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Vote Libertarian!
Here’s a thought: If Trump is nominated, I know a lot of you plan to just stay home.
Personally, I hope Ted Cruz pulls it off or Trump gets ousted at a contested convention. But if that doesn’t happen …
Instead of staying home, why not vote Libertarian? In an election where both candidates are big government populists, the best message you could send is a strong surge of support for the Libertarian candidate. Gary Johnson isn’t going to win, so you don’t have to worry about him legalizing dope or anything, but getting him into the debates would inject a very useful ideological counterpoint to the statism of the other two candidates.
The Libertarians have an organization that has them currently on the ballot in 34 states. At this point, they might wind up being the only viable third party. It would sure be nice to remind the people that they have choices other than big government and even bigger government.
Related article at Reason magazine.
Published in Elections, General
OK, I’ll bite- show me where true libertarians in the public debate have focused more on other issues. Ron Paul was all about foreign policy isolationism. Reason (go look at their last article polling 2012 staff voting plans) tends to talk more about drugs than anything else. Gay marriage proponents most often demean the civil rights movement by equating their position demanding privileges equal to those of straight parents with the end of slavery. I do admit that Ron Bailey is more into things like therapeutic cloning rather than sex, drugs, and foreign policy; that is not a positive development.
I see no benefit in debating who is a “true” libertarian. The philosophy of libertarianism (not the Libertarian political party or the conduct of libertines) consists of supporting limited government with defined functions that are justifiable because they secure the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It stands for personal responsibility and individual choice over centrally planned societies. And frankly, it really has no position at all on foreign policy, because libertarianism is about ordering society from within and not about relations with other societies. Some libertarians are isolationists. Some, like me, favor America taking an aggressive role in the world.
Conservatives mostly understand and follow these principles, on most issues. Drugs and sex (especially gay marriage) happen to be the two main issues where conservatives depart from these principles, and want government to regulate individual behavior. Therefore, that is where you see libertarian-conservative clashes. But if you think that we libertarians care only about sex and drugs, you’re wrong. Very, very wrong.
Okay, I’ll bite. Here are the titles from the last several episodes of the Cato Daily Podcast. They’ll give you a flavor of what libertarians in the public debate focus on.
A New Supreme Court Nominee
Affirmative Action and Academic Mismatch
Regarding the Common Law
Escaping the War on Drugs
The Loco-Foco Movement and Lessons for Today
Fact and Fiction on the US Border
Civil Asset Forfeiture is Wrong
Trump’s Consistently Inconsistent Foreign Police
Poor Would Pay the Price for Trump’s Protectionism
Resolving Puerto Rico’s Fiscal Failures
Narconomics: How to Run a Drug Cartel
Learning from Making a Murderer
The Inevitability of Federal-Land-Use Fights
Emissions and Clean Power Plan
Guantanamo Bay, Talking Points, and Endless War
Foreign Policy: #FeelingtheBern vs. #MakeAmericaGreatAhgain
Weighing the Record of Antonin Scalia
Apple Will Fight Federal Conscription to Defeat Encryption
and so on.
With all due respect, if you don’t see libertarians talking about other issues, its observational selection on your part. You’re seeing what you want to see.
The libertarian vs. Libertarian distinction is useful in general discussions of political philosophy, but the context of this particular thread is the proposal in the OP to vote for the Libertarian Party candidate in November. Before voting for their candidate I’d want to know more about the party platform, for instance are they still as staunchly isolationist as they were in the past?
How do you define isolationist? When I was in high school, isolationism was a three-legged stool.
Paul Harvey and Patrick Buchanan were my idea of isolationists. Libertarians largely go along with #3 and are opposed to #1 and #2. Many people today use #3 exclusively to define isolationism. If you are asking if libertarians still want to avoid getting involved in other countries revolutions, the answer is usually Yes.
Good clarification, yes I meant #3. I was responding to this comment:
While I’m sure there are individual libertarians such as Larry who “favor America taking an aggressive role in the world,” in my experience they are very much in the minority. Libertarians often cite the Founder’s views on entangling alliances and the inherent threat to liberty in large standing armies — and someone has to pay for that army, and that would get in the way of their proposal to abolish the income tax and replace it with nothing.
Plus for libertarians who base their whole philosophy on the Non-Aggression Principle, the very idea of “taking an aggressive role” is pretty much a non-starter.
Ugg… I hate it when people try to define libertarianism no narrowly. There’s nothing about libertarianism that says it can or should only work within one’s own borders. Saying this is just a way to get around the fact that they are not a libertarian with regards to foreign policy. Instead of saying that, libertarianism is redefined to pretend the logic isn’t applicable more generally.
Libertarianism is about the proper role of government with respect to its own citizens. Its own citizens; not foreign dictatorships. I certainly don’t know of any libertarian principle that says that our government must treat such dictatorships with the same respect it owes to its own citizens. If anything, the liberty-loving libertarian should want to help the victims of such dictatorships if it is possible and if the costs are not too great. We may differ on what it means for the costs to be “too great” but I do not see anything in principle that says we should apply the creed of “live and let live” to evil dictators.
I think you have lost sight of what the non-aggression principle means. The non-aggression principle is about defining when government may step in and use force to limit individual freedom. It is not some rule about government not acting “aggressively.” Obviously, by the non-aggression principle, our government is utterly justified in using force against another country that is aggressing against and oppressing people. Just as the government would be justified in using force to stop you from assaulting someone or stealing from them.
It’s that the costs war are obvious and large, and history shows the outcomes are extreamly unpredictable. You shouldn’t oust an evil dictator unless you can be reasonably certain what replaces them will be better enough to compensate for the huge cost of innocent lives, let alone the lives of solders and cost of running the war.
Not to mention how you morally justify confiscating someone’s wealth for such an uncertain endeavor.
These are valid points, Mike, and I do not think we should go to war lightly. But these are utilitarian arguments. They do not derive from the philosophy of libertarianism.
Also, your points apply when we declare war on someone else. It is a little different when the someone else declares war on you. I think all libertarians (as opposed to anarcho-capitalists) agree that national defense is a valid function of government.
I believe libertarianism is derived from correct moral philosophy. In a way, I define moral philosophy applied to the State as libertarianism. Basically, whatever the correct answer is, is what I’d like to call libertarianism.
While you are correct that I was using a form of utilitarian argument, I have to stipulate that I’m not a strict utilitarian. Utilitarianism and moral truth often go hand in hand, but they are not always the same thing. In saying that, you made me realize I misspoke. War not only has to pass the utilitarian test, you must be confident that the long term benefits far outweigh the costs before war is worth risking. If you only end up making things incrementally better, all things considered, with the war than without, I don’t think that justifies all the killing and mayhem.
From the Mises Institute wiki:
I take that to mean it’s an ethical principle that’s not just limited to government, it also explains why (for instance) theft and assault are wrong. It covers all actions both private and governmental.
I agree, and the definition above makes clear that violent self-defense is legitimate. What I have heard Libertarian Party members argue is that this means the Defense Department should (as the name implies) focus entirely on defending the homeland against armed invasion, and leave the rest of the world to fend for itself.
Mike and Joe,
I think we all agree that libertarianism is a moral philosophy. It is about what is right and good and decent. It holds (among other things) that the state may not use force unless force is necessary to stop (or sometimes to prevent) aggression by one person against another.
By that standard, I believe that America would be morally justified in killing every member of ISIS. They’re monsters, and killing them would be right and good and decent. There may be utilitarian and practical reasons not to do it, but immorality is not among those reasons. As far as I’m concerned, libertarianism says “If you have a chance to kill the monsters, and you choose to do it, go for it.”
Yes, if we could press a button and all ISIS members heads explode, it would practically be morally required to do it. I just wish war was that cut and dry.
Well, Gary Johnson:
a) Supports federal funding for Planned Parenthood.
b) Thinks business owners have no right to refuse service for religious reasons.
c) Supports mandatory labelling of GMO in food products.
d) Supports subsidies for wind power.
e) Etc
It’s a political party, not a cult. Of course there are going to be differences of opinion between candidates.
Source.
That list may be the least libertarian list I’ve ever seen from a supposed libertarian.
Well he was a Republican as governor, right? He just decided to run as a Libertarian after he couldn’t even get into the debates as a Republican in 2012.
Plus he’s CEO of Cannabis Sativa Inc. so maybe he figures Libertarian events are a good place to network and find potential customers…
Being a libertarian does not make you an isolationist, a peacenik, or an advocate of open borders. In fact, I would say that the trends in the libertarian community towards these ideas are rather new.
Barry Goldwater was a libertarian, and he favored a very strong American footprint in the cold war – so much so that he was effectively painted as a warmonger by the other side. Ronald Reagan had libertarian sympathies, but he was as hawkish on foreign policy as you were likely to find.
I came by my libertarianist tendencies through the writings of people like Robert Heinlein and Ayn Rand – neither of which would ever be described as a peacenik or an advocate of open borders. And I believe I can make a very strong libertarian argument for a strong defence, active engagement in the world, and strong borders.
Here is a thought experiment for libertarians who believe that it’s always wrong to initiate violence. Many of you have probably seen this before.
Your next door neighbor starts screaming that he’s going to kill the neighbor across the street as soon as he can finish building a rocket to launch at him. For days you hear banging and sawing sounds, then one day a rocket flies out from his house and destroys the neighbor across the road.
Now, the same person says to you, “You’re next!” Then he goes away and you start hearing the same banging and sawing sounds. Question: What is your moral responsibility? Do you have to let him launch his rocket at you before you can retaliate? If so, you’re just ceding your life and that of your family to someone else. Or do you have the right to initiate violence to stop him? Remember, this is a person who has never done a thing to you other than issue threats. So where do you draw the moral line?
If you answered, “Heck yes, I’d attack the guy. I have all the evidence I need to know that I’m a dead person if I wait until I’ve been attacked,” then congratulations – you’re a libertarian who accepts the need to be pro-active in the face of a threat to the nation.
Now, where we draw the line is always going to be open to debate and interpretation. How much evidence do we need that we will be attacked? How much collateral damage is acceptable to save our own people? Will an attack make the situation worse over time? Can we even do it?
These are all valid questions, but they are the same question non-libertarians should be asking. But there is nothing about libertarianism that should preclude us from taking the same actions that non-libertarians would take in the same circumstance.
As for borders… No less a libertarian than Milton Friedman admitted that open borders are completely incompatible with a welfare state. I agree with him.
Being a libertarian does not prevent you from signing mutual defence pacts or otherwise forming alliances. In fact, the libertarian belief in the sanctity of contracts means that a libertarian government should be even more willing to engage troops in the defence of an ally.
Ayn Rand believed that countries run by dictators had no moral right to sovereignty, and could be attacked or not subject only to the interests of the nation doing the attacking and the effect on the people being attacked. So she might have disagreed with the Iraq war on practical grounds if she thought it was counter-productive, but she wouldn’t have objected on moral grounds.
This is not to defend Ayn Rand’s entire belief system, but to simply point out that there’s just as much a healthy range of opinions on foreign policy and border control among libertarians as there is anywhere else.