure the continued health of the competitive system.

To keep the sovereign above the throng he or she would have the power to appoint their successor (what better than the eldest son!). Importantly, the Sovereign was not necessarily an individual in the Hobbes system, but could also be an elite ruling group or even, surprisingly, a democratically chosen chamber. What concerned Hobbes was not so much the source of the power but the absolute manner in which it was wielded.

Hobbes claimed that the legitimacy for his theory came from the freedoms which man possessed in the state of nature. But as C. B. MacPherson showed in his book Possessive Individualism, this was a fallacy.

What Hobbes did was to take the contemporary mid-seventeenth century English economic structure of small traders and freelancers and hypothesize how they would behave if laws were removed. Crucially, his version of liberty rested on the fact that a person is free to the extent that he/she is not constrained by laws; the Sovereign is there merely for the stability of society and the health of a free market.

For Hobbes, so-called freedom by non-interference was key and as freedom is maximised when the number and extent of laws are minimised, it is actually irrelevant whether the laws are passed by an elected chamber or an absolute monarch. The idea of liberty through non-interference, also expounded by John Locke, was later developed by Jeremy Bentham and became the prevalent view which still dominates today.

But it turns out that this idea of liberty is not nearly strong enough and not only must there be non-interference, but there must be no possibility of interference (so-called non-domination). Furthermore, the state itself must also be free, prevented from being subverted by individual or sectarian interests. In this view a sovereign must be restrained from creating arbitrary laws to their own advantage or blocking new laws to extend liberty in some facet of society.

Thus to a modern day British Republican (and more widely to any real Democrat as a believer of rule by the people) the mere existence of the Royal Prerogative along with Royal Assent (though not used since 1707) and Queens Consent which can be used to prevent debate in the House of Commons is unacceptable. As Philip Pettit in his book Republicanism writes:

Liberty as non-domination republican liberty had not only been lost to political thinkers and activists; it had even become invisible to the historians of political thought.

As activists we need to recover this idea of republican liberty. Remember that the theory calls for the wielding of absolute power (or as close as we can get in the form of Prerogative or Executive Order). Although Hobbes can be seen as the progenitor of the concept, modern Libertarians are actually critical of Trump and May, viewing the size of the Government they propose as being far too large. Nevertheless the autocratic Libertarian elements of both leaders must be opposed for a compassionate and fair society with effective individual rights to survive. The recent debacle suffered by Theresa may in this General Election greatly increases the chances of a successful outcome in the near future. But the ideology is as old as the hills and we can be certain that sooner or later it will flourish again.

Notes

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Trump, May, and Autocratic Libertarianism - Bright Green