Category Archives: Libertarianism

I know that as soon as you saw the title of this article you thought to yourself, This isnt about me. Well I hate to break it to you, but it most likely is so shave your neck beards, burn your fedoras, take the hot pocket out of your mouth, and listen up. If libertarianism is going to grow we must address the biggest hurdle that we face today: how to market libertarianism. There are a number of issues that must be dealt with, but the one that seems most glaring and which has lead to the stereotypes that I have used to get your attention is that libertarians are just not cool.

As libertarians we must realize that our message is not mainstream yet, and therefore each of us is an ambassador when marketing it. Being an ambassador comes with a certain amount of personal responsibility to be self aware so that you do not completely disenfranchise someone you are engaging with. No one wants to be around a person who causes them discomfort, whether that is because they are a socially awkward basement dweller, a loud obnoxious internet troll, lack personal hygiene, or just generally unaware of normal human behavior.

Dont despair, however, for it is possible to change your ways and I am happy to be your guide in this endeavor with a few simple tips:

If we ever hope for the message of liberty to become mainstream we must focus on marketing, and the most important part of marketing is to be presentable. So, please, libertarians, try to be cool.

* Christopher Lee McKitrick is a writer and political commentator. He is a New Hampshire native, beer enthusiast, and lover of freedom. You can follow him on Facebook @mckitrickliberty.

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Libertarians Just Aren't Cool - Being Libertarian (satire)

The non-aggression principleEdit

The non-aggression principle (NAP) is often described as the foundation of present-day right-libertarian philosophies.[4][5][6] It is a moral stance which forbids actions that are inconsistent with capitalist property rights. The principle defines "aggression" and "initiation of force" as violation of these rights. NAP and property rights are closely linked, since what constitutes aggression depends on what libertarians consider to be one's property.[7]

Because the principle redefines aggression in right-libertarian terms, use of the NAP as a justification for right-libertarianism has been criticized as circular reasoning and as rhetorical obfuscation of the coercive nature of libertarian property law enforcement.[8]

The principle has been used rhetorically to oppose such policies as victimless crime laws, taxation, and military drafts.

There is a debate amongst right-libertarians as to whether or not the state is legitimate: while anarcho-capitalists advocate its abolition, minarchists support minimal states, often referred to as night-watchman states. Minarchists maintain that the state is necessary for the protection of individuals from aggression, theft, breach of contract, and fraud. They believe the only legitimate governmental institutions are the military, police, and courts, though some expand this list to include fire departments, prisons, and the executive and legislative branches.[9][10][11] They justify the state on the grounds that it is the logical consequence of adhering to the non-aggression principle and argue that anarchism is immoral because it implies that the non-aggression principle is optional, that the enforcement of laws under anarchism is open to competition.[citation needed] Another common justification is that private defense agencies and court firms would tend to represent the interests of those who pay them enough.[12]

Anarcho-capitalists argue that the state violates the non-aggression principle by its nature because governments use force against those who have not stolen or vandalized private property, assaulted anyone, or committed fraud.[13][14] Many also argue that monopolies tend to be corrupt and inefficient, that private defense and court agencies would have to have a good reputation in order to stay in business. Linda & Morris Tannehill argue that no coercive monopoly of force can arise on a truly free market and that a government's citizenry can't desert them in favor of a competent protection and defense agency.[15]

Libertarian philosopher Moshe Kroy argues that the disagreement between anarcho-capitalists who adhere to Murray Rothbard's view of human consciousness and the nature of values and minarchists who adhere to Ayn Rand's view of human consciousness and the nature of values over whether or not the state is moral is not due to a disagreement over the correct interpretation of a mutually held ethical stance. He argues that the disagreement between these two groups is instead the result of their disagreement over the nature of human consciousness and that each group is making the correct interpretation of their differing premises. These two groups are therefore not making any errors with respect to deducing the correct interpretation of any ethical stance because they do not hold the same ethical stance.[16]

While there is debate on whether left, right, and socialist libertarianism "represent distinct ideologies as opposed to variations on a theme," right-libertarianism is most in favor of private property.[17] Right-libertarians maintain that unowned natural resources "may be appropriated by the first person who discovers them, mixes his labor with them, or merely claims themwithout the consent of others, and with little or no payment to them." This contrasts with left-libertarianism in which "unappropriated natural resources belong to everyone in some egalitarian manner."[18] Right-libertarians believe that natural resources are originally unowned, and therefore, private parties may appropriate them at will without the consent of, or owing to, others (e.g. a land value tax).[19]

Right-libertarians (also referred to as propertarians) hold that societies in which private property rights are enforced are the only ones that are both ethical and lead to the best possible outcomes.[20] They generally support the free market, and are not opposed to any concentrations of economic power, provided it occurs through non-coercive means.[21]

Libertarianism in the United States developed in the 1950s as many with Old Right or classical liberal beliefs in the United States began to describe themselves as libertarians.[22]H. L. Mencken and Albert Jay Nock were the first prominent figures in the United States to call themselves libertarians.[23] They believed Franklin D. Roosevelt had co-opted the word liberal for his New Deal policies, which they opposed, and used libertarian to signify their allegiance to individualism. Mencken wrote in 1923: "My literary theory, like my politics, is based chiefly upon one idea, to wit, the idea of freedom. I am, in belief, a libertarian of the most extreme variety."[24]

In the 1950s, Russian-American novelist Ayn Rand developed a philosophical system called Objectivism, expressed in her novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, as well as other works, which influenced many libertarians.[25] However, she rejected the label libertarian and harshly denounced the libertarian movement as the "hippies of the right."[26] Philosopher John Hospers, a one-time member of Rand's inner circle, proposed a non-initiation of force principle to unite both groups; this statement later became a required "pledge" for candidates of the Libertarian Party, and Hospers himself became its first presidential candidate in 1972.[citation needed]

Austrian School economist Murray Rothbard was influenced by the work of the 19th-century American individualist anarchists, themselves influenced by classical liberalism.[27] However, he thought they had a faulty understanding of economics: they accepted the labor theory of value as influenced by the classical economists, but Rothbard was a student of neoclassical economics which does not agree with the labor theory of value.[citation needed] Rothbard sought to meld 19th-century American individualists' advocacy of free markets and private defense with the principles of Austrian economics: "There is, in the body of thought known as 'Austrian economics,' a scientific explanation of the workings of the free market (and of the consequences of government intervention in that market) which individualist anarchists could easily incorporate into their political and social Weltanschauung".[28]

The Vietnam War split the uneasy alliance between growing numbers of self-identified libertarians, anarchist libertarians, and more traditional conservatives who believed in limiting liberty to uphold moral virtues. Libertarians opposed to the war joined the draft resistance and peace movements, as well as organizations such as Students for a Democratic Society. They began founding their own publications, such as Reason magazine and Murray Rothbard's The Libertarian Forum,[29] and organizations like the Radical Libertarian Alliance[30] and Society for Individual Liberty.[31]

Arizona United States Senator Barry Goldwater's libertarian-oriented challenge to authority had a major impact on the libertarian movement,[32] through his book The Conscience of a Conservative and his run for president in 1964.[33] Goldwater's speech writer, Karl Hess, became a leading libertarian writer and activist.[34]

The split was aggravated at the 1969 Young Americans for Freedom convention, when more than 300 libertarians organized to take control of the organization from conservatives. The burning of a draft card in protest to a conservative proposal against draft resistance sparked physical confrontations among convention attendees, a walkout by a large number of libertarians, the creation of libertarian organizations like the Society for Individual Liberty, and efforts to recruit potential libertarians from conservative organizations.[35] The split was finalized in 1971 when conservative leader William F. Buckley, Jr., in a 1971 New York Times article, attempted to divorce libertarianism from the freedom movement. He wrote: "The ideological licentiousness that rages through America today makes anarchy attractive to the simple-minded. Even to the ingeniously simple-minded."[36]

In 1971, a small group of Americans led by David Nolan formed the U.S. Libertarian Party.[37] The party has run a presidential candidate every election year since 1972. Educational organizations like the Center for Libertarian Studies and the Cato Institute were formed in the 1970s, and others have been created since then.[38]

Modern libertarianism gained significant recognition in academia with the publication of Harvard University professor Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia in 1974, a response to John Rawls's A Theory of Justice. The book proposed a minimal state on the grounds that it was an inevitable phenomenon which could arise without violating individual rights. Anarchy, State, and Utopia won a National Book Award in 1975.[39][40]

Since the resurgence of neoliberalism in the 1970s, free-market capitalist libertarianism has spread beyond North America and Europe via think tanks and political parties.[41][42]

Right-libertarianism has been criticized by the Left for being pro-business and anti-labor [43] and also for desiring to repeal government aid for people with disabilities and the poor.[44]

Corey Robin describes right-libertarianism as fundamentally a reactionary conservative ideology, united with more traditional conservative thought and goals by a desire to enforce hierarchical power and social relations:[45]

Conservatism, then, is not a commitment to limited government and libertyor a wariness of change, a belief in evolutionary reform, or a politics of virtue. These may be the byproducts of conservatism, one or more of its historically specific and ever-changing modes of expression. But they are not its animating purpose. Neither is conservatism a makeshift fusion of capitalists, Christians, and warriors, for that fusion is impelled by a more elemental forcethe opposition to the liberation of men and women from the fetters of their superiors, particularly in the private sphere. Such a view might seem miles away from the libertarian defense of the free market, with its celebration of the atomistic and autonomous individual. But it is not. When the libertarian looks out upon society, he does not see isolated individuals; he sees private, often hierarchical, groups, where a father governs his family and an owner his employees.

Within right-libertarianism, many reject associations with conservativism, and often reject traditional left-right labels.

In the 1960s, Rothbard started the publication Left and Right: A Journal of Libertarian Thought, believing that the left-right political spectrum had gone "entirely askew" since conservatives were sometimes more statist than liberals. Rothbard tried to reach out to leftists.[46] In 1971, Rothbard wrote about right-wing libertarianism which he described as supporting self-ownership, property rights and free trade.[47] He would later describe his brand of libertarianism as anarcho-capitalism.[48][49]

Anthony Gregory points out that within the libertarian movement "just as the general concepts 'left' and 'right' are riddled with obfuscation and imprecision, left- and right-libertarianism can refer to any number of varying and at times mutually exclusive political orientations". He writes that one of several ways to look at right-libertarianism is its exclusive interest in economic freedoms, preference for a conservative lifestyle, view that big business is "a great victim of the state," favoring a strong national defense, and sharing the Old Right's "opposition to empire." However, he holds that the important distinction for libertarians is not left or right, but whether they are "government apologists who use libertarian rhetoric to defend state aggression."[50]

Some pro-property libertarians reject association with either right or left. Leonard E. Read wrote an article titled "Neither Left Nor Right: Libertarians Are Above Authoritarian Degradation."[51]Harry Browne wrote: "We should never define Libertarian positions in terms coined by liberals or conservativesnor as some variant of their positions. We are not fiscally conservative and socially liberal. We are Libertarians, who believe in individual liberty and personal responsibility on all issues at all times."[52]Tibor R. Machan titled a book of his collected columns Neither Left Nor Right.[53]Walter Block's article "Libertarianism Is Unique and Belongs Neither to the Right Nor the Left" critiques libertarians he described as left and right, the latter including Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Edward Feser and Ron Paul. Block wrote that these left and right individuals agreed with certain libertarian premises but "where we differ is in terms of the logical implications of these founding axioms."[54]

Author Ilana Mercer draws even further distinction between right-wing libertarianism and left-leaning libertarianism, which she refers to as "Lite Libertarianism" stating that the "difference between lite libertarians and the Right kind is that to the former, the idea of liberty is propositionala deracinated principle, unmoored from the realities of history, hierarchy, biology, tradition, culture, values. Conversely, the paleolibertarian grasps that ordered liberty has a civilizational dimension, stripped of which the libertarian non-aggression axiom, by which we all must live, cannot endure"[55] and "that Classical Liberalism of the 19th century certainly allows for the individual to do as he pleases ... but the authentic libertarian emphasizes the right to life, liberty and property."[56]

Herbert Kitschelt and Anthony J. McGann contrast right-libertarianism"a strategy that combines pro-market positions with opposition to hierarchical authority, support of unconventional political participation, and endorsement of feminism and of environmentalism"with right-authoritarianism.[57]

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Right-libertarianism - Wikipedia

GOVERNMENT MUST BE BASED ON DELEGATED, ENUMERATED AND THUS LIMITED POWERS

Libertarianism calls for freedom and responsibility, free markets and civil liberties, a minimal government that stays out of both boardrooms and bedrooms.

For those who go into government to improve the lives of their fellow citizens, the hardest lesson to accept may be that Congress should often do nothing about a problem such as education, crime, or the cost of prescription drugs. Critics will object, Do you want the government to just stand there and do nothing while this problem continues?

Sometimes that is exactly what Congress should do.

Remember the ancient wisdom imparted to physicians: First, do no harm. And have confidence that free people, left to their own devices, will address issues of concern to them more effectively outside a political environment.

Advocates of limited government are not anti-government per se, as some people would charge. Rather, they are hostile to concentrations of coercive power and to the arbitrary use of power against right. With a deep appreciation for the lessons of history and the dangers of unconstrained government, they are for constitutionally limited government, with the delegated authority and means to protect our rights, but not so powerful as to destroy or negate them.

The American Founders established a system of government based on delegated, enumerated, and thus limited powers.

The American Founders did not pluck those truths out of thin air, nor did they simply invent the principles of American government. They drew from their knowledge of thousands of years of human history, during which many peoples struggled for liberty and limited government. There were both defeats and victories along the way. The results were distilled in the founding documents of the American experiment in limited government: the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, the state constitutions, and the Constitution of the United States.

Through the study of history the Americans learned about the division of power among judicial, legislative, and executive branches; about federalism; about checks and balances among divided powers; about redress and representation; and about the right of resistance, made effective by the legal right to bear arms, an ancient right of free persons. Liberty and limited government were not invented in 1776; they were reaffirmed and strengthened.

John Locke, himself an active participant in the struggles for limited government in Britain and the primary inspiration of the American revolutionaries, argued in his Second Treatise on Government:

the end of Law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge Freedom: For in all the states of created beings capable of Laws, where there is no Law, there is no Freedom. For Liberty is to be free from restraint and violence from others, which cannot be, where there is no Law: But Freedom is not, as we are told, A Liberty for every Man to do what he lists: For who could be free, whenevery other Mans Humour might domineer over him?

The original American Founders were willing to mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor. Nothing even remotely approaching that would be necessary for todays members of Congress to renew and restore the American system of constitutionally limited government.

What is needed for the survival of limited government is an informed citizenry jealous of its rights and ever vigilant against unconstitutional or otherwise unwarranted exercises of power, and officeholders who take seriously their oaths of office and accept the responsibilities they entail.

Thomas Ravenel is the former treasurer of South Carolina and one of thestars of Southern Charm, a Charleston, S.C.-based reality television show that airs nationally on Bravo TV.

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Thomas Ravenel: On Libertarianism - FITSNews

Being Libertarian

Conservatism and Libertarianism: Mutually Exclusive or Inherently Inseparable? Being Libertarian A few of my comments regarding the issue of conservatism and liberalism were recently taken out of context by a colleague of mine at Being Libertarian, Martin van Staden, our Editor in Chief. Martin's article, Social Conservatism and Libertarianism ...

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Conservatism and Libertarianism: Mutually Exclusive or Inherently Inseparable? - Being Libertarian

CANTON -- St. Lawrence University will host economist Deirdre McCloskey at 7:30 p.m. on March 15, in Hepburn Hall, room 218.

The event is part of the Department of Economics Visiting Speaker Series in Political Economy and is funded by the Charles Koch Foundation.

McCloskeys lecture, Humane Libertarianism: A New American Liberalism, is free and open to the public.

An economist, historian and rhetorician, McCloskey the author of more than 400 peer-reviewed academic articles and 17 books, including "Economical Writing: A Memoir and most recently Bourgeois Equality: How Ideas, Not Capital or Institutions, Enriched the World, the third volume in the trilogy The Bourgeois Era."

McCloskey earned a bachelors degree and Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University and taught at the University of Chicago, the University of Iowa, and the University of Illinois at Chicago, from where she retired as the distinguished professor of economics, history, English and communications at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

For more information, contact the Department of Economics at 315-229-5430 or visit http://www.stlawu.edu/economics.

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'Humane Libertarianism: A New American Liberalism,' a lecture hosted by SLU slated for March 15 - North Country Now

Im going to remind libertarians of many thing they already know, but generally forget they know when it comes to the idiotic national conversation weve had about healthcare in the last decade.

First, rights are not what the government gives out to its citizens; rights are what the government in our nation, with our definition of governance is required to protect. That is the sole government responsibility regarding rights. What the government gives out to citizens are called entitlements, and the list of entitlements the US Constitution authorizes our government to dispense are as follows: 1. not a damned thing; 2. the list ended three bullet-points ago.

Second, rights are free for the taking, but they are certainly not free. They are simply what the government leaves the citizen alone to acquire for himself, to the degree the citizen wishes it, and has the capacity to acquire or make use of it. The examples to illustrate this are infinite. The First Amendment, for example, acknowledges a citizens right to property. But property does not appear out of thin air; it generally belongs to someone else first. Does a citizens right to property compel the current owner of the property to deed it over to the citizen who desires it?

Of course not; that is both stupid and confiscatory. What the right to property permits is the current owner and the potential future owner to arrive at a mutually agreeable price and other terms under which the transfer of ownership shall be made. The government isnt obliged to give anyone forty acres and a mule, nor to compel others to provide same. If a citizen wants these things, the citizen is instructed to save his money and find someone who wishes to trade for it.

Third, rights include essentially everything that isnt nailed down. Rights are, Constitutionally: 1] not limited to what Amendments 1-8 specify as rights [9thAM]; 2] include every aspect of human interaction not directly given to the federal government and not prohibited to the states to control [10thAM]; AND 3] the states are prohibited from legislatively controlling anything that was not also given to the feds [14thAM, Sec 1].

Protectable rights are, in a very real sense, any power to act that is not listed in Article I, Section 8 of the US Constitution as a power for Congress to make law upon and those Congressional powers to legislate are very very few. Congress is given no authority, for example, to regulate who is allowed to use our roads, therefore driving is a right. States cannot deny that right in their own laws, though they are allowed to regulate how the roads are used speed limits, rights of way, skills tests, et cetera.

Congress is given no authority, for another example, to regulate who may marry whom, therefore marrying your homosexual lover is a right. States may not deny that right in their own laws, though they may regulate certain aspects of marriage, such as the minimum age necessary.

These are all things that libertarians comprehend about rights. Hell, these are all things that virtually all Americans, libertarian or not and adequately inculcated in American civics, understand about rights, even if they do not like the specific consequences. and Im thinking particularly of the religious right morons and gay marriage, here. Even they understand this, as it makes their skin crawl.

So how is it, then, that we conveniently throw all this comprehension of rights to the four winds when the subject becomes healthcare? Healthcare is not an issue given to the government to control; it is therefore a right. Why do we indulge the facile and insupportable, and claim a governmental role in healthcare when government involvement does not join with any other right?

We have the right to say what we wish. But if we have stage fright, does the government provide us assertiveness training? No it does not. If we are inarticulate stumble-tongues, does the government provide us speech therapy? No it does not, not even when Dubya is elected President and could have used it. Does the government provide a bullhorn? a soapbox? Does the government reserve a sidewalk on a popular street corner? compel the first four hundred random passers-by to stop and grant rapt attention? And if we are unable to think of anything to say, does the government provide a pre-written speech?

No. It does not. Our right to say what we wish begins and ends with our own willingness and ability to actually use the damned thing. If we cannot speak in public, or cannot make others listen, or cannot think of what to say that anyone would want to hear, the government has no obligation or duty to assist. The lack of government providence does not negate our freedom of speech.

We have the right to write what we wish. But if we are illiterate and cannot strings words together into sentences, sentences into paragraphs, and paragraphs into thematic essays, does the government provide literacy training? No, it does not. Even when it tries to it doesnt. as anyone even marginally familiar with public education in the United States knows. If we have nothing to write with, does it give us a pen? If we have nothing to write on, does it give us paper? If we have a batshit manifesto burning a hole in our Kaczyniskiist hovel, does the government provide us a publisher?

No. None of these things. And yet, the absence of government assistance does not erase our freedom of the press.

We have the right to marry the person of our dreams, because the Constitution does not give the government the power to stop us. But if that person does not wish to marry us back, does the government compel the object of our affection to meet us at the altar?

Of course not. Logistically, it would be a nightmare for people like Jennifer Aniston. But this doesnt affect our right to marry whom we wish.

We have the right to employment, because the Constitution does not give the government the power to prevent it. But if a citizen wishes to be employed as the bazillionaire CEO of Microsoft, does the government oust Bill Gates and install the new hire? If a citizen wishes to be employed as the next Luke Skywalker in the Star Wars franchise, does the government do lunch with George Lucas and make it happen? If a citizen simply wants to be hired by any old company at any old position making any old amount of money, does the government impose itself to make even that happen?

Absolutely not, and this still doesnt deny our right to a job. Something about a free market.

We have the right to buy the shirt we like, the sports car we want, the home we pine after in the neighborhood we covet; in short, to acquire property. But if we dont have the money necessary to complete the transactions, does the government give us the money? Alternately, does the government coerce the transaction without it?

Certainly not. If we need money to buy what we want, we are advised to avail ourselves of our right to a job. But the governments hands-off attitude toward our right to accumulate property does not invalidate our right to accumulate property. Our failure to accumulate the property we want only speaks to our priorities, financial abilities and other manifestations of a free market, and nothing else.

We have the right to a haircut, a pedicure, a Papa Johns pizza, and a Caribbean cruise and every other service you can name. But if we dont have the money for these because we used all our money on that fancy sports car two paragraphs ago, does the government step in with the cash? with coercion? with even so much as a coupon?

Not a chance. A commercial service being a right does not suddenly imbue the government with the authority to compel the service to be provided, nor its terms and conditions. More free marketeering.

Healthcare is a right simply because the government is given no defined authority to control it. It is a service just like the haircut we have a right to get. Our right to acquire healthcare, as with the haircut, does not grant the government any authority to compel it, nor to set the terms and conditions of its acquisition. Our ability to acquire healthcare rests entirely with us, with our priorities, and with our financial abilities. The free market, when applied to the right of healthcare, does not suddenly mean that the commodity being sought must be free of cost, or that the cost must be borne by the government.

Yet healthcare today is exclusively discussed as a government providence. This is what democrats use to base their baseless belief that it is a right, and what republicans and libertarians use to claim that it is not.

Libertarians should know better. Libertarians should be smart enough to avoid the equivocative word traps laid out by the mealy-mouthed Bernie Trotsky Sanders and other progressives. Any libertarian who does not know, and cannot recite at a moments notice, the very specific and crucial difference between a right and an entitlement has no claim to calling himself a libertarian.

This is a taxation is theft moment in a taxation is theft conversation. Rights are what the government leaves you alone to get for yourself; entitlements are what the government gives you. This is true whether it is speech, press, property, employment, pedicures or a prescription. If the government is providing healthcare, coercing it upon reluctant patients and setting the terms and conditions for its providers, then it is an entitlement and not a right. If healthcare is a right and it is then the government must stay out of the picture.

As libertarians, we know this. Lets pretend were libertarian, mkay?

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Follyswaddling Healthcare or How to Abandon Libertarianism in One Intemperate Moment of Political Insecurity - The Libertarian Republic

Being Libertarian

Donald Trump Is No Libertarian - Being Libertarian Being Libertarian Ladies and gentleman there you have it, straight from Merriam-Webster. It is with a sad heart that I write this article, but I feel I must. Many of us liberty minded ... and more »

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Donald Trump Is No Libertarian - Being Libertarian - Being Libertarian

President Trump's recent executive order, titled "Reducing Regulation and Controlling Regulatory Cost," speaks the language of the principled libertarians, but its beneficiaries are likely to be the thugs.

The order prohibits any agency from issuing any new regulation unless it also repeals two regulations that cost as much as the new one. "Costs" mean the cost of complying with the regulation. The harms that were the reason for the regulation don't count at all.

David Dana and Michael Barsa observe the implications of Trump's order. The Department of Interior created a set of new regulations in response to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster, in which BP spilled nearly 5 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. It was the largest marine oil spill in history, and, Dana and Barsa wrote, it cost "nearly $9 billion for lost fisheries and $23 billion for lost tourism, not to mention the catastrophic effects on marine life and birds. Yet under the president's order, the only costs that matter are those to the oil companies. Costs to the public and to the environment are completely ignored." The regulations aren't cheap; the cost to the industry has been estimated at hundreds of millions. But that's peanuts compared to the costs of another spill.

Trump is a big fan of Ayn Rand. Like her fictional hero John Galt in "Atlas Shrugged," he wants to free business from the heavy hand of government. But this is an oddly distorted libertarianism, in which Rand's villains masquerade as her heroes: those who talk most of liberty are the looters and moochers.

Conservatives worry about "regulatory capture": the danger that regulators will abandon the public interest at the behest of regulated industries, keeping prices high and stifling competition. The solution is to get rid of regulation: the state should butt out and let the market operate. There's no doubt that capture has sometimes happened. A notorious example is the Civil Aeronautics Board: after it was abolished in 1985, airline competition intensified and prices plunged.

There is, however, another way in which unworthy special interests can seize control of government. They can work to cripple regulation, so that they can hurt and defraud people. Libertarian rhetoric has turned out to be a rich resource for them.

Barack Obama is actually a better libertarian than Trump. He spent years teaching at the University of Chicago, where the idea of regulatory capture was developed. That had an impact: when he was President, he demanded (following a principle laid down by Ronald Reagan!) that any new regulations survive rigorous cost-benefit analysis. That immunizes regulations from capture, and makes sure that regulators take account of just what worries Trump, the cost to businesses. The overall net value -- benefits minus costs -- of Obama's regulations was upward of $100 billion.

Trump, on the other hand, has replaced cost-benefit analysis with cost analysis. Benefits are ignored. This isn't even business-friendly. The Deepwater Horizon oil spill destroyed hundreds of well-functioning businesses. On the other hand, the businesses that were crushed were small and had nothing like BP's political connections.

There's room for reasonable disagreement with Obama's regulations. The calculation of both costs and benefits inevitably involves some guesswork. The cumulative effect of regulation can hamper businesses. The big difference between Trump and the standard conservatives' critique of Obama is that Trump's executive order holds, as a matter of principle, that benefits don't matter. Consumer fraud, tainted food, pollution, unsafe airplanes and trains, epidemic disease all have to be put up with, if stopping them would increase the costs of regulation.

Trump's new "regulatory reforms" show a persistent pattern. One targets a rule that requires retirement advisers to put clients' interests ahead of their own. Conflicts of interest in retirement advice, for example steering clients into products with higher fees and lower returns, costs American families an estimated $17 billion a year. You can understand why some parts of the financial industry hated the rule. That $17 billion was going into someone's pocket, and that someone finds libertarian rhetoric right handy.

The Libertarian Party, which got more than 4 million votes in the last presidential election, is enthusiastic about the order. It shouldn't be. The order is a deep betrayal of libertarianism, which holds that people should do what they want as long as they don't hurt anyone else.

Freeing businesses to hurt people is not libertarian. The libertarians -- at least, the ones who don't see through Trump -- are being played. If the crippling of the state allows economic behemoths to do whatever they like to others, then what libertarianism licenses, in the garb of liberty, is the creation of a new aristocracy, entitled to hurt the commoners. This is just a different kind of mooching and looting.

It is a new road to serfdom. It reinforces the prejudices of those on the left who repudiate capitalism. The libertarians who embrace it, thinking that they are thereby promoting freedom, are useful idiots, like the idealistic leftists of the 1930s whose hatred of poverty and racism led them to embrace Stalin. John Galt is a sap.

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Trump's 'libertarianism' endangers the public - CNN

Weaknesses (of libertarianism)

1. According to the libertarian, we experience our own freedom when we make choices. But in our dreams, we have the feeling that we are making choices even though we know that dreams are the product of the physiological and psychological causes that produce them. Hence, we can feel as though we are free even though causes are producing our behavior. 2. According to some thinkers, the scientific view of the world is based on the conviction that events follow fixed laws and that there is a cause for everything being the way that it is. If this statement is a correct account of science, does libertarianism then fl y in the face of modern science? If so, because nothing can compete with modern science in unveiling the nature of reality, don't these facts negate libertarianism? 3. According to libertarianism, every free act is based on a volition or an act of the will. But in a given case, why did a particular volition come about at the precise time that it did and why was it directed toward this or that outcome? (Why did you decide to listen to music at this precise time and not three minutes earlier or later? Why did you decide to listen to this particular CD and not the others that were available?) Isn't the libertarian forced to admit that either our volitions pop into our heads uncaused (in which case, they are unexplained, indeterministic events that happen to us) or they are the result of previous acts of the will? In the latter case, we are caught in an infinite regress. For example, your decision to listen to music was based on your decision to relax, which was based on your decision to take a break from studying, which was based on your decision to do x, and so on. Doesn't it seem that libertarianism leads to the notion that our free actions are based on an absurd and impossible infinite series of willings? 4. Isn't it the case that the better you get to know a person, the more his or her actions are predictable? Doesn't this finding indicate that the more knowledge we have of people's past, their personality, and the present circumstances that are affecting them, the more we understand the causes that are operating on them to produce their behavior? Aren't we convinced that a person's past experiences are a key to understanding why he or she became a saint or a serial killer? If so, doesn't this argument undermine libertarianism?

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3.7 Libertarianism Flashcards | Quizlet

Justin Amash cant seem to concentrate. His eyes keep drifting toward the TV behind me, mounted on the wall inside his congressional office. The 36-year-old representative from Michigan, who arrived in Washington six years ago as a self-described libertarian Republican, is rattling off a list of concerns about the newly inaugurated president, but he is distracted by C-SPANs programming: Mick Mulvaney, his close friend and colleague from South Carolinaand a similarly libertarian-minded Republicanis getting grilled during his confirmation hearing to become director of the Office of Management and Budget. Arizona Senator John McCain had just finished his inquisition and was particularly harsh, scolding Mulvaney for voting to slash military spending and withdraw American troops from Europe and Afghanistan. It was a tense exchange, and Amash savored every moment of it. The ascent of Mulvaney to such a powerful position in the federal government, libertarians believe, proves that their ideology has invaded and influenced the Republican mainstream in a manner unimaginable a decade ago.

There is, however, a complicating factor: Mulvaneys new boss is President Donald Trump.

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In campaigning for the presidency, Trump frequently sang from the same hymnal as libertarian primary rival Senator Rand Paul, warning against regime change and nation-building abroad, decrying the allied invasions of Iraq and Libya (never mind that Trump initially supported both), and promising to disengage from a self-immolating Middle East while re-evaluating American involvement in NATO. The election of an ideologically unmoored reality-TV star was startling to many libertarians, but at least it suggested some progress in their struggle with the GOPs interventionist wing. The silver lining is that Trump proved you can win the Republican nomination, and the presidency, by criticizing neoconservative foreign policy, says David Boaz, executive vice president of the libertarian Cato Institute.

I think the McCain-Graham wing of the party is withering, Amash tells me in his office, referring to South Carolinas hawkish senator. It was dominant 10 or 15 years ago on foreign policy matters and surveillance and other things. But today, its a rather weak force compared to a decade ago in D.C. And its almost nonexistent at home.

And yet, Trump also pledged to oversee a massive military buildup. He threatened to bomb the shit out of the Islamic State; suggested killing the families of terrorists; expressed an interest in seizing Iraqs sovereign oil; advocated the return of torture; and, in his inaugural address, declared he would eradicate Islamist terrorism from the face of the Earth. When I mention all this, Amash bursts out laughing. Not exactly a libertarian philosophy, I say. No, he shakes his head. Its not.

There are areas, certainly, in which Trumpism and libertarianism will peacefully co-exist; school choice, as evidenced by Trumps selection of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, is one example. Deregulation is another. But by and large, they cannot be reconciled. Where libertarians champion the flow of people and capital across international borders, Trump aims to slow, or even stop, both. Where libertarians advocate drug legalization and criminal justice reform, Trump and his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, seek a return to law-and-order policies. Where libertarians push to protect the First and Fourth Amendments, Trump pushes back with threats of banning Muslims and expanding the surveillance state. And where Mulvaney has dedicated his career to the argument that dramatic fiscal measures are needed to prevent the United States from going bankrupt, Trump campaigned unambiguously on accumulating debt, increasing spending and not laying a finger on the entitlement programs that make up an ever-growing share of the federal budget.

THE LIBERTARIAN STANDARD-BEARERS: Rep. Justin Amash and Sen. Rand Paul outside the Capitol in 2015. | Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call

Sooner or later, something has to give. Mick knows the numbers. And hes going to get to, at some point, a soul-testing moment, Mark Sanford, his fellow South Carolina representative and a self-identified, lifelong libertarian, tells me. Do I go with, you know, what Donald is saying? Or do I go with what I know to be mathematic reality?

This disconnect captures the sense of uncertainty and conflict that libertarianswhether they are Republicans, Democrats or adherents of the eponymous third partyfeel in the age of Trump. After generations of being relegated to the periphery of American politics, they are seeing some of their most precious ideals accepted and advocated for at the highest levels of government. But in many policy areas, there has never been a president who poses a greater threat to what they hold dearone who is poised, potentially, to reorient the GOP electorate toward a strong, active, centralized and protectionist federal government. The Trump presidency, then, is shaping up to be a defining moment for the libertarian movement.

But it wont come down to intraparty disputes over marijuana, or sentencing reform, or government data collection. Rather, the viability of libertarianismfor the next four or eight years, and potentially much longerwill be determined to an overwhelming extent by the relative stability of international affairs and the level of security Americans feel as a result.

Not long ago, libertarians were having their long-awaited moment, with Rand Paulsupposedly the candidate who could rebrand their once-fringe ideology for a new generation of Americansgracing magazine covers and converting Republicans to a philosophy of laissez-faire at home and restraint abroad. But the reason he isnt president today, his allies say, owes equally to the rise of Trump and that of another disruptive phenomenon.

Two people were Senator Pauls undoing in the presidential race, Chip Englander, his campaign manager, tells me. Donald Trump and Jihadi John.

DEFINING MOMENT: At a 2007 primary debate, Ron Paul argued U.S. interventionism led to 9/11. | Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Libertarians call it the Giuliani moment. It was May 15, 2007, and the former New York mayor stood across from Ron Paul on a debate stage in Columbia, South Carolina. They had nothing in commonpersonalities and ideologies aside, Rudy Giuliani was comfortably leading the GOP presidential field, while Paul was polling in the low single digitsbut they would soon produce an inflection point in the partys modern history, one that triggered a decade of unprecedented progress for libertarians.

As a panel of Fox News moderators mocked his opposition to the Iraq War, Paul argued that American intervention in the Middle East was a major contributing factor to the September 11 attacks. Have you ever read the reasons they attacked us? he asked. They attack us because weve been over there. Giuliani, whose candidacy arose from his heroic handling of 9/11, pounced, calling it an extraordinary statement and asking Paul to withdraw it. The crowd roared with approval, but Paul didnt budge. I believe very sincerely that the CIA is correct when they teach and talk about blowback, he responded.

That statement, better suited to an Ivy League faculty lounge than a Republican debate stage, was the spark that started everything, says A.J. Spiker, the former Iowa GOP chairman who backed Ron Paul and later his son Rand for president. Before long, there was talk of a Ron Paul Revolution, which somehow wasnt an overstatement: As he climbed in the polls and gained name recognition, Paul began raising eye-popping sums of money online with the help of liberty movement groups that had begun forming across the country, with much of their grass-roots energy concentrated on college campuses.

There was, however, an unintended consequence: Pauls popularity served to cement libertarianisms reputation as an exotic strand of internecine opposition rather than a reliable, cooperative piece of the GOP coalition. Even though he emphasized other issues in his campaignmost memorably, auditing the Federal Reserveit was Pauls harsh critique of President George W. Bushs interventionism that defined his candidacy in 2008 and again in 2012, as well as his sons political ambitions, in the eyes of the party elite.

He alienated a lot of Republicans with a very isolationist foreign policy message, says Bob Barr, the former Georgia congressman who abandoned the GOP and became the Libertarian Partys presidential nominee in 2008. Barr, listening to Paul that year, recalls thinking, If libertarians continue to exist on ideological purity in that regard ... it will condemn them to not expanding their influence in the party.

The Republican establishment was banking on exactly that. Having watched with alarm as Pauls 2012 campaign attracted significantly more support than its 2008 iteration, the partys elder statesmen were eager to undermine the movements long-term viability. When I spoke with Karl Rove a month after Election Day 2012, he predicted libertarianism would soon regress to pre-Paul irrelevance. I dont think the antiwar sentiment is durable, Rove told me. The Republican Party is not going to find itself in five or 10 years committed to neo-isolationism.

In the year that followed, Roves prediction looked anything but prescient. In July 2013, Amash sponsored an amendment to restrict the National Security Agencys bulk data collection program; it fell just 12 votes shy of passage in the House, despite fierce opposition from President Barack Obama and the congressional leadership of both parties. That amendment was inspired by blockbuster revelations a month earlier, made by intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, that the governments domestic surveillance practices were illegal. That followed a watershed moment in March 2013, when Rand Paul, then a freshman senator from Kentucky and inheritor of his fathers messianic following, had completed a nearly 13-hour filibuster in opposition to the nomination of John Brennan as Obamas CIA directorand more broadly, to the administrations refusal to rule out drone strikes on American citizens. This momentum was validated by Republican leader Mitch McConnell, a mascot of the Washington establishment, hiring Jesse Benton, the Paul family consigliere, to manage his own 2014 Senate reelection.

With another White House campaign on the horizon, the dreams of a movement rested on the younger Pauls shoulders. Everyone recognized that the disheveled, curmudgeonly 70-something Ron could win hearts and minds but never the presidency. Randmore polished, more nuanced and nearly 30 years youngerwas the libertarians chosen one. (Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Partys 2016 nominee, was never taken as seriously.) Ron had won 21 percent of the vote in Iowa and 23 percent in New Hampshire in the 2012 primary; Rand, in the eyes of his bullish base, had nowhere to go but up.

Sure enough, by July 2014, he sat atop the GOP presidential field in the RealClearPolitics average of national surveys; that same month, NBC News released polls showing him leading in New Hampshire and tied for first place in Iowa. As he prepared to launch his campaign in early 2015, Paul basked in hisand the libertarian movementsascendance, which crescendoed with an August 2014 New York Times Magazine feature, with the headline, Has the Libertarian Moment Finally Arrived? It was met with hosannas inside Pauls political operation.

Twelve days after the Times piece was published, an organization known as the Islamic State, or ISISwhich had announced the formation of a caliphate to govern Muslims worldwide, but globally was not yet a household namereleased a video depicting the beheading of American journalist James Foley. Exactly two weeks later, ISIS published a similar video showing another American journalist, Steven Sotloff, also being beheaded. With the spectacular barbarism piercing Western consciousnessamid wall-to-wall coverage, the executioner was dubbed Jihadi John by media outletsObama delivered a prime-time address on September 10 and pledged to destroy ISIS.

The next month, Time magazine featured Paul on its cover as The Most Interesting Man in Politics. The timing could not have been worse: Having intended to capture Pauls rise, the story marked the onset of his decline. He had already dropped to 12 percent in the RCP national poll average, from 14 percent in July; by Christmas, he was at 9 percent. The crash continued throughout 2015, interrupted by only a fleeting bounce after his April 7 campaign launch. In late July, he was below 6 percent, and by October, one year after Times cover, he hovered at just over 2 percent.

We did a survey in Iowa that fall, and in the survey, Republican caucus-goers were very much opposed to the policies that Senator Paul was waving the flag for: less spying, less drone strikes, less foreign intervention, closing of foreign bases, recalls Vincent Harris, the campaigns chief digital strategist.

Embarrassingly, Pauls numbers plunged so low that Fox Business excluded him from its main debate in January 2016, less than a month before Iowas first-in-the-nation caucuses. (Paul boycotted the undercard debate.) A few weeks later, after winning just 4.5 percent of the vote in Iowa, Paul quit the race.

THE NEW BOSS: Rand Paul with Donald Trump after the president signed a bill undoing a coal rule. | Rex Features/AP

It was a dramatic, if unsurprising, fall from grace. Ron Paul had masterfully exploited the frustrations of a war-weary Republican Party, and though his son was hyped as an objectively superior messenger, everyone understood the foundation of his appeal could crumble with a sudden shift in public opinion. We as libertarians know that at a time of fear, our brand doesnt sell very well, says Jack Hunter, the editor of Rare Politics and co-author of Rand Pauls 2011 book, The Tea Party Goes to Washington. So when we saw beheadings on the news ... we knew it would be problematic.

Polling suggested as much. In November 2013when Rand Paul was riding high43 percent of Republicans said U.S. anti-terrorism policies were going too far in restricting civil liberties, while 41 percent said they werent going far enough to protect the homeland, according to Pew Research. In September 2014during the immediate aftermath of the Foley and Sotloff execution videosthose figures were 24 percent and 64 percent, respectively. The shift in sentiment would only accelerate. A separate poll in September 2014, commissioned by CBS News, found that 39 percent of Americans favored sending U.S. ground troops to Iraq and Syria to fight ISIS, with 55 percent opposed. Five months later, in February 2015, the percentages inverted: 57 percent of Americans wanted U.S. ground troops deployed to battle ISIS, and 37 percent were opposed. (Among Republican voters, it was 72 percent and 27 percent, respectively.)

To remain competitive, Paulwhose candidacy was already suffering from other manifest shortcomings, lack of financial support and personal prickliness chief among themtried to thread an impossible needle: projecting greater toughness to reassure mainstream Republicans, without sounding so muscular as to alienate his base. We accomplished neither, Tony Fabrizio, the Paul campaigns pollster, says. With all respect to Rand I think he wanted to prove he and his father were different. And that created natural tensions. By trying to please both sides, he wound up pleasing neither.

Drew Ivers, who chaired Ron Pauls 2008 and 2012 campaigns in Iowa, shocked his fellow libertarian activists by declining to endorse Rands 2016 bid. I remember him telling me once by phone that he was going to submit a proposal to go to war with ISIS, Ivers tells me. Go to war? Wait a minute. What do you mean, go to war?

I busted his chops about it, Matt Welch, editor at large of Reason, recalls of Pauls proposed declaration of war. And he said to me, Look, I cant win a Republican primary under these conditions if I dont support some kind of confrontation with ISIS.

Paul declined an interview request for this article. His spokesman, Sergio Gor, said in an email, Our focus is on Obamacare repeal and replacement exclusively right now. More accurately, the senators friends and allies say, he simply has no interest in re-litigating his presidential run or participating in a post-mortem of it.

Ironically, there was one Republican in 2016 who outdid Ron Pauls rants against Bushs interventionismand he won the partys nomination. Look at Trump. He went to South Carolina, a military state, and said the Iraq War was a disaster, said 9/11 happened on Bushs watch, shared these borderline conspiracy theories, Welch says. He was stridently antiwar and anti-interventionand he stomped the competition.

Trump had beaten Paul at what was supposed to be his own game.

***

Its the wild card of global affairsand the terrible hand it dealt Pauls 2016 campaignthat distracts from libertarianisms successful infiltration of the domestic policymaking complex. Education, which Republicans nationalized under Bush, is increasingly being handed back to the states. A coalition of liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans has begun challenging the status quo on issues ranging from police militarization to asset forfeiture to sentencing reform. Meanwhile, two of the libertarian communitys other longtime goals, marijuana decriminalization and marriage equality, have been realized in irreversible ways.

And yet, all of this momentum might be rendered insignificant, even irrelevant, if the new Republican president ends up going to war. In fighting for the heart and soul and future of the GOP, libertarians understand their chief strategic priority is holding Trump to his non-interventionist rhetoric. This explains why Paul was willing to support Sessions nomination, despite the new attorney generals sharply divergent views on issues such as drug prosecution and asset forfeiture: Paul, it appears, would rather spend what political capital he has opposing anyone who might inflame Trumps foreign policy. (Do not let Elliott Abrams anywhere near the State Department, the Kentucky senator wrote the week of Sessions confirmation vote, responding to reports that Trump could pick the well-known neoconservative to be deputy to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.)

So far, Paul and his ilk are taking some comfort in the company Trump keeps. The president passed on hiring Abrams. And the principals of Trumps national security teamTillerson, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, Homeland Security Secretary John Kellyare regarded as pragmatic realists who will restrain, rather than encourage, the presidents more aggressive instincts.

TRUMPs LIBERTARIAN: Mick Mulvaney is sworn in as director of the Office of Management and Budget. | Ron Sachs/picture-alliance/DPA/AP Images

That said, Trump, who loves to be called a man of action, feels a mandate to escalate various conflicts with Americas enemies. Exit polls on Election Day found that 24 percent of all voters thought the fight against ISIS was going very badly, and Trump won 83 percent of that group. Some in the Pentagon reportedly want to send ground forces into Syria. Trump has already proved unhesitant to deploy American troopsspecial operators at minimumto foreign soil. That he decided to greenlight a tremendously dangerous operation in Yemen almost immediately after taking office shows an appetite for boldness and a willingness to accept collateral damage; a Navy SEAL, as well as several civilians, were killed in the operation.

Its not what President Rand Paul would have done. And yet libertarians, who feared they ultimately would choose between an interventionist Democrat in Hillary Clinton and a neoconservative Republican nominee, still believe, perhaps naively, that this was their next best outcome. Marco Rubio, the hawkish Republican senator from Florida, would have been much worse for us, Amash tells me. I think Rubio would have ushered in a long decline of American foreign policy. Trump is just a shock to the system. Rubio is a younger, more charming John McCain.

In any case, the grass-roots foundation laid by Ron and Rand Paul seems likely to outlast Trump. Young Americans for Liberty, the group that grew out of Rons 2008 campaign, went from 96 chapters nationwide in 2009 to 602 chapters in May 2015, the month after Rands campaign launched. Today, there are 804 chapters. This growth, combined with continuous, non-election-year activismand polling showing that younger voters, both left- and right-leaning, are increasingly libertarian in their views of governmentwards off pessimistic assertions that their moment might have just come and gone.

Look at every single candidate who ran, and look at their infrastructures, Cliff Maloney, president of Young Americans for Liberty, tells me. Do you see people out still knocking doors for Marco Rubio or Jeb Bush or Ben Carson? No. This is going to be a slog. And were going to fight through.

The more important fight will take place on Capitol Hill. With the vast majority of Republicans already capitulating to Trump, libertarian-minded lawmakers are positioned as the most vocal bloc of intraparty opposition. Ron Paul was a lonely voice of dissent in Bushs GOP, and benefited politically when the party faithful eventually came around to some of his arguments. Today, theres a much larger contingent in the Congress oriented toward libertarianismAmash, Sanford, Thomas Massie of Kentucky and others in the House; Rand Paul and Mike Lee in the Senateand it has already shown a willingness to tangle with Trump where others in the party have passed. The aggressiveness with which libertarians check Trumps overreach, at home and abroad, will correlate with the movements credibility, and popularity, if Republican voters turn against the presidents policies.

But what if they dont? Knowing the Libertarian Party just nominated its most experienced presidential ticket ever and won just 3 percent nationally, the grave fear among libertarians is that Trumps actions will represent the very worst of his campaign promisesintervening militarily, adding to the debt, abandoning trade, restricting civil libertiesand that the GOP electorate will love him for it.

If the Republican Party becomes thoroughly Trumpist, Boaz says, theres not much room for libertarians.

Tim Alberta is national political reporter at Politico Magazine.

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The End of the Libertarian Dream? - POLITICO Magazine