Category Archives: Libertarianism

Duke University historian Nancy MacLean has published a new book, Democracy in Chains, that is getting a great deal of favorable attention from progressive media outlets and is selling quite well online. The theme of the book is that Nobel Prize-winning economist James Buchanan, a founder of public choice economics and a libertarian fellow-traveler, was the intellectual leader of a cabal ultimately supported by Charles Koch intent on replacing American democracy with an oligarchy based on constitutional protections for property rights.

When I first came across this book and interviews with its author, I was immediately skeptical. For one thing, Ive been traveling in libertarian intellectual circles for about three decades, and my strong impression is that Buchanan, while a giant in economics, is something of a marginal figure in the broader libertarian and free-market movements. Sure, public choice theory has provided important intellectual support for libertarian views of government, but Buchanan was hardly the only major figure to work on public choice (which is basically applying economic theory to the study of politics). Many other leading public choice economists were decidedly liberal in their political views; consider, for example, Kenneth Arrow, whose foundational work preceded Buchanans. Even among the more free-market-oriented early public choice scholars, there is my late colleague Gordon Tullock (co-author of the book that won Buchanan the Nobel Prize; Tullock was stiffed because he was not formally trained in economics), George Stigler, Sam Peltzman, among others. Tullocks famous article on what came to be called rent-seeking strikes me as more influential on mainstream libertarian thought than the entire corpus of Buchanans later work.

Buchanans work on constitutional political economy was of great interest to a subset of libertarian-leaning economists, but was sufficiently obscure and idiosyncratic to have had relatively little influence on the broader movement. Ive met many libertarians who were brought to libertarianism by the likes of Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman, Robert Nozick, Murray Rothbard, Charles Murray, Julian Simon, Randy Barnett and others; Ive yet to meet anyone who has cited Buchanan as their gateway to libertarianism. Brian Dohertys Radicals for Capitalism, the best extant history of the libertarian movement, gives Buchanan approximately the attention Id think he deserves, several very brief cameos, all relating to Buchanans foundational work in public choice.

The other reason I was immediately skeptical of MacLeans take on Buchanan was because her portrayal of Buchanan did not mesh with my personal experience. 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.]

My confidence in the book did not increase when I saw that MacLean tied the rise of the early libertarian movement to hostility to Brown v. Board of Education, and libertarian ideology in general and public choice theory to the work of John Calhoun, which did not jibe with my own research and experience.

When the book arrived, I eagerly looked for her sources supporting the notion that modern libertarianism owes a massive debt to Calhoun, a theme on which she spends her entire prologue; later in the book, she claims that the libertarian cause traces its lineage to Calhoun. It turns out that she cites two articles noting similarities between Calhouns theories of political economy and modern public choice theory, and also cites to two pages of Murray Rothbards 1970 book, Power and Market. To put the two pages from Rothbard in perspective, I have in front of me a volume with the entire run of the New Individualist Review, a pioneering libertarian academic journal published at the University of Chicago in the 1960s. The index has multiple citations to Mill, Friedman, Hayek, Hobbes, Montesquieu, von Humboldt, Smith, Rand and other classical liberal and libertarian luminaries. Calhoun, meanwhile, does not appear in the index. Not once.

Meanwhile, in Chapter 3, MacLean claims that contemporary libertarians eschewing overt racial appeals, but not at all concerned with the impact on black citizens, framed the Souths fight as resistance to federal coercion in a noble quest to preserve states right and economic liberty. Nothing energized this backwater movement like Brown. MacLean identifies only two such libertarians, Frank Chodorov and and Robert LeFevre. I cant check her citation to LeFevre, because its from private correspondence that I dont have access to. But her citation to Chodorov fails to support her assertion.

The article she cites by Chodorov can be found here. In it, Chodorovpraises Brown: The ultimate validation of the Court decision,which undoubtedly ranks among the most important in American history, lies in the fact that it is in line with what is deepest and strongest and most generous in our historical tradition. Chodorov goes on to point out that merely prohibiting segregated schools wont lead to integration because of residential segregation, and concludes that hostility to integration may lead some southern states to open up publicly-funded education to competitive private schools, which would mean what began as an attempt to evade an unavoidable change in an obsolete system of racial segregation might turn into an interesting educational experiment. Chodorov does note that among opponents to Brown there is a very genuine feeling that education is a matter reserved for the states, but again this is in the context of him praisingBrown.There is nothing in this piece remotely celebrating southern resistance to federal coercion in a noble quest to preserve states right and economic liberty. And there are more subtle errors as well. MacLean portrays Chodorov as being excited that Brown presented the opportunity to do away with the public school system, when in fact he specifically envisioned a larger network of private schools, denominational and non-denominational, side by side with the general public school system.

More to come.

[I wrote this post before I saw co-blogger Jonathan Adlers post detailing various other controversies over Democracy in Chains." I recommend that post, which anticipated a future post I planned.]

Originally posted here:
Some dubious claims in Nancy MacLean's 'Democracy in Chains' - Washington Post

Lee Drutman, Voter Study GroupEveryone nods their heads when pundits and pollsters talk about conservative votes, liberal voters, and populist voters. But do libertarian-leaning voters actually dwell among the American electorate? A new analysis of the 2016 election concludes that libertarians are as mythical as the hippogruff. Using a variety of survey questions about cultural and "identity" issues and economic policy, New America's Lee Drutman basically says no.

Dividing voters into one of four groups, he finds 44.6 percent are liberal ("liberal on both economic and identity issues"), 29 percent are populist (liberal on economic issues, conservative on identity issues), 23 percent are conservative (conservative on both economic and identity issues), and less than 4 percent are libertarian (conservative on economics, liberal on identity issues). According to Drutman, Donald Trump won by picking up virtually all conservatives and a good chunk of populists, while Hillary Clinton only pulled liberals. What few libertarians there are just don't amount to any sort of force in Drutman's take (see that empty lower-right-hand quadrant in figure). Drutman's piece gave rise to a number of pieces, almost all from the left side of the political spectrum, crowing that "libertarians don't exist" (in Jonathan Chait's triumphalist phrasing at New York magazine).

Not so fast, says Emily Ekins, the director of polling at the Cato Institute (a position she previously held at Reason Foundation, the nonprofit that publishes this website). Libertarians are real, she documents in a new article, and they're spectacular. Responding to Drutman's elimination of libertarians as a meaningul voting block, she emphasizes that his finding is an outlier in the established research:

It depends on how you measure it and how you define libertarian. The overwhelming body of literature, however, using a variety of different methods and different definitions, suggests that libertarians comprise about 10-20% of the population, but may range from 7-22%. (Emphasis in original.)

In the newest Reason Podcast, Nick Gillespie talks with Ekins not simply about the errors of Drutman's analysis (he also finds many more liberals than most researchers) but about the sorts of issues that are motivating libertarians and other voters, especially Millennials. In the podcast, Ekins stresses that economic issues and concerns tend to drown out all other factors when it comes to voting patterns. But, she says, there are periods during bread-and-butter issues recede and cultural and symbolic issues come to the fore. We may well be in one of those periods despite weak to stagnant economic growth because most people's standards of living have held up (even if economic anxiety is on the rise). This is, she says, especially true among voters between 18 years old and 35 years old. That's mostly good news for libertarians. Millennials, she tells Gillespie,

libertarian on social issues and civil liberties except for one issue: free speech issues. I think this is something that we're going to need to keep an eye on... [Y]ounger people are more supportive of the idea that some sort of authority, whether it's the college administrator or the government should limit certain speech that is considered offensive or insulting to people.

Audio production by Ian Keyser.

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This is a rush transcriptcheck all quotes against the audio for accuracy.

Nick Gillespie: Hi I'm Nick Gillespie and this is The Reason podcast. Please subscribe to us at iTunes and rate and review us while you're there.

Today we're talking with Emily Ekins she director of polling at the Cato Institute, a position she also previously held at The Reason Foundation, the non-profit that publishes this podcast. Emily also holds a PhD in political science from UCLA and writes on voter attitudes and millennial sentiments towards politics and culture.

Emily Ekins, welcome.

Emily Ekins: Thank you for having me.

Gillespie: A recent analysis of the 2016 election results by the voter study group at the Democracy Fund concluded that there were essentially no libertarian voters. By that they were identifying it as people who were socially liberal and fiscally conservative. Instead the study found that most voters fell into a liberal progressive camp that was liberal on economic and on identity issues. Things like immigration, things like Muslim sentiments towards Muslims, gay marriage, things like that. It found that most voters fell into a liberal progressive camp or populist group that was liberal on economics but conservative on identity politics or conservative on identity issues and conservative on both economic and identity issues.

The conclusion was Trump won because he won conservatives and populist while Hillary Clinton only polled liberals. For me, and I suspect the big point of interest for you also, was that the author, the political scientist Lee Drutman found that just 3.8% of voters fell into the libertarian group. There's a scatter plot, there's a very lonely quadrant there that is supposedly where libertarians don't exist. It led to a lot of people talking about there is no libertarian vote, we've been telling you this all along. Is Drutman right that there are essentially no libertarians in the electorate?

Ekins: Well first I'll say this. That I actually worked with Lee Drutman on this broader project which is part of the Democracy Fund voter study group. We feel that a very large longitudinal survey of 8,000 voters right after the election. Then several of us actually wrote up our own reports analyzing the data. Lee wrote a paper, I wrote a paper and I have a lot of respect for Lee Drutman and his research.

Gillespie: Okay, now stick the knife in. You have a lot of respect for him and so while he's beaming and looking up at the sun.

Ekins: I would say that on this particular aspect of his paper where he says that there's only 3.8% libertarians, I would say that that is inconsistent with most all other academic research I have ever seen on the subject. He also found that about 45% of the public fell into this economically liberal and socially liberal or identity liberal quadrant. Again I've never seen anything that high in the literature and I've surveyed most all of it that's really looked at this question.

I would say that's it's very inconsistent, you want to know what's going on. I think what happens is that people use different methods to try to identify the number of liberals, libertarians, conservatives and populists. They use different methods, they also use different definitions. What does this mean to be a liberal or a libertarian? The method, the question that they used to try to ascertain if you are a libertarian also differ.

In this instance one of the dimensions, you said that, typically when we try to identify libertarians we look at people who are economically, some will call it economically conservative or others will say less government intervention in the economy and then socially liberal. That's not exactly how his methodology worked. That that second dimension wasn't really about what gay marriage and legalization of marijuana, those types of social issues, it was about identity and he used a battery of questions that are very commonly used in academia but they're very controversial. They're used to determine your attitudes towards African Americans and racial minorities. These questions are problematic and I think that's part of the problem.

I could give you one example. One of the questions, it's an annoying question. It should put off most people but the question goes something like this, do you agree or disagree with the following statement: the Irish, the Italians, the Jews overcame prejudice without any special favors, African Americans should do the same. I think most people who hear this think, Ugh, why are we talking about groups? We're individuals. The problem is if someone who, if someone believes that no one should get special favors then they're going to probably agree with that statement. However if you agree with that statement you're coded as racist. Or not in the liberal direction shall we say.

Gillespie: Would you end up as a conservative or a populist?

Ekins: Those people are probably going to get pushed into the conservative or populist buckets. Essentially if you were to be a libertarian with this analysis, you would want less government spending, lower taxes, less government involvement in health care but also want government to, quote, give special favors. It's a very bizarre combination of attitudes that I'm unfamiliar with in the literature.

Gillespie: That reminds me of I know in the old Minnesota multi-phasic personality inventory which is still used in various ways. But back in the 40s and 50s if you were a woman, among the questions they would ask would be like, "Do you like reading Popular Mechanics or do you like working with tools?" If you said yes, she would kicked over into a lesbian category because that was obvious signs that there was something not right with you. What you're saying then is that the actual, more than in many things, you really need to look at the way in which the models are built and executed to figure out because different researchers have different definitions.

I know in your work you've written recently at the Cato website, at cato.org, about how typically libertarians come up as about 10% to 20% of the electorate and that the wider range is 7% to 22%. The fact that somebody comes up with a new and novel finding isn't, it doesn't mean they're wrong, but it means you really pay attention to see what's going on. How do most studies define libertarians and is the 10% to 20% any more accurate than the 3.8%?

Ekins: I looked at the literature, the academic literature on the subject about how do we identify these groups. There's different methods that are used. One simple method that I would say, is not as good of a method is just ask people to identify themselves. A lot of people don't they're libertarian when they are and a lot of people think they're libertarian when maybe they're not. That's not the best method. But if you do that you get about 11% or so who will self identify as libertarian on a survey.

A better method that academics often use is very similar to what Drutman used in his paper which is to ask people a series of public policy questions on a variety of different issues. Now the next step is where you can diverge. I would say the gold standard from there is to do a type of statistical procedure called a cluster analysis where you allow a statistical algorithm to take the inputs of those questions and identify a good solution about how many clusters of people are there in the electorate.

Stanley Feldman and Christopher Johnson did exactly this. I would say this is probably the gold standard. What they found was 15% were libertarian, they defined that as they tended to give conservative answers on economic questions or the role of government and the economy and gave more liberal responses on social and cultural issues. That's a very common way to do it. They found 17% were conservatives so not much different than libertarians. Slightly more were liberal, meaning economically liberal and socially liberal, 23%. They found about 8% were populist.

Now that not 100%. They found two other groups of people as well which it think also speaks to how interesting their analysis was, they found these two groups really didn't have strong opinions on economics but they differed on whether they leaned socially liberal or socially conservative. That actually tells us a lot. It fits well with what we see in American politics is that there are a lot of people out there that really don't know much about how the economy works but they do have an opinion when it comes to social and cultural policy.

Gillespie: How does these typologies of voters, how does it square with somebody like the political scientist Morris Fiorina who has for a couple of decades, at least, has been arguing that when we talk about culture war in America, and by that he means polarized politics and he grants that politics is very polarized and it's getting more polarized partly because the nominating processes for candidates that run for public office are typically in the hands of the most ideologically or dogmatically extreme members of various parties. He says when you look at broad variety of issues, whether it's things like abortion, whether it's drug legalization, whether it is immigration that there's oftentimes there's a broad 60% or more agreement or consensus so that we're actually one of the things he says is that our differences are routinely exaggerated and our agreements are typically ignored. Does that make sense? How does that match up with what you're talking about here because most people who do voter analyses talk about the things that separate voters rather than the commonality.

Ekins: It actually is very consistent with what the data suggests. Also if you're to look at my post at cato.org, the first chart in the post, I graphically display where the people live. Where are the libertarians and the conservatives and the liberals, if you were to plot them in an ideological plane, like the Nolan chart, on economic issues, social issues.

Gillespie: That's the world's smallest political quiz. Essentially it's a diamond shape that is made into quadrants. You're either more libertarian or more authoritarian from top to bottom.

Ekins: Yes. It's the same idea. What I did in this graph is plot where all the people live ideologically. What you see is it's a big blob. There is no structure meaning, there aren't just these, the story of polarization which does seem to be true at the congressional level, people who are elected to political office. But of the regular people of America, if polarization was happening and in Mo Fiorina, if he were wrong, then you would just see these two groups of people separated from each other on this plane. But that's not what it is. We see people are just randomly distributed. Meaning there are people with all different types of combinations of attitudes and the way our politics actually manifests is how we organize those people into, how those people organize themselves, I should say, into interest groups, into advocacy organizations, into businesses and then ultimately into politics. The way it is now, with Democrats and Republicans, it's by no means the only organization of politics that we can have.

Gillespie: Is there a sense and certainly I feel this and Matt Welch my recent colleague and I have written a book about it, but that part of what we're witnessing and it's hard to believe we're in the 2017, we're well into the 21st century but we're kind of stuck with these two large political groupings that go back to before the Civil War and that the groups that they were originally, and they get remade every couple of decades, but the groups, the conglomeration of voting interests that they once served, say even in 70s or 80s have fallen apart because this, to go from your blob on the Nolan chart to Democrats and Republicans in Congress if you're pro-abortion you have to vote for a Democrat and if you vote for a Democrat that means you're also voting in favor of certain elements of affirmative action or immigration policy.

If you're a Republican and you don't want people to burn the flag it also means you also have to be for lower marginal tax rates. These are things that really don't have any necessary connection. Is that the parties are describing or they're appealing to fewer and fewer people but you still have to vote for one or the other.

Ekins: Yes and that's probably contributed to the rise of the independent voter as well documented in your book. Also political scientists have shown that it's not just unique to US but most countries that have a political system similar to ours have what is equivalent to their congress, or their parliament divided along economic issues. In United States, this is by no means always true, but typically speaking, when people vote, they tend to vote along their economic interest, their economic issue positions if that makes any sense. All the social issues or at one time race became a second dimension in American politics. When these other issues have come out, then people are stuck, if they are out of alignment with their party on maybe social issues but are in alignment on economics the forces tend to have them voting along the lines of economics. That seems to be true not just in the US but other countries.

Gillespie: That explains libertarians voting oftentimes, self-identified libertarians or people in the libertarian movement aligning with the Republican party rather than the Democratic party because most of the people, I suspect, most of the people I talk to that I know at Cato and certainly at Reason are askance that they're not happy with Republican positions on a variety of science issues, on a variety of social issues for sure but they end up voting because they say, economics is more important.

Ekins: Yes, that seems to be what happens. But to some extent that is changing. There are periods of time where another dimension rises up like racial issues in 60s. Civil rights became so important some people were willing to say, I'm not going to stand with this party and allow it to continue doing what it's doing. It forced the party to change.

Gillespie: How does immigration fit into this? Because in Drutman's analysis it seems that immigration is a big, is one of those inflection points or hotspots. It becomes very interesting to me because Hillary Clinton when she was running as senator for the Senate in New York was very explicitly anti-illegal immigrant, she said she was against giving them drivers license. Bill Clinton forced the Democratic party platform in the 90s to be very hostile to immigration in general but especially illegals and one of the big pieces of legislation that he signed, actually on welfare reform in 90s and this is not necessarily a bad thing, but made it illegal immigrants and even legal immigrants for the first five years to be cut off from transfer payments, means tested transfer payments.

There's a sense that the Democrats are friendlier towards immigrants than Republicans and there seems to be some evidence for that at least in attitudes if not in policy because Obama was pretty terrible towards immigrants. But Mitt Romney was even worse. My larger question or I guess there's two questions here. One is something like immigration, it's not exactly clear how different the parties are in practice but then it's also, how much does it matter to voters whether or not, they might feel very strongly about immigration but it might be the 10th issue that they actually vote on. It doesn't even really come into play. How do you measure the intensity of a voter's belief in a particular topic and how that actually influences who they pull the lever for?

Ekins: There's a lot there. The first thing I would say is that there is a lot of posturing when it comes to immigration policy. Like you said, in many ways there aren't significant differences between many Republican and Democratic lawmakers when they, in their actual positions on immigration. But the posturing is different. Talking about self-deportation, that immigrants must learn english. Again it's not to say, most Americans to be honest would prefer immigrants learn english, it's not like that is so controversial, it's the way that it is said. If you're very first thing is about we need to secure the border and then second then we need to deal with X, Y and Z immigration issue. It gives the impression to people who are themselves immigrants or their children or friends of immigrants, are close to the immigrant experience, they get the very strong impression that they are not welcome. That is hugely important in how people are voting and that's why Democrats appear to be the pro-immigration party more so than Republicans. There are some policy differences like DOCA and things like that. But posturing is hugely important.

Generally speaking, I would say immigration hasn't been the highest priority when it comes to how people vote but data coming out of the 2016 election that I find very compelling and that we worked on as part of the Democracy Fund voter study group, suggests that immigration attitudes were by far what made this election and voting for Donald Trump most distinctive. It's not to say that people changed their minds, they don't seem to have changed their minds but rather these were concerns that they already had and they were activated by the rhetoric of the campaign. These were concerns people had, most Republicans and Democrats weren't talking about it in a way that people could really relate to then Trump comes in and just blows the lid off of it. Without nuance or without sophistication about the delicate issues that are at play here and people were so relieved and validated to have someone talk about immigration in the ways that they thought of if, they became very devoted to him. That meant ...

Gillespie: I'm sorry, go ahead.

Ekins: I was going to say, and that meant other scandals that came out during the course of the campaign did not matter as long as he continued to validate feelings on immigration.

Gillespie: In the Drutman analysis, part of it was that he sees the Democratic party as basically pretty supportive and in line behind liberal economic policies and liberal identity policies. He identifies two different groups within the Republican party that Trump appealed to. One are traditional conservatives and Republican voters who are conservative on social issues and also say they're conservative on economic issues. But then populists, I guess populists he defines as people who are into big government, populists like farms subsidies, they like business subsidies, they like subsidies for jobs and the idea that the government will take care of them against the, whether it's Islamic terrorists or big business or rapacious interests. But also, but they're conservative on these identity issues. Trump in a way, in that rating he was able to get the populists who might have voted for Obama in 2012 but definitely were not going to vote for Hillary because she seemed to be, she's part of the establishment, she doesn't care about them, she's a New York elitist. Is that accurate?

Ekins: I think that is. Obama had an economic message that resonated with these voters. Hillary Clinton didn't seem to give the impression that she cared much about them at all. She thought, "Oh, demography is destiny, we no longer need voters that come from certain economic and other types of strata in the electorate." And she didn't talk to them. Obama did and it served him well.

Gillespie: The joke was that she went to Chipotle more often during the 2016 campaign than Wisconsin. And you assume if you're a displaced or you feel like you're a displaced factory worker in northern Wisconsin and somebody's going to Chipotle you're not going to identify with them particularly strongly.

Ekins: Yes, that true. Also a lot of people have argued that Donald Trump is basically a Democrat. We was for years and he gave lots of money to Democrats. He's basically a Democrat but he is very suspicious of immigration which is right now out of line with the Democratic party.

Gillespie: Right, and he ran against the swamp in DC and all the people who had been living there or attached to it for years. Even though his economic policies were indistinguishable, it's just in the news that the Carrier air conditioning plant in Indiana that he had made a big stink about, getting them to not move to Mexico and of course all the jobs are going to Mexico anyway but it was a very interventionist, I don't even know that it's Democrat versus Republican 'cause Republicans love business subsidies in their own way but it was very populist certainly that the president was going to force big business to heel and to do what is right for the common American worker.

Your Cato colleague David Boaz who has written widely and wonderfully about libertarianism and you've done some work with him, about a year ago he asked Gallup to follow up. And I'm curious about this because I like this story a lot. He used Gallup data to break people into four categories: conservatives, liberals, populists and libertarians. He found using a question that keyed off of, that Gallup itself uses, to talk about political ideology, he found that libertarians, people who tended to be socially tolerant and in favor of small government were the single largest ideological block, 27%. Then there were conservatives at 26%, liberals at, I think it was 23% and populist at 15%. Does that work for you? In general that method and those results, do you find those are worth keeping in the front of our minds?

Ekins: I would say that's a little bit on the higher end of the numbers that I've seen. But that's a product of the method of using, I believe, they were using two questions. Something on an economic issue, role of government in the economy and then traditional values and you just look at who of the respondents said that they wanted small government and government not to promote traditional values.

That's a fine way to quickly segment the electorate but I probably wouldn't put too much stock in there being a difference between 27% and 23%. I do think though that that populist, the populist bucket if you will, Paul Krugman called them hardhats, some people call them communitarians or statists. They do seem to be a smaller segment of the electorate and think that they're going to be getting smaller as people do become more socially liberal over time.

Gillespie: Is there a sense, I realize this might be outside of your realm of expertise or interest, but part of thing as mediocre as the economy has been in the entire 21st century, we've been well below 2% annual growth which is something that we used to take for granted or even something closer to 3%, but the fact is is that most people's material lives are pretty good and they're getting better in terms of people have food, clothing and shelter and those things tend to get better over time. Are we moving more into a realm where the more symbolic issues or what you talked about as posturing or what we might call identity issues, are those going to dominate more and more? You had mentioned that civil rights was a huge factor in the 60s, obviously there was foreign policy as well as economic issues going on but are we more in a symbolic space now where it's not about whether or not people have enough to eat. Nobody's going to win election as president again by promising a chicken in every pot. But are we in a post-economic phase of political identity?

Ekins: I think that's a very interesting question and it reminds me of Brink Lindsey's book Age of Abundance with the idea being that economic wealth essentially allows us to have, I'll just make this up here, luxury ideological goods. If you have what you need then you can focus on other things that you believe in truly from a political standpoint that are not related to the bread and butter of jobs, housing, food, things like that. Certainly we have seen that. The introduction of social issues and cultural issues as being a second dimension of American politics emerged about the time that economic prosperity and growth really took off.

But I would say this, as a caveat to that, in the Democracy Fund voter study group that we worked, our group more broadly, two authors Ruy Teixeira and Robert Griffin at the Center for American Progress, they did another paper and what they found, was I thought very interesting, that individuals who were struggling economically or said they were struggling economically in 2012 were significantly more likely by 2016 to have become more anxious and concerned about immigration and wanting to restrict immigration. Let me just, if I'm saying that clearly enough here. People that had worse economic situations in 2012, four years later disproportionately turned against immigration. Why is that?

It does seem to me that to some extent this isn't just purely an ideological luxury issue that many people perceive it to be economic even if it might not be, people think it is.

Gillespie: Right, and it speaks to a whole host of, beyond any question about economics and as good libertarians I suspect we agree that even illegal or maybe especially illegal immigrants are a boon to the economy to the culture et cetera but regardless of the economics of it, the idea that you are a person in America who has been made redundant or irrelevant in a particular economic moment and you're pissed. Immigrants are the ultimate place where you can focus your anger and ire. Somehow they are getting something that you cannot anymore.

Ekins: Right. There definitely seems to be something going on there. It was a theory that a lot of people had that I think to Teixeira and Griffin really showed that empirically.

Gillespie: Now of course Teixeira also has been talking about the oncoming iron clad Democratic majority for a decades really. And we all do this where we, going back to Kevin Phillips who had the coming Republican majority at a point when the Republicans looked like they were about to go out of business. He was right for a while then was wrong, right again. One of the things that Gallup and I guess Harris used to do this too, where they would ask people to self-identify both as Republican and Democrat and it was always that there were always more Democrats, people who would identify as Democrats than Republicans but there were always many more people who would identify as conservatives rather than liberal and in most of those things, the self-identified liberal group would never get really more than about 20% of the electorate going back to 1970 and conservatives would be in the 40s, sometimes almost the 50s.

Yet over the past half century Republicans keep winning elections, particularly at the state and local level and Democrats keep losing. Is there any worthwhile way of digging through that where there are more Democrat, people who identify as Democrats but there are more conservatives but that's why Republicans win elections? Or is this just these are categories that are so loose that they really don't tell us anything?

Ekins: Well I think the first point, it brought to mind a phrase that I think you hear a lot of people say. Where they say, "I'm a conservative, I'm not a Republican." That distinction matters to a lot of people. But as political science research has shown, over time the parties have become more aligned with a particular ideology. Conservatives are more likely to be Republican and liberals more likely to be Democrat than in the past. That doesn't mean though that people are comfortable with the words liberal. For some reason the word liberal has been a bad word and so a lot of people who really are just liberal Democrats would say, "I'm a moderate Democrat," or "I'm more conservative." That's just more semantics. I think that's why we want to ask them, what do they think about public policy? That's the best way to know where people go.

I don't know how this maps onto though, the fact that Republicans have been doing better at winning these state and local elections. Other than the idea that they are more organized than the Democrats are right now. Right now Democrats seem to be very focused at the federal level and protests and more like expressing themselves. For instance in Los Angeles it's my understanding that, wasn't there 700,000 people who turned out for the women's march and it was only a couple hundred thousand showed up for the local elections? In the same month.

Right now it seems like Democrats are more focused on expressing frustration and anger and Republicans have been more organized and as a result they have been winning more elections at the state and local levels.

Gillespie: Let's talk about millennials. A few years ago you did a fantastic survey for Reason and the Roop Foundation about millennials and you've continued to work that ground. Are millennials, are they more or less libertarian than GenXer's or Baby Boomers? You foregrounded a lot of this and I guess we actually wrote something together about this that I'm now in my dotage I'm remembering. It seems that millennials use a different language to talk about politics. Are they, and a lot people confuse that for them being socialists, literally socialists, a lot of millennials love Bernie Sanders. Millennials, at least going back to the Obama years, which would have been the first elections that they could have voted in, overwhelmingly vote for Democrats at the presidential level. What you're take on millennials? Are they more or less libertarian than people in the past or are they more or less liberal or progressive?

Ekins: It's hard to answer that question. I would say that GenX in some respects seems to be the more libertarian generation of the groups. With millennials what we found is that they don't seem to stand out on economic policy so a lot of people think that they're all socialists because they like Bernie Sanders. That actually doesn't seem to line up with where the facts are. But they came of a political age, more or less, when Bush was either president or on his way out and the Republican party brand was in shambles and Obama was an incredibly popular brand and figure. So obviously the messengers that they trust, President Obama, John Stewart of the Daily Show, the messengers that they trusted really didn't tell them anything about free market economics. It's actually maybe almost surprising that they're not more statist than they are.

It's on the social issues that we see a difference and that they are more libertarian on social issues and civil liberties except for one issue. Free speech issues, I think this is something that we're going to need to keep an eye on. Where younger people are more supportive of the idea that some sort of authority, whether it's the college administrator or the government should limit certain speech that is considered offensive or insulting to people.

Gillespie: Wow. You're working on a study about that, is that correct?

Ekins: That's correct. It should be out in September.

Gillespie: Wow. That is obviously something to look forward to. You also recently identified in a, again at cato.org, five types of Trump voters. What are they and how are they relevant to analysis?

Ekins: Yes, this is also part of the Democracy Fund voter study group, we talked about them quite a bit during this podcast. I wrote a separate paper that did a type of statistical analysis, a cluster analysis of the Trump voters. Because a lot of folks have had this tendency to talk about the Trump voter as though it's one type of person, that voted for him for one particular reason. This statistical analysis that I ran, found five different types of Trump voters and they are very different from one another. On even the issues central to the campaign, immigration, matters of race and American identity. They're even very different on the size and scope of government. In way it's amazing that they're all in one coalition here. I could go over some of those groups if you are interested.

Gillespie: Yes, please do.

Ekins: The first group I'll mention, I call them the American Preservationists. They are the core Trump coalition that put him through the primaries. They're not the most loyal Republican voters though. They're more economically progressive, they're very concerned about Medicare, they want to tax the wealthy some more but they are very, very suspicious of immigration both legal and illegal. They have cooler feeling toward racial minorities and immigrants. They fit the more typical media accounts of Trump voters. What really surprised me about this group is that they were the only group that really felt this way and most likely group to think that being of European descent was important for being truly American. A very unusual group of voters. But they comprised about 20% of the whole coalition.

Gillespie: Wow, and they're highly motivated and intensely active. I recognize them daily in the comment section at Reason.

Ekins: Yes. But again 20% of the coalition.

There was another group that I think would really surprise you that existed in the same coalition. I call them the Free Marketeers. They actually comprised a larger share, 25%, and in many ways they're the polar opposite of the American Preservationists. They were the most hesitant Trump group. Most of them voted for Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio in the primaries and they said that really their vote was against Hillary Clinton. As opposed to being for Trump. These are just, as the name implies, small government fiscal conservatives, they have very warm feelings towards immigrants and racial minorities. They're the most likely group to support making it easier to legally immigrate to the US. They're very similar to Democrats on these identity issues. They're polar opposites to the Preservationists.

Gillespie: How do they, I guess I know the answer to this which is it's Hillary Clinton. Because Trump was so out there in terms of trade protectionism and forcing businesses to his will, he did not seem to be at all a free trader or a free marketer.

Ekins: Not at all but Hillary Clinton, besides trade didn't seem to be one either. I think they disliked her so much it seems like they, that's why they voted for Trump. But they also have the most in common with the third party voters who voted for Gary Johnson. If they weren't voting for Johnson or staying home, they were in this bucket.

Gillespie: You did have one group in your schematic that were, I'm sorry I'm blanking on the title now, but it was the Disinterested or Disaffected voters. Is that right?

Ekins: Yes, they were a small group, The Disengaged. They didn't tell us much about their politics, they're the type of people that when they take surveys they just don't have many opinions but the opinions that they did have were, they were suspicious of immigration and the felt the system was rigged against them. That was really a more common thread. It's not a thread that all the Trump voters shared in common but there was a bit more suspicion of immigration which make sense because that was a major part of Trump's campaign rhetoric.

Gillespie: Right. That also calls to mind the Drutman analysis where this idea of the system being rigged or the system not working anymore. If not, the system is either actively hostile to you or it just is just totally incompetent in delivering basic things. Like I work hard so I should have a good life, this system isn't doing that anymore. Is that, which also linked Trump and Bernie Sanders 'cause Sanders was running as an outsider and oftentimes in terms that were almost indistinguishable from Trump. Is that really the battleground now of whether or not you are working or are supporting the establishment or are you a marker of the system or are you actively attacking it? Is that the real front of American politics?

Ekins: I don't quite see it like that. I did find a group that fit that exactly. Their name is just what you'd expect. I call them the Anti-Elites. They fit just what you're talking about. They don't really align with Trump that much on immigration issues, they're a lot like Democrats on economics and immigration but they really felt like the system was rigged against ordinary people like themselves. And the establishment versus the people. For two of the five clusters, and they're the majority, of the Trump voters, the Free Marketeers and another group that I haven't mentioned yet, The Staunch Conservatives.

They're just more conventional Republicans. They don't think the system is rigged. They don't think that people take advantage of you. They think that they have agency and that they through their votes can change the political process, which is the exact opposite of the Preservationists that I mentioned and the Anti-Elites. Which fits that narrative that you're talking about. Now that narrative really does a good job at explaining more of the vote switchers, the people who voted for Obama in 2012 and switched to Trump in 2016, they do feel that way. But that doesn't explain all of the Trump voters.

Gillespie: How common was it for people to have voted for Obama and then to have switched to Trump.

Ekins: I had the number almost in the top of my head today. It was about 6%, something like that. Sizable enough obviously. But there were also voters, Republicans who voted for Romney who switched and voted for Hillary Clinton or a third party. If I remember correctly it was slightly more Obama voters switched to Trump than Romney voters that left the Republican party. There's a slight net gain, but I think it's important for people to realize that for all the voters that Trump picked up, the Republican party lost a lot of voters too because of Trump.

Gillespie: Do we make a mistake, a fundamental mistake when we try to analyze political trends through presidential elections? Because they come once every four years, we had, this time around, we had the two least liked candidates in American history. Is it a problem if we key too much off of who wins the presidency? And we essentially, just as we started the 21st century, with a dead heat where a few thousand votes essentially separated Bush and Gore. We had this bizarre outcome where Trump lost the popular vote pretty sizably but won the electoral vote. To my mind that's not a constitutional crisis, it's a sign that nobody can get to 50%. Is it wrong to look at the presidential races as the way, to tell us where politics is going?

Ekins: I think you're absolutely right. People read way too much into presidential elections. If you recall after George W. Bush won in 2004, there were all sorts of magazine covers and books that would show red America being huge and then blue America, the coasting really small and the permanent Republican majority but then, then Obama won then it was demographics is destiny and it's going to be a permanent Democratic majority. Even still a lot of people have read, particularly I would say on the more Republican side of thing of over read too much into this Trump election thinking that, oh if only Republicans appeal on the way that Trump does that's how they win.

Here's what we know in political science. This might surprise some of the listeners here, but that economic variables for instance, how fast the economy's growing, what's the labor force participation rate as well as the current president's approval ratings. A couple of these structural variables predict almost every election outcome over the past 100 years. What that means, I'm not saying campaigns don't matter, they seem to have to matter in some respects. Maybe if you didn't run a campaign then you would just get blown out of the water. Assuming you've got two campaigns going, the structural variables seem to be hugely important.

They're not always right, they've missed three elections, one of them was Gore versus Bush, as you recall Gore did technically win the popular vote. These models seem to be pretty good. And throughout this entire election campaign I was telling folks, hey look at, I'm forgetting his name, excuse me. There's a few economists that do this Abramowitz did one of these models, Ray Fair at Princeton does a model. If you followed Ray Fair's model, he predicted a Republican win almost the entire election. I thought well, just about any Republican can win this election. I thought Trump might not be able to do that, there are outliers but he did pull it out, and I think part of the reason are these economic fundamentals.

Gillespie: Let's close out by talking about libertarians and their way forward for people who are libertarian voters, obviously Gary Johnson and William Weld for all of the tension and controversies within that campaign and whatnot, they had the best, by far the best results of any libertarian party candidate. But beyond the LP, with small L libertarians, what are the issues that libertarians are interested in that seem to give the most possibility of building meaningful alliances and pushing forward over the next couple of years? In the past it's been things like drug legalization, criminal justice reform. Certain aspects of immigration and free trade certainly. Gender equality and marriage equality. Are libertarians, where would you say, given their array of issues, where do those match up with most other groups where we might be able to build meaningful alliances?

Ekins: I think it's a great question but I think it's a hard question to really answer. I agree with you on most of those issues, that those continue to be key issues for libertarians particularly criminal justice reform, privacy issues. That's something that really wasn't on the radar in terms of issues until Edward Snowdon really it seems like. But I think another thing for libertarians to think about is thinking about Republicans and Democrats, and realizing that they do have shared interests with both groups. To try to emphasize what we as libertarians are for, not what we're against. I'll give you an example 'cause we're talking about healthcare a lot on the news.

I am for everyone who wants to have access to healthcare to able to get it. We live in a country where people have houses, they have access to food and they don't have the government running it. We have found a way that the markets provide these things then we do have a social safety net for those who hit hard times and need help, we have ways to fill those gaps but it doesn't require the government to run it all. When it comes to things like healthcare and other issues like that we are for all of these positive outcomes.

The question is what's the best way to do it? What I often hear is some of our libertarian friends talking about what we're against. Let's talk about what we're for, whether that be for criminal justice reform, whether it be for healthcare, whether that be for entitlement reform, drug reform and so forth. Let's talk about the end goals 'cause you think about it, I hear this coming from the political parties all the time. They tell you the outcome that they want to deliver you. Now they're wrong all the time but let's talk about the outcomes that we believe that a freer society that libertarian public policy can help deliver. Let's focus on the positives.

Gillespie: All right that sounds like pretty sage advice and I'll be very interested in September when your paper about free speech and millennials comes out because it may be, it'll be interesting to see what's the outcome you're proffering there. And then working to persuade millennials who are more likely to believe in constraints on speech. It sounds like a tough nut to crack but a really interesting one as well.

We have been talking with Emily Ekins, she's the director of polling at the Cato Institute and she is also a PhD in political science from UCLA and writes widely on voter attitudes and millennial attitudes as well.

See the original post here:
Do Libertarian Voters Actually Exist? Yes, and in Droves [Reason Podcast] - Reason (blog)

This page is about free-market individualism. Some people (especially in Europe and Latin America) use the word libertarianism to refer to "libertarian socialism" (see anarchism)

Libertarianism is an idea in ethics and politics. The word comes from the word "liberty". Simply put, libertarians believe that people should be able to do whatever they desire as long as their actions do not harm others. As a result, Libertarians want to limit the government's power so people can have as much freedom as possible.

Libertarianism grew out of liberalism as a movement in the 1800s. Many of the beliefs of libertarianism are similar to the beliefs in classical liberalism. It also has roots in anarchism and the Austrian School of economics.

Like other people, libertarians oppose slavery, rape, theft, murder, and all other examples of initiated violence.

Libertarians believe that no person can justly own or control the body of another person, what they call "self-ownership" or "individual sovereignty." In simple words, every person has a right to control her or his own body.

In the 19th century, United States libertarians like William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, and Lysander Spooner were all abolitionists. Abolitionists were people who wanted to end slavery right away.

Garrison based his opposition to slavery on the idea of self-ownership. Since you have a natural right to control your own body, no one else has any right to steal that control from you. Garrison and Douglass both called slave masters "man stealers."

If you have a right to control your own body, then no one has a right to start violence (or force) against you.

Some libertarians believe that all violence is unjust. These libertarians are often called "anarcho-pacifists". Robert LeFevre was a libertarian who rejected all violence. However, most libertarians believe that there are some ways violence can be justified.

One thing that justifies violence is self defense. If someone is violent towards you, you have a right to defend yourself with equal force.

The libertarian Murray N. Rothbard said that it would be wrong to kill someone for stealing a pack of gum. If you steal gum, this is an act of violence against the property owner. The owner has a right to use defensive violence to get the gum back, but killing the thief goes too far. That is too much force because it is not equal to the force used by the thief. Punishment must be equal to the crime. A student and colleague of his, Walter Block, said that a punishment shouldn't be equal to the crime, but rather enough to make up for the damage the crime caused plus how much it cost to catch the criminal.

Some libertarians believe that it is your moral duty to defend yourself and your property if you can. This belief is usually held by Objectivists. These people believe that pacifism is immoral. Most libertarians reject this view.

All libertarians believe that it is wrong to start violence against any person or against what he or she owns. They call this the "non-aggression principle."

Ownership is the right to control something. Property is the thing that you control.

Libertarians believe that property rights come from self-ownership. This means that because you have a right to control your own body, you also have a right to control what you make with it.

The English philosopher John Locke said that a person comes to own something by using it. So, if you turn an area that no-one else owns into a farm and use it, that area becomes your property. This is called the "homestead principle."

Libertarians also say that you can become a legitimate owner by receiving something as a gift or by trading it with someone for something they own. You do not become a legitimate owner by stealing. You also do not become a legitimate owner by simply saying you own something. If you have not "homesteaded" the thing or received it through trade or gift, you do not own it.

Libertarians are opposed to states (or governments) creating any "laws" that tell people what they can and cannot do with their own bodies. The only legitimate laws are laws that say a person may not start violence against other people or their legitimate property. All "laws" stopping people from doing nonviolent things should be repealed, according to libertarians. (These "laws" are usually called "victimless crimes" because there is no victim if there is no theft.)

In most countries, the state (or government) takes tax money from the people. All libertarians support cutting taxes back, and some libertarians believe the state should not take tax money at all. Libertarians think people can take care of the poor without the government. They believe that people should pay for the things that they want to use, but not have to pay for other things that they do not want. Tax evasion (refusal to pay taxes to the state) is a victimless crime. Libertarians would prefer to see taxation replaced with lotteries, user fees, and endowments.

Libertarians think everyone should be allowed to decide what is good or bad for her/his own body. Libertarians think if people want to drive cars without wearing seat belts, it is their own choice. They should not be forcibly stopped from doing that, not even by the state. If a person wants to donate all of her/his money to a charity, or waste it all gambling, that is also something she/he should decide for herself/himself. No one should be forcibly stopped from doing that, not even by the state. Libertarians even say that if adults want to use harmful drugs, they should be allowed to do that, even if it spoils their lives. It is the drug user's own choice because it is the drug user's own body. As long as the drug user does not start using violence against other people or their legitimate property, no one should use violence against the drug user or the drug user's legitimate property, not even the government.

Many libertarians also believe that families and friends should look after people so that they will not use drugs, drive without seat belts, or do other things that are dangerous for them. But no one can force others to do things that they do not want to do, or to stop them from doing nonviolent things that they want to do.

There are two basic types of libertarians. All libertarians fall into one of these two broad types.

Minarchists are libertarians who believe that society should have a state with very limited power. They typically believe that the only things the state should have are police and judges to make sure that people obey the laws. Some also believe in having a military to make sure that no one attacks the country. Some minarchists believe in having a small amount of taxation.

Two famous minarchist libertarians are Robert Nozick and Ayn Rand. Nozick believed that the only legitimate thing a state can do is have a police force. He called his legitimate state a "night-watchman state." Rand believed that the state should have a police force and a court system.

Libertarian anarchists usually call themselves anarcho-capitalists, free-market anarchists, individualist anarchists, or just anarchists.

Libertarian anarchists do not believe the state is needed. They believe that people can organise their own lives and businesses. They want to replace the state with voluntary organisations, including charities, private companies, voluntary unions, and mutual aid societies. They also want to end all forced taxation.

They say that state police can be replaced with "DROs" (Dispute Resolution Organisations) or "private protection agencies." They also say that state judges can be replaced with "private arbitration."

The most famous libertarian anarchist was Murray N. Rothbard. Others include Lysander Spooner, Benjamin R. Tucker, and Linda & Morris Tannehill.

Most libertarians fall under one of the two types of libertarians listed above. But there are other types, too.

Excerpt from:
Libertarianism - Simple English Wikipedia, the free ...

Its easy for an individual that has been cringeworthy himself on many occasions even on a national stage (also, it seems you may be lacking some self-awareness with that egotistical prick comment, Mr. Ive Read 100 Books On This Ideology) to separate himself from any of the blame when it comes to how cringeworthy some libertarians are.

Aside from that, Charles Peralos assertion that libertarians are [] the cringe lords of Facebook stood out to me as a poor generalization. For example, in a world where regressive leftists showcase their poor understanding of economics, their abysmal critical thinking skills, and their hatred of the freedom of speech on social media (ironic, right?), its simply absurd to say that libertarians are the worst. All sides of the political spectrum have their cringeworthy members; libertarians arent unique in that regard.

In my opinion, Charless points were undoubtedly sloppy and this is not just because his articles are typically a poor read, both structurally and contextually. His article proves that he simply had an ax to grind, and instead of coming up with 10 compelling reasons not to make your friends libertarian, he just compiled a list of things he doesnt like about some libertarians.

So, heres a different list of 10 ways not to make your friends libertarian.

In America, liberals may have stolen the term for our political ideology, but that doesnt mean we are what they are; this is why I refer to leftists as such rather than liberals, and also because most leftists arent liberal they dont believe in things like the freedom of speech like they used to.

I dont want to focus too much on Charles and look like I myself have an ax to grind, since this isnt the time or place, but his content proves exactly my point on this particular issue.

Wanting to save social security, attack possible opportunities for secession, partner with a radical and violent leftist group like Black Lives Matter, support government paying off student loan debt rather than simply repudiating said debt, and advocate for universal healthcare are all ideas that swing left to varying degrees.

Moving away from the author at hand, there are plenty of other people that have done the same, from Gary Johnsons I agree with Bernie 73% of the time comments, to other liberty advocates pushing leftist ideals.

Lets stop making libertarianism about leftism. Theyre not compatible. As long as universal healthcare, universal basic income, and maintaining social security and the rest of the welfare state are on the table, libertarianism loses.

Part of the problem I have with the liberty movement these days is that many people have abandoned principle over party in favor of party over principle.

Sure, political strategy often simply revolves around winning. But attacking the wrong people is the worst idea for an up-and-coming party. I see libertarians within the Libertarian Party attacking Rand Paul, Ron Paul, Justin Amash, and Thomas Massie simply for being Republicans, without realizing that most of us would vote for these people if they were on our ticket in a heartbeat.

These people may be Republicans, but theyre an ally to liberty and libertarianism. Lets not forget that the Libertarian Party isnt the only mechanism for advancing liberty.

I could write an entire book revolved around the idea that libertarians shouldnt hate veterans just because they also hate that the government funds the military through taxation.

Whether or not you think our country should have such an expansive nanny state as it does, or whether you think the country should exist at all, military people havent done anything to you.

Attacking these people, who likely will be the easiest to pitch libertarianism, is a poor choice to make. These people have seen the disastrous effects of interventionist foreign policy, these people have seen why an expansive military doesnt need to exist.

These people also are just people, and theyre not baby killers. Theyre ordinary people, and most of them are reservists who never see combat deployment. Generalizing all the people who have served our country as killers, savages, and awful humans who want to steal your tax money to fund failed wars is not only an awfully poor and incorrect generalization, but also not a way to expand the libertarian base.

Anarcho-capitalists are the purists of the libertarian ideology. This one should go without saying: attacking the most devoted liberty minds doesnt do libertarianism any good. Theyre an important part of the ideology, and whether or not you agree with them, they have a lot of good things to say, if youll just listen.

If youre worried about the public image of libertarianism, and believe that people will generalize libertarianism as anarchism or anarcho-capitalism, then simply make it your mission to explain how thats not the case when youre pitching someone.

Life, liberty, and property; its clich, I know.

But that, in short, is libertarianism. The right to life, absolute liberty, and property, so long as you dont harm anyone else. The Johnson campaign was guilty of this, as well as many other libertarians. Property rights are integral to what libertarianism is as an ideology; if we abandon this integral plank, our ideology will fail.

We cant make our friends into libertarians if we dont have a philosophy. We also cant do it if we dont have a solid philosophy to pitch. Property rights are important, lets not forget that.

The abortion debate has always been murky when it comes to libertarianism, with both sides debating which provides more liberty. I tend to fall on the pro-life side, except when rape results in pregnancy since there was no consent and it is essentially self-defense by the mother. I stand firm that life begins at the first heartbeat, which is around six weeks. The debate, in my opinion, should be whether life begins at conception or not. I havent personally heard an argument that convinced me life begins at conception.

Whether we even need to have this debate anymore has recently been taken into question, but since we will for the foreseeable future, it makes its way onto this list.

Pro-life libertarians see the unborn life as exactly what it is a life. They argue that the mother and father had consensual sexual intercourse whilst understanding the possible consequences, and that the termination of said pregnancy is murder because it is the taking of a life; just because the life resides in a womans womb doesnt make it her property, rather she consented to the possibility of pregnancy by taking an action thats meant to begin a pregnancy.

Whether or not you agree with this, pro-life libertarians make good points. Not only can they attract a sizable right-wing electorate that tends to agree with libertarians otherwise, but these pro-life libertarians themselves are key to our cause.

Disagreements on abortion arent worth dividing the house over.

Some people cant get out and be real-world activists for liberty, and thats understandable they work full-time jobs that fill their days, have children, and so on. Not everyone can dedicate time out of their lives to get out and fight for liberty.

I had to turn down the chance to fly across the country and participate in a grassroots activism campaign this summer because I have to work my day job in order to save enough money before I transfer to an out-of-state college in the fall. I dedicate my time to being the news editor here at Being Libertarian, writing opinion pieces when I can, and using social media to spread the ideology. Once I have the ability to be a real-world activist, I will, but we shouldnt punish people who cant get out and be activists. Theyre doing what they can just because its not the medium you prefer doesnt make it bad or ineffective.

Even if someone has the time but doesnt want to be a real-world activist doesnt mean theyre not contributing by posting to social media. If you couldnt tell, social media is alive and well, and its an apt place to be a liberty advocate.

The only way to achieve everything in one fell swoop whether it be minarchism or anarcho-capitalism is to have some sort of civil war or revolutionary war. Thats a pretty drastic situation, and not one thats popular, for obvious reasons.

Anything other than that takes time. Even secession takes time; at least all 50 states would have to secede, and theres absolutely no way that happens all in one shot. Secessionism is one of the quickest ways to get what we want, assuming secession doesnt result in another powerful government, with the only change being territorial size.

Besides those two, we have to realize that as much as we may want it to not everything is going to happen all at once. We cant get everything we want right away, so we should push for every victory we can achieve.

By participating and contributing to a gradual move towards libertarian ideals, we allow our ideas to have exposure on a grander stage.

Its a win-win scenario we shrink government gradually (while not shutting ourselves off to other options to accelerate said shrinkage), and we give libertarianism more exposure.

To be honest, I think its pretty ridiculous that I have to even make this point.

Antifa are not anti-fascist, they are fascist. They are against free-speech and the freedom of association, and use violence to suppress speech and ideas. Libertarians, especially those within the party, have supported or sympathized with these people. Whether its to spite President Trump, or its based on pure ignorance, libertarians that side with Antifa are siding against everything they believe in.

Just because these people are anarchists (actually, theyre anarcho-communists), doesnt mean we should side with them. If anything, thats just going to reinforce the publics growing notion that these people are libertarians and anarcho-capitalists, which is absolutely not the case.

This final, most important point takes a direct shot at Charless point that we shouldnt remind people that taxation is theft, or discuss the non-aggression principle (NAP).

These are both key principles, like property rights, that make libertarianism what it is.

Sure, if all you ever say is taxation is theft, youre going to push people to click that ever-so-enticing unfollow button. However, we shouldnt just throw these slogans to the curb.

Make America Great Again and America First were key slogans that captured the attention of an otherwise silent and forgotten demographic. They were clich on the surface, and were great for a bumper sticker. But everyone knew what these things meant: they were essentially shorthand for some of the policies Trump advocated for. If we want to pitch our ideas to people, we can do the same with our slogans. As long as we dont say taxation is theft without expanding upon why its an issue and why we should fix it, these are things we can utilize to expand the libertarian base.

We dont advocate libertarianism for fun, we advocate it because we want to free ourselves from coercion, and seek the most amount of liberty attainable. Remember, we can win this fight. Liberty can win, and it will, as long as we dont forget our mission.

This post was written by Nicholas Amato.

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

Nicholas Amato is the News Editor at Being Libertarian. Hes an undergraduate student at San Jose State University, majoring in political science and minoring in journalism.

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Response to 10 Ways Not to Make Your Friends Libertarian - Being Libertarian

The idea that licentiousness among consenting adults (legalized drugs, prostitution, gambling, etc.) can co-exist with limited government (confined strictly to preventing anyone from infringing upon the life, liberty, and property rights of anyone else) under a constitutional republic in an environment free from interference by over-zealous right-wing Bible-thumpers, tax-and-spend liberals, or other external agents of oppression.

The main problem with this delusional notion of co-existence is that it runs afoul of an annoying immutable natural law - roughly translated as "nature abhors a vacuum" - that's understood and exploited by every drug pusher, credit card issuer, Las Vegas casino, and Madison Avenue marketer and even the bailout-happy U.S. Federal Reserve and which was summed up by Edmund Burke:

"Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites; in proportion as they are disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good in preference to the flattery of knaves.

"Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without.

"It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters."

-or as John Adams said:

(The U.S.) constitution was made for a moral and religious people; it is wholly inadequate for any other.

"We favor the repeal of all laws creating 'crimes' without victims, such as the use of drugs for medicinal or recreational purposes."

"The only legitimate use of force is in defense of individual rights life, liberty, and justly acquired property against aggression"

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Urban Dictionary: libertarianism

A detail from The Apotheosis of Washington (1863-1864) by Constantino Brumidi. Source: Architect of the Capitol (no endorsement to be inferred), hosted on Wikimedia.

My title is very clearly provocative. So let me add a bit of nuance: if the Church condemns socialism, She also condemns Liberalism in generalboth in its center-left (e.g. John F. Kennedy, Joe Biden) and its center-right (e.g. Newt Gingrich, Paul Ryan) varieties. Or, to be more precise: She condemns 90% (Im guesstimating) of state and federal American politics, perhaps, one might say, America itself.

To understand what I mean here, it will be necessary to put away how the term liberal is most often used in the contemporary United States. Liberal and socialist are treated as synonyms; often the first is regarded as a polite identification for the second, a mask of sorts.

But this is not the historical definition of Liberalism, and it is not the one with which most people (including most popes) have been familiar (this changed somewhat recentlymore on that below). The Encyclopdia Brittanica offers a good starting point for our analysis:

Liberalism, political doctrine that takes protecting and enhancing the freedom of the individual to be the central problem of politics. Liberals typically believe that government is necessary to protect individuals from being harmed by others; but they also recognize that government itself can pose a threat to liberty. As the revolutionary American pamphleteer Thomas Paine expressed it in Common Sense (1776), government is at best a necessary evil. Laws, judges, and police are needed to secure the individuals life and liberty, but their coercive power may also be turned against him. The problem, then, is to devise a system that gives government the power necessary to protect individual liberty but also prevents those who govern from abusing that power.

Lest I be thought to be pulling a fast one, even libertarians agree with the Encyclopdias definition. Libertarianism.org, for example, makes use of Edwin van de Haars work to classify classical liberalism, social liberalism, libertarianism, and conservatism as the four predominant forms Liberalism takes today:

Note here that in principle each of these emphasizes human freedom and its relationship to government. Liberalism on the whole might be said to ask the question: at what point does human freedom end in its relationship to ordained power? Each of these ideologiesincluding, lets not forget, conservatismoffers an answer to this question. There are, of course, illiberal, traditionalist forms of conservatism in the U.S. today (notably among Catholics and Orthodox), but such currents are not our concern at the momenttheir numbers are fairly negligible, and, insofar as they vote for either the GOP or the Democratic Party, they vote liberally (as almost all of us do, given our options in the U.S. today).

Liberalism carries with it specific discourses, that is, ways of speakinga vocabulary if you will. Terms like freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of religion. While certainly some forms of social liberalism may launch assaults on free speech at universities as far as conservatives are concerned, such liberals do not disavow the concept entirely. In other words, a conflict over the definition of free speech does not disqualify social liberals from taking up the mantle of Liberalism.

Take, for example, Stanley Fish, a noted professor and public intellectual, who has repeatedly attacked the idea that universities ought to traffic in freedom of speech:

That leaves us with free speech and here the big mistake (again made by students, some professors, and all commentators) is to think that free speech is what universities are all about; to think that universities are in the business of protecting and encouraging free speech. No, they arent. Universities are in the business of advancing knowledge about the many subjects taught and researched within their precincts. In relation to that task, freedom of speech is not an absolute and trumping value; it is a tool that may or may not be in the service of the prime value the university stands for and instantiates the value of following the evidence to wherever it leads, the value of open academic inquiry.

A distinction is key here: Fish thinks universities are private (messier if public, but still) bodies with the ability to regulate themselves and decide which sorts of discussions ought to be allowed and which should not be. He is not saying that free speech is unimportant; in fact, at the popular level, I am sure he would say that those with unorthodox, even unacceptable, opinions are free to voice them on social media, in books (if they can find a publisher), and wherever else is open and in the public square (in fact, I heard a supporter of his opinion above say just that in a lecture today). This is an avowedly Liberal position (e.g. the private freedom of the university is to be distinguished from public discussion about issues). Fishs definition may be different from that found among most modern conservatives, but it still prioritizes freedom in a way central to Liberalism as a whole.

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If the Church Condemns Socialism, She Condemns Modern Conservatism - Patheos (blog)

Being Libertarian

Beautiful Infinity: A Libertarian Theory on Race Being Libertarian A libertarian theory on race would be a theory based upon individualism, one that takes into account the complexity and diversity of individuals. A libertarian would look past race in order to view the true beauty that is individuality. This makes ...

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Beautiful Infinity: A Libertarian Theory on Race - Being Libertarian

The Fiscal Times

The Obvious Problem With the 'Simple' GOP Solution for Health Care The Fiscal Times The moment was valuable not because it revealed that a few Paul backers took their libertarianism to such an extreme that they cheered the idea of letting a sick man perish in the name of freedom, but because of the disgust that the rest of the country ... and more »

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The Obvious Problem With the 'Simple' GOP Solution for Health Care - The Fiscal Times

Conservative Review

Alex Jones does NOT represent libertarians Conservative Review Megyn Kelly made headlines this week for her interview with controversial broadcaster Alex Jones, a self-described libertarian. For someone like me, this is distressing for a number of reasons. First, there's just the shameless appeal to sensationalism ...

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Alex Jones does NOT represent libertarians - Conservative Review

Obscuring census data to give "conservative districts more than their fair share of representation." Preventing access to the vote. Decrying "socialized medicine." Trying to end Social Security using dishonest vocabulary like "strengthened." Lionizing Lenin. Attempting to institute voucher programs to "get out of the business of public education." Increasing corporatization of higher education. Harboring a desire, at heart, to change the Constitution itself.

This unsettling list could be 2017 Bingo. In fact, it's from half a century earlier, when economist James Buchanan an early herald of libertarianism began to cultivate a group of like-minded thinkers with the goal of changing government. This ideology eventually reached the billionaire Charles Koch; the rest is, well, 2017 Bingo.

This sixty-year campaign to make libertarianism mainstream and eventually take the government itself is at the heart of Democracy in Chains. It's grim going; this isn't the first time Nancy MacLean has investigated the dark side of the American conservative movement (she also wrote Behind the Mask of Chivalry: The Making of the Second Ku Klux Klan), but it's the one that feels like it was written with a clock ticking down.

Still, it takes the time to meticulously trace how we got here from there. Charles and his brother David Koch have been pushing the libertarian agenda for more than 20 years. A generation before them, Buchanan founded a series of enclaves to study ways to make government bend. Before that, critic and historian Donald Davidson coined the term "Leviathan" in the 1930s for the federal government, and blamed northeasterners for "pushing workers' rights and federal regulations. Such ideas could never arise from American soil, Davidson insisted. They were 'alien' European imports brought by baleful characters." And going back another century, the book locates the movement's center in the fundamentalism of Vice President John C. Calhoun, for whom the ideas of capital and self-worth were inextricably intertwined. (Spoilers: It was about slavery.)

It's grim going; this isn't the first time Nancy MacLean has investigated the dark side of the American conservative movement ... but it's the one that feels like it was written with a clock ticking down.

Buchanan headed a group of radical thinkers (he told his allies "conspiratorial secrecy is at all times essential"), who worked to centralize power in states like Virginia. They eschewed empirical research. They termed taxes "slavery." They tried repeatedly to strike down progressive action school integration, Social Security claiming it wasn't economically sound. And they had the patience and the money to weather failures in their quest to win.

As MacLean lays out in their own words, these men developed a strategy of misinformation and lying about outcomes until they had enough power that the public couldn't retaliate against policies libertarians knew were destructive. (Look no further than Flint, MacLean says, where the Koch-funded Mackinac Center was behind policies that led to the water crisis.) And it's painstakingly laid out. This is a book written for the skeptic; MacLean's dedicated to connecting the dots.

She gives full due to the men's intellectual rigor; Buchanan won the Nobel for economics, and it's hard to deny that he and the Koch brothers have had some success. (Alongside players like Dick Armey and Tyler Cowen, there are cameos from Newt Gingrich, John Kasich, Mitt Romney, and Antonin Scalia.) But this isn't a biography. Besides occasional asides, MacLean's much more concerned with ideology and policy. By the time we reach Buchanan's role in the rise of Chilean strongman Augusto Pinochet (which backfired so badly on the people of Chile that Buchanan remained silent about it for the rest of his life), that's all you need to know about who Buchanan was.

We are, 'Democracy in Chains' is clear, at a precipice.

If you're worried about what all this means for America's future, you should be. The clear and present danger is hard to ignore. When nearly every radical belief the Buchanan school ever floated is held by a member of the current administration, it's bad news.

But it's worth noting that the primary practice outlined in this book is the leveraging of money to protect money and the counter-practice is the vocal and sustained will of the people. We are, Democracy in Chains is clear, at a precipice. At the moment, the first practice is winning. If you don't like it, now's the time to try the second. And if someone you know isn't convinced, you have just the book to hand them.

Genevieve Valentine's latest novel is Icon.

Read more from the original source:
'Democracy In Chains' Traces The Rise Of American Libertarianism - NPR