Category Archives: Libertarianism

Cathy Young

Cathy Young is a regular contributor to Reason magazine and Real Clear Politics.

The people who gathered for the 10th annual conference of the International Society of Students for Liberty in Washington last weekend were a motley crowd that included anti-war activists with neon-colored hair and law students in three-piece suits. In the exhibit hall, a display honoring Ronald Reagan was only a few feet away from a LGBT group with a rainbow version of the Dont Tread on Me Gadsen flag and from the table of a group called Muslims for Liberty.

Despite the festive atmosphere, this years speakers at the libertarian event were mostly in a dark mood worse than last year, when many warned about a rising authoritarian tide. While libertarians tend to be at the Republican end of the two-party spectrum, Donald Trump Republicanism is about as un-libertarian as you get. There was raucous applause when Katherine Mangu-Ward, editor of Reason magazine (where I am a contributing editor), declared at the opening-night session, Free movement of people and goods across the border is good. Another Reason editor, Nick Gillespie, contrasted the libertarian spirit of cosmopolitanism and tolerance with Trumps demonization of undesirables and with the lefts anti-pluralist drive to silence politically incorrect speech.

Tom Palmer, vice president for international programs at the nonprofit Atlas Network, also spoke of illiberal trends on both the left and the right in his talk on global anti-libertarianism. But while Palmer named left-wing identity politics and thought-policing as part of the problem, his focus was the threat from the right: in America, Trumpism, with its cult of the leader who embodies the peoples will and its paranoia about the foreign; in Europe, populist, nationalist, and sometimes outright fascist movements, many financed by Russias authoritarian regime.

Social psychologist and New York University professor Jonathan Haidt, whose talk on the rise of the safety culture in colleges was probably the biggest hit of the conference, warned that the end of liberal democracy was a real threat. Haidt, whose 2012 book, The Righteous Mind, examined the moral foundations of political beliefs, painted a dire picture of polarization in America and of the drift toward a leftist echo chamber on college campuses. Social justice, Haidt said, is replacing pursuit of knowledge as the central mission of universities, and there is less and less tolerance for dissent. The result is a generation sympathetic to censorship of offensive speech.

Haidt argued that diversity of thought is desperately needed on campus, and that libertarians may be the key. Conservatives are seen as poison in the academy, while libertarians are merely viewed with wariness and confusion, and are thus in a far better position to get unorthodox opinions heard. Do something about the mess that were descending into, he implored the audience, mostly of libertarian students.

In the age of Trumpian populism versus political correctness run amok, libertarianism offers promise beyond the campus, too if it doesnt descend into laissez-faire utopianism at home and isolationism abroad. Gillespie noted that if libertarianism is defined as a preference for less government involvement in both economic and moral matters, at least one poll finds that libertarian leaners are now the single largest group of voters, at 27 percent (while 26 percent are conservative, 23 percent liberal, and 15 percent populist).

While parts of the conference had a decidedly pessimistic tone, there was optimism as well and discussion of libertarian victories from deregulation to gay civil rights. Libertarianism may not have all the answers; but right now, it may be our best hope for rebuilding a culture of freedom and tolerance.

Cathy Young is a regular contributor to Reason magazine and Real Clear Politics.

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Can libertarians mediate the divide? - Newsday

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

SELFISH LIBERTARIANS AND SOCIALIST CONSERVATIVES?: THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE LIBERTARIAN-CONSERVATIVE DEBATE

By Nathan W. Schlueter and Nikolai G. Wenzel

Stanford University Press, $24.95, 232 pages

While libertarians and conservatives have some similar outlooks on politics, economics and culture, many profound differences have kept them apart. Attempts to bridge this gap, including Frank S. Meyers theory of fusionism (combining elements of libertarianism and traditional conservatism), have largely been unsuccessful.

Nevertheless, these two right-leaning ideological groups have more than enough in common to discuss ideas in an intelligent, thoughtful manner. Nathan Schlueter and Nikolai Wenzels Selfish Libertarians and Socialist Conservatives? serves as an important backdrop in ensuring the libertarian-conservative debate never turns into a libertarian-conservative divide.

Mr. Wenzel, the libertarian, is a research fellow at the University of Paris Law Schools Center for Law & Economics. Mr. Schlueter, the conservative, is a professor of philosophy and religion at Hillsdale College. In their view, a civil, informed, and energetic argument between these two political opposites offers a more interesting, illuminating, and engaging format for readers than an impartial survey of the issues.

Are they right? For those who identify as conservatives, libertarians or one of the worlds few remaining fusionists (like me), their information and analysis is nothing new. But the authors ability to create succinct philosophical arguments for intellectuals and the masses is both admirable and educational.

Each author contributes four chapters. They provide explanations of what their political ideologies entail, whats wrong with each others ideological position, relevant case studies, and final conclusions.

Mr. Schlueter posits that conservatism is not a specific philosophy of government but a generic term that can have a wide range of specific meanings, depending on context. Hence, to create a unified conservatism from its three primary strains (libertarianism, traditional conservatism and neoconservatism), these principles are necessary for human flourishing and that, although they are in some tension with one another, the three principles are interdependent.

Moreover, the author argues, the principles of the American founding that conservatives defend are a form of classical liberalism. This, in turn, has led modern conservatives to defend traditional concepts like natural law and the common good, along with newer concepts like limited government and property rights.

Mr. Wenzel sees libertarianism as a political philosophy about the protection of individual rights. Adherents to this ideology consider liberty to be the highest political good, and believe that government should be viewed as a protector of rights, to provide an umbrella within which individuals can peacefully go about their business, interact, and thrive. Libertarianism also relies heavily on markets and civil society to supplement that which individuals cannot complete on their own and that which government cannot deliver without violating individual rights.

Naturally, the two authors respectfully feel that each others political philosophy is, as they put it, wrong.

Mr. Wenzel believes Mr. Schlueter makes one of the clearest expositions of conservatism I have seen, but that much in conservatism is problematic. For instance, he perceives natural law liberalism, which his co-author defends as a component of unified conservatism, rests on the claim that there exists an objective moral order but that it has also been used to justify ugly things like slavery, absolute monarchy, or Sharia. At the same time, he wonders if this contradictory hodgepodge of different conservatisms is arbitrary in its claims because it seeks justification for the public imposition of private preferences.

Mr. Schlueter admires Mr. Wenzels able defense of libertarianism, but believes [i]n the most fundamental sense, the difference between conservatism and libertarianism turns on the degree to which politics can be understood in terms of economics. By and large, conservatives dont believe that economics defines political life and human beings can only fully flourish through their own self-constituting choices. Also of note, when it comes to public choice theory a popular topic in libertarian circles he feels the major flaw is that its either descriptive, or is it prescriptive. The former is undermined by empirical evidence, and the latter is undermined by political life altogether.

Their case studies and conclusions dont lead to any surprising revelations: Mr. Schlueter supports conservatism, and Mr. Wenzel supports libertarianism. But their discussions about economics, immigration, education and marriage are intriguing. The differences between the two ideologies are subtle in some ways, and more stark in others.

Neither Mr. Schlueter nor Mr. Wenzel believe his political ideology is the model of perfection. There are flaws in libertarianism and conservatism, as there are in all philosophical models. At the same time, they obviously both feel that their respective ideology is better for our society, warts and all.

In this civil debate of ideas, thats the best closing argument we could ever hope for.

Michael Taube is a contributor to The Washington Times.

Original post:
The libertarians versus the conservatives - Washington Times

"Free movement of people and goods across borders are incredibly important things. And Trump is not into either of those things"Katherine Mangu-Ward.

At the 10th annual International Students for Liberty Conference, Reason magazine Editor in Chief Katherine Mangu-Ward, former editor and longtime head of the Institute for Humane Studies Marty Zupan, and I discussed the history and future of Reason and libertarianism in President Donald Trump's America.

We each talked about the signature issues of the decades we were at the magazine's helm (the 1980s for Zupan, the '00s for me, and currently for Mangu-Ward) and whether libertarianism is waxing or waning.

This podcast was recorded live on Friday, February 17. Now finishing up its first decade, SFL reported that about 1,700 guests from all over the world attended this year's conference.

Produced by Mark McDaniel.

Subscribe to the Reason podcast at iTunes or click below to listen right now!

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Reason and Libertarianism in the Trump Era [Reason Podcast] - Reason (blog)

Breitbart.comWhat do you do when you're Matt Schlapp, the guy heading up the American Conservative Union, which runs the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (emphasis added), and it turns our your biggest draw to this year's event defends pedophilia? Well, first you disinvite him and then you bluster your way through an excrutiatingly painful few minutes on Morning Joe before trying to pawn Milo Yiannopoulos off as a libertarian:

"He doesn't call himself conservative. He calls himself more of a libertarian.... Some libertarians would deny that he's a libertarian."

On that much, we agree. Most libertarians I know wouldn't claim Milo as one of our own. You know who else says Milo isn't a libertarian? Well, Milo himself, it turns out:

"Libertarians are children. Libertarians are people who have given up looking for an answer. This whole 'everybody do what they want' is code for 'leave me to do what I want.' It's selfish and childish. It's an admission that you have given up trying to work out what a good society would look like, how the world should be ordered and instead just retreated back into selfishness. That's why they're so obsessed with weed, Bitcoin, and hacking."

Read more about that here and here.

Milo's critique of libertarianism is not so strong, is it? As it happens, the policy work being done by folks at Reason Foundation (the nonprofit that publishes this website) is revolutionizing K-12 education, public-sector pensions, transportation infrastructure, and more. Same goes for ideological compadres at the Cato Institute and elsewhere. To the extent that there's a principled opposition to really dumb military interventions, runaway spending, and conservative-approved idiocies such as a border wall and trade protectionism, well, it's not conservatives pushing it. And none of that is to deny one bit that drug policy, criminal justice reform, crypto-currencies, and forced transparency of government overreach are in any way about "selfishness."

What does it say about the modern conservative movement that CPAC was so desperate to get Milo on its stage in the first place? Nothing good. He's outrageous (not really "dangerous" in any meaningful sense of the word) and he is fully capable of bringing out the worst elements of the idiot-progressive left. But does he have anything to say when he's actually allowed to speak? Derp, not really. Schlapp can say that ACU wants to teach the controversy and all that, but the fact of the matter is that as an intellectual force and a serious place for discussion about policy, CPAC has been more watered-down than the beer at Delta House for a very long time. It's a good sign that someone with the last name Paul won five of the last seven presidential straw polls, but conservatives and Republicans have almost completely squandered their power and influence throughout the 21st century. When George W. Bush and the GOP ran the federal government, they busted the budget in a way that would embarrass drunken sailors the world over. When Obama was in power, they did virtually nothing to demand actual budgets or restrain executive power, and they're still pretending that they are really...just...about...ready...to...reveal an alternative health-insurance plan. They nominated and elected Donald Trump for president and it's surprising that CPAC invited/disinvited a flyweight trash talker to their big shindig? It's almost as if they didn't kick out the gays a couple of years ago or that Newt Gingrich doesn't show up every year and talk about the need for flag-burning amendments and English-only laws.

It's never easy for a movement founded on the cry of standing athwart history, yelling Stop to move forward, but this is simply ridiculous.

Here's Matt Schlapp on Morning Joe:

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CPAC Organizer Tries To Pawn Off Milo Yiannopoulos as "Libertarian" - Reason (blog)

Being Libertarian

Identity Politics and Libertarianism Being Libertarian Libertarianism has no place for identity politics; each person, despite his race, class, gender, or sexual orientation is seen to be an individual and is judged as such. This is why it can be difficult to find two libertarians who agree with one ...

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Identity Politics and Libertarianism - Being Libertarian

Jeff Malet Photography/NewscomOn Saturday, alt-right leader Richard Spencer crashed the 10th annual International Students for Liberty Conference at a hotel in Washington, D.C. After quarreling with conference attendees, he left the premises.

Spencer, a self-declared white nationalist who believes the U.S. is losing its white identity, had no business attending a gathering of libertarian students, and conference organizers had every right to eject him. Indeed, their decision to do so was a valid exercise of libertarian principles in action.

I attended the conference, along with several other Reason staffers. The Reason Foundation is a co-sponsor of ISFLC, and hosted several events during the conference. One of those events, a panel discussion about sex trafficking featuring Reason Associate Editor Elizabeth Nolan Brown and Director of Criminal Justice Reform Lauren Krisai, unfolded at roughly the same time as Spencer's unsolicited visit. I was in the audience at that event, and did not cross paths with Spencer.

But it's clear from video footage that Spencer set himself up in the bar of the hotelthe Marriott Wardman in Woodley Parkand attempted to host an unscheduled and unwanted conversation about his despicable views. To be absolutely clear: Spencer was not welcome at the hotel and had not been invited to participate in ISFLC.

"We did not invite Mr. Spencer," said SFL CEO Wolf von Laer in a statement. "We reject his hateful message and we wholeheartedly oppose his obsolete ideology."

Eventually, Jeffrey Tuckeran influential libertarian thinkerconfronted Spencer and made clear to the alt-right provocateur that he "did not belong" at ISFLC. Some shouting ensued, and hotel staff intervened. Shortly thereafter, Spencer left.

It's not completely clear whether Spencer departed of his own accord: he seems to think he was forced to leave, while others say he asked security to see him out safely, even though he was in no danger. But it hardly matters: the Marriott Wardman hotel is private property, and should enjoy the absolute right to evict irksome and unwelcome guests from its premises.

Spencer has attempted to wring as much publicity from the incident as possiblehe tweeted about it no fewer than 40 times, by my count. In his mind, libertarians are "lolbertarians" who need to "accept the reality of race" and get serious about "white replacement." To the extent that his only goal in life is to garner more attention for his fringe worldview, I suppose the stunt was a successhere I am writing about it. Congrats to you, guy who thinks "the United States is a European country."

In any case, the incident should make abundantly clear that the alt-right's racism is incompatible with the principles of a free society. Libertarianism is an individualist philosophy that considers all people deserving of equal rights. In contrast, Spencer is a tribalist and collectivist whose personal commitment to identity politics vastly exceeds the left's.

Spencer is entitled to broadcast his vile opinions, and to make equal use of public resources. He should not be attacked on the street, or anywhere else. But no private actor is required to give him a platformotherwise, property rights would cease to matter.

ISFLC, an organization that works tirelessly to support the cause of liberty all over the worldnot just for white American college studentshandled the matter correctly, in my view.

Disclaimer: I am a friend of Students for Liberty, and won the organization's 2016 Alumni of the Year Award.

See the article here:
Alt-Right Leader Richard Spencer Crashed a Student Libertarian Conference and Was Shunned - Reason (blog)

Two years ago on Presidents Day (which is legally Washingtons Birthday) I talked about my book The Libertarian Mind at the National Constitution Center (video). As part of that appearance I wrote about Americas libertarian heritage in the Philadelphia Inquirer:

Where better than Philadelphia on Presidents Day to talk about liberty and reviving the American tradition of freedom and limited government.

Thomas Jefferson said that when he wrote the Declaration of Independence in June of 1776, he had no book or pamphlet at hand but simply set down an expression of the American mind. With its foundation on the equal and inalienable rights of all people, including life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, the Declaration also reflects the libertarian mind.

Indeed, the principles of the Declaration are so closely associated with libertarianism that the Chinese edition of my previous book,Libertarianism: A Primer, features a cover photograph of the famous room in Independence Hall, complete with Windsor chairs and green tablecloths.

Libertarianism is the philosophy of freedom. It has, in different form throughout history, inspired people who fought for freedom, dignity, and individual rights the early advocates of religious tolerance, the opponents of absolute monarchy, the American revolutionaries, the abolitionists, antiwar advocates and anti-imperialists, opponents of National Socialism and communism.

I believe that the simple, timeless principles of the American Revolution individual liberty, limited government, and free markets are even more powerful and more important in the world of instant communication, global markets, and unprecedented access to information, a world that Jefferson or Madison could not have imagined. Libertarianism is the essential framework for a future of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

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Remembering America's Heritage of Freedom - Cato Institute (blog)

LISTEN TO TLRS LATEST PODCAST:

by Micah J. Fleck

Just moments ago, at the latest International Students for Liberty Conference, White Nationalist and Alt-Right leader Richard Spencer had a heated confrontation with FEE head Jeffrey Tucker after the former had set up an impromptu booth in a dining hall at the hotel venue.

For close to an hour prior, Spencer sat and spoke with passerby as they questioned his being at the libertarian event and his societal views at large. Spencer at various points supported the idea of using state force to protect the rightful citizens of his ideal utopia from outsiders, as well as spoke very cynically and distrustfully of multiculturalism something he apparently thinks degrades culture and is therefore wary of.

Various attendees to the conference publicly shared or posted about the happening on Facebook and other social media, showing their unease.

Eventually, Tucker entered the scene and immediately berated Spencer. Fascists are not welcome at an anti-fascist conference! He shouted. This was met with cheers from those standing around the scene. Libertarianism is about human dignity, liberty for all, and not about fascism! Soon, Spencer and Tucker were shouting at each other in a heated back-and-forth, and as more and more people crowded around, security was ultimately called. Spencer was then booted out of the venue.

The initial hour-long discussion, as well as the confrontation with Tucker, which were both captured via nearby bystanders streaming to Facebook. can be seen below.

The round table: (https://www.facebook.com/thelmaij/videos/374888589556965/)

Richard Spencer at ISFLC

Posted by Thelma IJ on Saturday, February 18, 2017

The fight: (https://www.facebook.com/John.Lindley1988/videos/10104575049675719/)

At the Richard Spencer

Posted by John Lindley on Saturday, February 18, 2017

alt-rightfascismfeeISFLCjeffrey tuckerlibertarianismLibertynaziRichard SpencerWhite Nationalism

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BREAKING: Richard Spencer Kicked Out of ISFLC '17 After Jeffrey Tucker Confrontation - The Libertarian Republic

Libertarianism in the United States is a movement promoting individual liberty and minimized government.[1][2] Although the word libertarian continues to be widely used to refer to socialists internationally, its meaning in the United States has deviated from its political origins.[3] The Libertarian Party asserts the following to be core beliefs of libertarianism:

Libertarians support maximum liberty in both personal and economic matters. They advocate a much smaller government; one that is limited to protecting individuals from coercion and violence. Libertarians tend to embrace individual responsibility, oppose government bureaucracy and taxes, promote private charity, tolerate diverse lifestyles, support the free market, and defend civil liberties.[4][5]

Through 20 polls on this topic spanning 13 years, Gallup found that voters who are libertarian on the political spectrum ranged from 1723% of the US electorate.[6] This includes members of the Republican Party (especially Libertarian Republicans), Democratic Party, Libertarian Party, and Independents.

Libertarianism, like many other concepts, predates the official coinage of that word. In the US the general movement started, philosophically, with the founding of the country itself, which was based on classical liberal ideas, which came to be known in the 20th century US as libertarianism. The ideas of John Locke, fundamental to those of the Founding Fathers, are considered a starting point for libertarian thought. Minarchists like Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine, influenced by Locke, advocated positions that are not only compatible with modern American libertarianism, but are also considered foundations for that movement.

In the 19th century, key libertarian thinkers, individualist anarchists and minarchists, were based in the US, most notably Lysander Spooner and Benjamin Tucker. These political thinkers argued that government should be kept to a minimum, and that it is only legitimate to the extent that people voluntarily support it, as in Spooner's No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority. American writers Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson advocated for individualism and even anarchism throughout that century, leaving a significant imprint on libertarianism worldwide.

Moving into the 20th century, important American writers and scholars like H. L. Mencken and Bertrand Russell carried on the intellectual libertarian tradition. They were subsequently bolstered by a new movement who actually used the word, most noteworthy among these being Albert Jay Nock, author of Our Enemy, the State, one of the first people in the world to self-identify as "libertarian", and European immigrant Ayn Rand, strongly influenced by Nock, who helped popularize the term, as well as Science Fiction author Robert Anson Heinlein, whose writing carried libertarian underpinnings, and who identified himself by the term as well.

In 1955, writer Dean Russell, a classic liberal himself, proposed a solution:

Here is a suggestion: Let those of us who love liberty trade-mark and reserve for our own use the good and honorable word "libertarian".[7]

Subsequently, a growing number of Americans with classical liberal beliefs in the United States began to describe themselves as "libertarian."[8] Academics as well as proponents of the free market perspectives note that free-market libertarianism has spread beyond the US since the 1970s via think tanks and political parties[9][10] and that libertarianism is increasingly viewed worldwide as a free market position.[11][12] However, libertarian socialist intellectuals Noam Chomsky, Colin Ward, and others argue that the term "libertarianism" is considered a synonym for social anarchism by the international community and that the United States is unique in widely associating it with free market ideology.[13][14][15]

Arizona United States Senator Barry Goldwater's libertarian-oriented challenge to authority had a major impact on the libertarian movement,[16] through his book The Conscience of a Conservative and his run for president in 1964.[17] Goldwater's speech writer, Karl Hess, became a leading libertarian writer and activist.[18]

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 and organizations such as Students for a Democratic Society. They began founding their own publications, like Murray Rothbard's The Libertarian Forum[19][20] and organizations like the Radical Libertarian Alliance.[21]

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.[22] 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."[23]

In 1971, David Nolan and a few friends formed the Libertarian Party.[24] Attracting former Democrats, Republicans and independents, it has run a presidential candidate every election year since 1972. Over the years, dozens of libertarian political parties have been formed worldwide. Educational organizations like the Center for Libertarian Studies and the Cato Institute were formed in the 1970s, and others have been created since then.[25]

Philosophical libertarianism gained a significant measure of recognition in academia with the publication of Harvard University professor Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia in 1974. The book won a National Book Award in 1975.[26] According to libertarian essayist Roy Childs, "Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia single-handedly established the legitimacy of libertarianism as a political theory in the world of academia."[27]

Texas congressman Ron Paul's 2008 and 2012 campaigns for the Republican Party presidential nomination were largely libertarian. Paul was affiliated with the libertarian-leaning Republican Liberty Caucus and founded the Campaign for Liberty, a libertarian-leaning membership and lobbying organization. His son, US Senator Rand Paul continues the tradition, albeit more "moderately".

The 2016 Libertarian National Convention which saw Gary Johnson and Bill Weld nominated as the 2016 presidential ticket for the Libertarian Party resulted in the most successful result for a third-party presidential candidacy since 1996, and the best in the Libertarian Party's history by vote number. Johnson received 3% of the popular vote, amounting to more than 4.3 million votes. Johnson has expressed a desire to win at least 5% of the vote so that the Libertarian Party candidates could get equal ballot access and federal funding, thus subsequently ending the two-party system.[28][29][30]

As was true historically, though, there are far more libertarians in the US than those who belong to the party touting that name. In the United States, libertarians may emphasize economic and constitutional rather than religious and personal policies, or personal and international rather than economic policies,[31] such as the Tea Party movement, founded in 2009, which has become a major outlet for Libertarian Republican ideas[32][33] especially rigorous adherence to the US Constitution, lower taxes and an opposition to a growing role for the federal government in health care. However polls show that many people who identify as Tea Party members do not hold traditional libertarian views on most social issues, and tend to poll similarly to socially conservative Republicans.[34][35][36] Eventually during the 2016 presidential election many Tea Party members abandoned more libertarian leaning views in favor of Donald Trump and his right wing populism .[37]

Additionally, the Tea Party was considered to be a key force in Republicans reclaiming control of the US House of Representatives in 2010.[38]

Polls (circa 2006) find that the views and voting habits of between 10 and 20 percent (and increasing) of voting age Americans may be classified as "fiscally conservative and socially liberal, or libertarian."[39][40] This is based on pollsters and researchers defining libertarian views as

Through 20 polls on this topic spanning 13 years, Gallup found that voters who are libertarian on the political spectrum ranged from 1723% of the US electorate.[6] Most of these vote for Republican and Democratic (not Libertarian) party candidates. This posits that the common single-axis paradigm of dividing people's political leanings into "conservative", "liberal" and "confused" is not valid.[41] Libertarians make up a larger portion of the US electorate than the much-discussed "soccer moms" and "NASCAR dads", yet this is not widely recognized. One reason for this is that most pollsters, political analysts, and political pundits believe in the paradigm of the single liberal-conservative axis.[39]

Well-known libertarian organizations include the Center for Libertarian Studies, the Cato Institute, the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE), the Reason Foundation, the International Society for Individual Liberty (ISIL) and the Ludwig von Mises Institute. The Libertarian Party of the United States is the world's first such party.

The Free State Project, an activist movement formed in 2001, is working to bring 20,000 libertarians to the state of New Hampshire to influence state policy. As of May 2015, the project website shows that 16,683 people have pledged to move once 20,000 are signed on, and 1,746 participants have already moved to New Hampshire or were already residing there when New Hampshire was chosen as the destination for the Free State Project in 2003.[42] Less successful similar projects include the Free West Alliance and Free State Wyoming.

The Cato Institute is a libertarian think tank headquartered in Washington, DC It was founded as the Charles Koch Foundation in 1974 by Ed Crane, Murray Rothbard, and Charles Koch,[43] chairman of the board and chief executive officer of the conglomerate Koch Industries.[nb 1] In July 1976, the name was changed to the Cato Institute.[43][44] Cato was established to have a focus on public advocacy, media exposure and societal influence.[45] According to the 2014 Global Go To Think Tank Index Report (Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program, University of Pennsylvania), Cato is number 16 in the "Top Think Tanks Worldwide" and number 8 in the "Top Think Tanks in the United States".[46] Cato also topped the 2014 list of the budget-adjusted ranking of international development think tanks.[47]

The Center for Libertarian Studies (CLS) was a libertarian and anarcho-capitalist oriented educational organization founded in 1976 by Murray Rothbard and Burton Blumert, which grew out of the Libertarian Scholars Conferences. It published the Journal of Libertarian Studies from 1977 to 2000 (now published by the Ludwig von Mises Institute), a newsletter (In Pursuit of Liberty), several monographs, and sponsors conferences, seminars, and symposia. Originally headquartered in New York, it later moved to Burlingame, California. Until 2007, it supported LewRockwell.com, web publication of CLS vice president Lew Rockwell. It had also previously supported Antiwar.com.

Read more:
Libertarianism in the United States - Wikipedia

President Donald Trump has signed an executive order claiming that in the future the total number of federal regulations will shrink, via the elimination of two regulations for every new one. He has nominated an FCC chief and a department of education chief who advocate choice-enhancing changes in the way their agencies run. He says he's a hardcore Second Amendment supporter (although he also supports taking away the right to bear arms based on mere suspicion). He's offered up a Supreme Court justice willing to seriously question government regulatory and police powers. He at least claims he wants to see spending cuts and tax cuts.

Ron Sachs/dpa/picture-alliance/Newscom

Should libertarianswho are supposed to advocate those goals as part of a larger vision of reducing government power over our property and choicesadmire and support Trump? Even a little?

Libertarianism is more than just advocating a random checklist of disconnected actions that in some respect limit government's reach or expense. (See Steven Horwitz, an economist in the Hayekian tradition, for valuable thoughts on why judging Trump via a checklist of discrete changes in specific government behavior doesn't work in libertarian terms.)

Libertarianism is a unified skein of beliefs about how the human social order should be shaped. What binds the philosophy is the understanding (or belief, for the skeptical) that using violent force against the peaceful both makes us, overall, poorer and is, at any rate, almost always or always wrong.

For most libertarians, the practical and moral arguments against aggressive force on the innocent support each other; the sense of what's morally right for most libertarians is rooted in a generally rule-based sense of what furthers human flourishing overall. To most libertarians, that is, freedom is both a valuable part of human flourishing, and a necessary part of most other aspects of it.

That we should be free to do what we want with ourselves, and with our justly owned property, is the core of libertarianism. (A swirling, complicated debate surrounds questions about what behavior is truly about ourselves alone, and how, why, and under what circumstances property is justly owned and what that implies about how we can use it. Such questions can't be resolved in a blog post.)

Given the nature of human beings' productive powers, the best way to ensure the collective "we" gets richer faster is to ensure the individual freedom to exchange with others as we choose, and by doing so build long and complex chains of production and exchange that benefit us all (or even just some/many of us), irrespective of accidents like national boundaries.

Free trade and free migration are, then, the core of the true classical liberal (libertarian) vision as it developed in America in the 20th century: if you don't understand and embrace them, you don't understand liberty, and you are not trying to further it.

The Trump administration may not in every specific policy area do the wrong thing in libertarian terms. But whatever it gets right is more an epiphenomenon of certain alliances within the Republican Party power structure or the business interests he's surrounding himself with. Trump and his administration can't be trusted to have any principled and reliable approach to shrinking government or widening liberty, since Trumpism at its core is an enemy of libertarianism.

What appears to be the core of Trumpism, based on his earliest priorities and his closest advisers? The blatant, energetic, eager violation of the right to freely choose what to do with one's justly owned property and energy, and fierce denial of the principle that through such freedom we create immense and unprecedented wealth for the human race. (Again, most libertarians don't just clutch "freedom" as a value disconnected from all other values, although they privilege it in most cases. They also believe freedom is conducive to the greatest human wealth and happiness, overall. It's a philosophy of social betterment as well as a philosophy of individual rights.)

Not yet a month into his administration, Trumpism is most surely centered on a poorly considered nationalism. His administration, with each swift and relentless bit of dumb bullying over our businesses' right to choose what to do with capital, our right to buy from abroad unmolested, other humans' ability to move peacefully into our country, acts on the principle that it's best if we don't trade with people outside our borders, that the Leader gets to decide what private businesses do with their capital and resources, and that we should beggar ourselves for the sour joys of keeping fewer people not born here from coming here (in a time when that alleged "problem" barely exists).

Trump is openly a type of illibertarian leader we haven't seen in a while. The "open" part is important. Those wanting to downplay the threat of Trump can, justly, point to all sorts of crummy and illiberal policies that past administrations and imagined alternate administrations did or might also pursue. In the context of the current political debate, that scarcely matters. Trump is the president we have, and his policies are what we have to face, and fight. It may fit any given person's amour propre to not ever risk seeming to overstate or overguess exactly how bad Trump is or might be, but it doesn't necessarily help the cause of promoting liberty.

It does matter whether a president encases even protectionist or trade-managing or restrictionist policies with a stated appreciation for lower tariffs and more open migration, which at least on the margins likely keeps bad things from happening. By paying that tribute of statist vice to libertarian virtue, at least doesn't deliberately imbue Americans with the belief that the country will be stronger by making goods and labor more expensive.

A president who openly and firmly rejects the principle of, and fails to grasp the benefits of, economic liberty is indeed worse than one who merely casually violates those principles. (And economic liberty is the core of human liberty, in a world where we must produce and trade to live).

Trump and his administration don't merely violate the core principles of individual liberty carelessly or as a byproduct of other goals; he is against economic liberty, deeply and sincerely. More than anything else, Trump is a loud and proud enemy of libertarianism.

The continued presence and dominance of Steve Bannon in his inner circle indicates that Trumpian nationalism, though the administration doesn't spell this out explicitly, yearns toward ethno-nationalism. Bannon believes American "civic society" necessarily excludes too many immigrants from Asia (even though people of that descent make up over 5 percent of America.)

While he's been careful since taking his powerful position in the White House not to say much of what he thinks about anything, Bannon's stated belief that the news organization he ran, Breitbart, was "a platform for the alt-right" and his own site's definition of that often deliberately ill-defined term, it's hard to avoid the conclusion that his nationalism has an ethnic component.

The administration's choice, apparently at the driving of Bannon and his ally Steven Miller, to launch their administration with an expensive and absurd "border wall" and for a spate of pointless (except in their disruptive cruelty) blows at movement of people from a small set of mostly-Muslim countries (that are not the Muslim countries from which any serious terror threat to the U.S. has ever actually arisen) show that the "public safety" rationale doesn't hold up. They are either idiots, or the restriction has another purpose.

What the limited travel restrictions so vital to the Trump administration have demonstrated is that they are eager to build from the most speculative and phantom of fears an expensive and disruptive apparatus of control, one that Miller considers a test run to prove the president's unrestricted power over certain matters, even in the face of the courts. And the fears they decide to focus on are fears of the foreign "other," even if that foreign other is a legal resident of the United States or wants nothing more than to work for or with existing Americans.

If you are judging how to view Trump's administration, and make reasonable guesses about its future actions based on demonstrated core commitments, those demonstrated preferences, goals, and methods are seriously bad, and more serious than (so far) semantic stunts about cutting regulation or taxes.

Trump v. Mises

Free trade and migration is not just one of a random pile of "freedom-increasing policies" that one can grab from and hope the whole number ends up large enough. It's the heart. Trump's disdain for them shows he can't be trusted to stand for our core freedoms, for any reason other than pure political contingency, or perhaps as part of his unlovely desire to humiliate the enemies and opponents his administration is obsessed with. (Yes, someone out to stick it to the modern liberals may occasionally posit a freedom-enhancing policy. This doesn't make "sticking it to the liberals" itself inherently a libertarian attitude.)

Is it just a sign of pants-wetting Trump Derangement Syndrome to call Trump the quintessential anti-libertarian? The modern American libertarian tradition is not unitary or invented by one personI wrote an over-700-page book about it, called Radicals for Capitalism.

That said, given his influence on nearly every thinker or institution that comprised modern American libertarianism from World War II to the dawn of the 21st century, Ludwig Von Mises, the Austrian emigre economist and social philosopher, can be relied on to reveal what is core about modern American libertarianism.

Mises, driven from his beloved Austria by the Nazis and firsthand witness to the death of liberal principles via strongman ethno-national fascism, thought and wrote diligently and brilliantly about every aspect of social philosophy. From the start of his career to the end he identified free trade and free migration in a regime of legal respect for individual private property as the core of a free society. Those, again, are the principles Trump has nothing but contempt for.

Mises' personal and intellectual experience taught him vividly why the nationalism at the heart of Trumpism is the worst enemy of classical liberalism, the humane and liberating and wealth-generating tradition Mises sustained and furthered.

Mises' liberalism, and thus modern libertarianism, was built not solely in reaction to Marxist communism but equally against the wealth- and life-destroying evils of autocratic ethno-nationalist autarkic statism.

As Mises wrote in his first magisterial work of social and political philosophy, Socialism (1922), almost as if he foresaw a Trump who would try to bamboozle a nation into thinking it could enrich "the people" as opposed to special interests via protectionism and exclusionary immigration policies, and wanted to warn the liberty-minded that would be not just one concession on a liberty checklist but the end of the benefits and glories of free markets (as well as a clear violation of any pretense that one is working for "the people" vs some privileged elite):

It becomes a cardinal point of the particularist policy...to keep newcomers out.

It has been the task of Liberalism to show who bear the costs of such a policy....

A system that protects the immediate interests of particular groups limits productivity in general and, in the end, injures everybodyeven those whom it began by favouring. How protection finally affects the individual, whether he gains or loses, compared with what he would have got under complete freedom of trade, depends on the degrees of protection to him and to others....

As soon as it is possible to forward private interests in this way and to obtain special privileges, a struggle for pre-eminence breaks out among those interested. Each tries to get the better of the other. Each tries to get more privileges so as to reap the greater private gain. The idea of perfectly equal protection for all is the fantasy of an ill-thought out theory.

For, if all particular interests were equally protected, nobody would reap any advantage: the only result would be that all would feel the disadvantage of the curtailment of productivity equally. Only the hope of obtaining for himself a degree of protection, which will benefit him as compared with the less protected, makes protection attractive to the individual. It is always demanded by those who have the power to acquire and preserve especial privileges for themselves.

In exposing the effects of protection, Liberalism broke the aggressive power of particular interests. It now became obvious that, at best, only a few could gain absolutely by protection and privileges and that the great majority must inevitably lose....

In order to rehabilitate protection, it was necessary to destroy Liberalism....Once Liberalism has been completely vanquished, however, and no longer menaces the protective system, there remains nothing to oppose the extension of particular privilege.

When it came to free immigration, Mises was so intellectually and emotionally attached to it that this generally quite pacific man thought that immigration barriers nearly rose to a legitimate excuse for the excluded to wage war.

His writing after seeing the horrors that ethno-national autarky brought to Europe in his 1944 book Omnipotent Government bookend his explanation of the vital, core importance of free trade and migration:

....imagine a world order in which liberalism is supreme....In this liberal world, or liberal part of the world, there is private property in the means of production. The working of the market is not hampered by government interference. There are no trade barriers; men can live and work where they want. Frontiers are drawn on the maps but they do not hinder the migrations of men and shipping of commodities. Natives do not enjoy rights that are denied to aliens. Governments and their servants restrict their activities to the protection of life, health, and property against fraudulent or violent aggression. They do not discriminate against foreigners. The courts are independent and effectively protect everybody against the encroachments of officialdom. Everyone is permitted to say, to write, and to print what he likes. Education is not subject to government interference. Governments are like night-watchmen whom the citizens have entrusted with the task of handling the police power. The men in office are regarded as mortal men, not as superhuman beings or as paternal authorities who have the right and duty to hold the people in tutelage. Governments do not have the power to dictate to the citizens what language they must use in their daily speech or in what language they must bring up and educate their children....

....In such a world the state is not a metaphysical entity but simply the producer of security and peace. It is the night-watchman....But it fulfills this task in a satisfactory way. The citizen's sleep is not disturbed, bombs do not destroy his home, and if somebody knocks at his door late at night it is certainly neither the Gestapo nor the O.G.P.U.

The reality in which we have to live differs very much from this perfect world of ideal liberalism. But this is due only to the fact that men have rejected liberalism for etatism.

It's not merely that of a grabbag list of "libertarian positions" Trump is picking a few and neglecting the others and thus libertarians have reason to be hopeful; it's not merely that, oh, free trade and immigration were among Mises' many positions, and his reasons for positing them as core to liberalism were whimsical.

They were, as he explained and knew in his bones from the horrible history of Austria and Germany he lived through, the core of liberalism (libertarianism). If one doesn't understand that, as Trump and his people do not, then their instincts and intelligence can't be trusted for anything when it comes to liberty.

Why Some Libertarians Might Not Seem Particularly Alarmed by Trump

Conflicting concerns and perspective have dictated many libertarians' reactions to Trump. (In the social networking age, it is much easier, for better or worse, to understand a very wide range of perspectives not mediated through existing approved brands.) Libertarians tend to already see so much of what the American state has done, under control of both parties and a variety of politicians, as hideous evils that our sense of loud public outrage at what the government is up to generally has had to be kept in some form of polite abeyance, lest we become the sort of constant wild ranters that tend to be filtered out of any public discussion.

This sociological reality, perhaps, makes libertarians less likely to be the loudest and most panicked about Trump. Trump is, as we've heard from many in the past few weeks, inheriting powers and a system that have long existed and long been abused, from travel restrictions to deportations. I have seen an understandable wave from those of libertarian bent of "wait, you are telling me the government is scary now?" reaction to the more, let's say, acutely panicked complaints about Trump.

This is a time of high rhetorical tension in American political discourse. One with a contrarian streak (and libertarians of necessity have contrarian streaks) might be inclined to discount the apocalyptic sense that Trump represents a unique and freshly unacceptable blow to American liberty. Predicting an unusually dire event occurring has social and intellectual costs; even someone highly alarmed by Trump might be reluctant to predict severe and unprecedented domestic repression.

But Trump's very rise to power was unprecedented in many respects, and his core and proud illiberalism is fresh in modern America. (Again, governmental vice paying some tribute to the virtues of liberty is important.) The presence and growing power of Steve Bannon, a man near as we can tell genuinely and enthusiastically dedicated to ethno-nationalism, is what makes it hard to believe that Trump doesn't want to take his economic autarky and restrictionism as far as he can get away with.

And from the perspective of the first few weeks of Trump, any remnants of dedication to free markets and freedom in these realms has seemingly already been flushed out of the body of the GOP in order to make room for an injection of pure malignant Trumpism, so we can't count on his Party or its old rhetorical commitments to hold him back.

Trumpian nationalism and restrictionism is a philosophy that has already caused and will continue to cause misery, both direct and obvious in the lives of people whose movement is restricted and indirect and harder to see in the choking of the wealth-generating properties of international trade.

The president has chosen to make his leading adviser, one who seems to have outsized influence on the administration, a man whose sole political concern is both dumb and evil, and whose approach to that goal is, according to something historian Ronald Radosh reports Bannon said to him (though Bannon later said he did not recall saying this to Radosh, or meeting him at all), "Leninist," that is, dedicated to the revolutionary scorched-earth destruction of all existing institutions.

I know many libertarians who smile at that. Why, even early libertarian movement linchpin Murray Rothbard at times thought in Leninist strategic terms! Don't libertarians hate the system and want to see it fall?

I, and most libertarians, hate lots about the "system" and would like to see lots about it fall. But Bannon's hatred for modern institutions has almost no overlap with libertarians'. He doesn't want more freedom. He wants ruthless state power supporting his particular vision of a favored class.

He doesn't hate modern institutions for being tyrannical, for illegitimately bossing around or destroying people's lives. Bannon sees libertarians as his enemies, and he's right to do so. He hates the current establishment because he feels it insufficiently promotes war to the death against radical Islam. He hates it for insufficiently pushing an autarkistic ethno-nationalism that will make poorer and more miserable not only Americans but the world.

Trump's Temperament (And Why it Matters)

There is another reason to find Trump especially alarming as president. It touches on what's always undergirded why I was attracted to libertarianism on a sub-intellectual level when I was young, an inclination that made the explicit philosophy ring true. It is another reason I find it wrongheaded from a libertarian perspective to be a bloodless Vulcan tallyer of pluses and minuses for specific policies Trump has spouted or appointments he's made.

Many libertarians don't dislike the state out of some disconnected dislike for "government" qua government, but because they dislike cruelty and the needless causing of pain and misery to other human beings, and that underlies most of what government does, and appears to be Trump's favorite parts of government.

Yes, government is an institution whose very function is control backed by violence and funded via extortion and is thus inherently cruel. But not everything government does is inherently wrong, considered outside the funding mechanism. Some things government does, were they not done by government, are perfectly proper things to do. Trump and his people seem most focused on the things that aren't, like punishing and restricting the harmless and taking away our rights to trade outside barriers the leader thinks are appropriate.

From immigration to eminent domain to the drug war to asset forfeiture Trump seems to be particularly malign, particularly contemptuous of the shopkeeper virtues of trade and the American virtues of live and let live liberty, with a sort of Viking streak that appeals to many of his fans who love seeing an "alpha male leader" take the reins and punish their perceived enemies.

Trump tries very hard to delegitimize any countervailing structures, such as a free press or the courts, that could possibly make it harder for him to do what he wants. He is for making police stronger and will lie to make you agree with that. His attorney general Jeff Sessions is a pure exemplar of governing as a source to punish.

Even given any particular set of policies, even given whatever you know or think about past or potential other future presidents, these are a terrible, terrible set of attributes from a libertarian perspective for the president. Those long concerned about the fragility of our debt and monetary structures, or potential reactions to a new terror attack, should indeed I think be uniquely frightened by this caudillist sitting in the White House.

Some in the libertarian thoughtworld believe passionately that Trump will prove to be less likely to cause destruction and death abroad via war than the average American president. I simply don't think there is a good reason to believe that will prove true, though it will be wonderful if it does.

Trump's first week priorities indicate that what motivates him the most is ignorant malign cruelty, autocratic acts that disrupt other peaceful human beings' plans and lives and business, acts that don't need to be done and that cause immense harm.

Such acts are embraced by Trump and his supporters through some combination of economic ignorance (the trade autarky and desire to force companies to do with their property as the leader wishes) and mindless unsupported fearmongering (the border wall, the immigrant and refugee foolishness).

One may temperamentally enjoy seeing modern liberals cry because they presided over a growing state, or are contemptuous of other people's peaceful chosen values, or are smug, or you don't like the way they look, or whatever, but the ol' drinking of modern liberal tears is a large price to pay for someone who likely doesn't care if he wrecks international trade to show he's tough.

Through the bad luck of elections, Trump runs a pretty much one-party state. He is advised by a proud ethno-nationalist. He likes to govern by executive ukase. None of these clear and dominant qualities of Trump and his administration are at all promising for a libertarian.

The best one could say about Trump for libertarians playing the long game in American political culture is it could be a teaching moment about the dangers of centralized executive power, of centralizing our culture's institutions of humane care in a machine whose lever of control is won and lost as easily as is control of the federal government.

Previous administrations of course violated the principles of free trade and cosmopolitanism. But they did not gleefully and malignly and publicly reject them and expect the nation to come along. This devotee of Ludwig Von Mises is suitably alarmed. Instructing other libertarians on specific strategies isn't really my bag. But not being publicly obstructionist regarding Donald Trump, who represents a special and revived threat to liberty from the populist right, well, I can't see how it will do libertarianism's future in the United States in the 21st century much good.

Anti-regulatory preening or not, libertariansthose dedicated to the entire fabric of liberty and social peace and prospertyshould consider it vital to defend the entire edifice of libertarianism, particularly in the face of a leader such as Trump who, no matter what else he does, admires authoritarian strength, hates allowing people or companies to make their own choices about what to do with their money and property, and has chosen, of everyone in the world he could have chosen, as his ideological consigliere a man like Bannon willing to tear down the fragile but vital benefits of modern international civilization in pursuit of his mad, ugly dream.

It might not end up as bad as it looks for libertarians, and those who paint the ugliest picture of the next four years may end up seeming overwrought. But from what has already happened with travel restrictions and trade restrictions and the overarching ideas and attitudes that infuse the Trump administration, it looks extraordinarily bad.

Read the original here:
Trump's Dangerous Anti-Libertarian Nationalism - Hit & Run ... - Reason (blog)