The blowup between Chris Christie and Rand Paul is highlighting differences between libertarians (with a small “l”) and Republicans (with a cap “R”). From the Washington Post:
In the 1992 election, for example, a Cato Institute analysis found that the 13 percent or so of voters who were libertarian-minded—those who told pollsters they wanted smaller government but tolerant social policies—split almost evenly among Republican incumbent George H.W. Bush, Democrat Bill Clinton and third-party candidate Ross Perot. …
When libertarian Clark Ruper was a University of Michigan student from 2004 to 2007, he recalled, “there were, like, five of us on campus, and we all knew each other.” Now vice president of a rapidly growing organization called Students for Liberty, Ruper says of the dust-up between Christie and Paul: “I think it’s fantastic. When guys like Chris Christie are attacking us, we must be doing something right.”
Ruper, for one, rejects Reagan’s depiction of conservatism and libertarianism as being one and the same. “We are not a branch of conservatism,” largely because of social issues like same-sex marriage and drug legalization, Rupar said. “Those are real deal-breakers where we can’t get along with conservatives. We find our allies there on the left.”
And this:
Libertarians still count relatively few elected officials as their own. Rand Paul comes the closest. Libertarians have cheered his stance on surveillance and his 13-hour filibuster in March to protest the Obama administration’s use of unmanned drones. That filibuster brought withering commentary from the conservative establishment. …
Yet even Paul draws some skepticism from libertarian purists. They are leery, for instance, of his recent overtures to the Christian right, a constituency he cannot afford to alienate if he hopes to win his party’s presidential nomination.
Too often, it’s pick your poison—Republican religious rightists or Democratic total statists. But I think it’s evident that libertarians gay and straight in the GOP know they are battling for the soul of their party, whereas LGBT activists in the Democratic fold often embrace the worst aspects of their party’s bigger-bigger-bigger government agenda.
More. Enjoy 23 Libertarian Problems.
24 Comments for “Libertarians Are Not Conservatives”
posted by Don on
I find absolutely zero evidence supporting the proposition that the Democrats are the bigger government party while Republicans want it smaller. Since Reagan’s time, they have only wanted the power to write checks to their pet projects instead of the left’s. If liberals argued that all spending for social programs should be a blank check, they would get nowhere. But Republicans make the same argument for the military and get a complete pass from their constituents. The reason libertarians are ascendant is because of this very fact. As long as conservatives were genuinely shrinking government and taxation, they were happy on the right. It’s been almost 30 years of blank checks before libertarians started to catch on that they’ve been lied to all this time. And why many true conservatives are beginning to split the party along spending lines.
For all the talk about liberals buying votes with taxpayer cash, it’s really wearing thin on the right. And the American people are starting to notice. I’m hopeful that the schism will create a new alignment with big government social conservatives who wish to legislate their religious teachings left out in the cold. But I’m thinking that might take another 30 years.
posted by Houndentenor on
And they never were. I’ve heard Republicans talk like libertarians when it suite their purposes, but Republicans are at least as “big government” as Democrats. They just want their big government to do different things. (And then let’s look at spending under Republicans vs. Democrats.) If you are a libertarian voting for Republicans because you want smaller government then you are a complete fool. Republicans don’t want smaller government and never have. It’s been a convenient argument to win over low information voters, but it just doesn’t line up with reality.
posted by a.v. on
From Forbes: Are Republicans Bigger Spenders Than Democrats?
The data reveals quite clearly that “No matter which party controls the White House, average federal spending is lower when Republicans control Congress.”
posted by Don on
it feels good to read that. but a critical eye can easily catch the obvious flaw: it’s like something happened all of the sudden in late 2008 or early 2009 where this guy went on a spending binge. he lost his mind and spent like crazy, jacking up spending by 10% out of nowhere.
well it wasn’t out of nowhere. food stamps and unemployment were enacted before Obama got elected to any office in his life. As the economy went into free fall, those expenses were locked in. So was TANF.
Did they vote to spend money in the stimulus package? yes, and he signed it in early 2009. but TARP was signed by Bush. And much of that money got spent after he was gone.
I can find plenty to criticize the president for, but its best to hit him for his real record, which that Forbes article disingenuously neglects to mention. It’s as unbiased as some tired trope from a liberal columnist about how much conservatives hate women. Propaganda to gin up anger based on half-truths at best.
posted by Houndentenor on
Yes, what happened in late 2008 and early 2009. Hmmm. It was so long ago. Oh yeah…our entire banking system came this close to imploding. Oh that.
posted by Tom Jefferson III on
1. Members of both major political parties have zero problem with ‘big government’. To suggest otherwise is just plain dishonest and not the sort of thing that should be peddled here.
2. Modern day conservatives tend to talk about how they will restore ‘limited government’ and ‘individuality’. However, once you get past the buzz words and flag weaving it is almost always really about (a) less government oversight for big business interests and (b) more attacks on ‘the other’ (immigrants, Muslims, gays, women who are not virgins, etc). This may be a bit different with conservative parties in Canada or the UK, but in the U.S. all of my gay/bi/straight conservative friends of mine who are pro-choice/pro-gay rights and do not have a knee jerk opposition to say, the minimum wage or ObamaCare are generally given the GOP boot.
3. Americans libertarians are not really part of the overall ‘conservative’ cannon, but they have only themselves to blame for being labeled as such. All too often libertarians will gladly eat up right-wing spin about how Republicans want ‘smaller government’, and ignore right-wing attacks on gay rights/women’s rights/civil liberties, as long as they are promised some sort of tax cut. The Libertarian Party is wacky, but at least they are consist in their whackiness. BTW, their is a club for libertarian minded Democrats and one for libertarian minded Republicans.
oo often, it’s pick your poison—Republican religious rightists or Democratic total statists. But I think it’s evident that libertarians gay and straight in the GOP know they are battling for the soul of their party, whereas LGBT activists in the Democratic fold often embrace the worst aspects of their party’s bigger-bigger-bigger government agenda. – See more at: https://igfculturewatch.com/#sthash.sXO9Z3YG.dpuf
posted by Tom Scharbach on
Libertarians still count relatively few elected officials as their own. Rand Paul comes the closest.
Paul’s not a neo-con, but he is a committed social conservative.
I’ll grant you that Paul’s positions are closer to the Libertarian platform than the positions of most Republican politicians, but he won’t lift a finger to move us toward “equal means equal”, and he might well set us back yet again.
Yet even Paul draws some skepticism from libertarian purists. They are leery, for instance, of his recent overtures to the Christian right, a constituency he cannot afford to alienate if he hopes to win his party’s presidential nomination.
I wonder if the “libertarian purists” who worry about Paul’s “recent overtures” are familiar with his statements over the last, say, five or so years. He’s not making “recent overtures” to the Christian right to hold that constituency in place. He is a conservative Presbyterian and believes what he says.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
Ruper, for one, rejects Reagan’s depiction of conservatism and libertarianism as being one and the same. “We are not a branch of conservatism,” largely because of social issues like same-sex marriage and drug legalization, Rupar said. “Those are real deal-breakers where we can’t get along with conservatives. We find our allies there on the left.”
If marriage equality is a “deal breaker”, then Rand Paul just got broke. I don’t understand why libertarian-leaning Republicans are going all mushy over Paul. He doesn’t seem to be much of a libertarian outside of foreign policy.
posted by Jorge on
The Republican party benefits when the libertarians function as the skeptics and conscience of the party. Libertarianism always can find merit some of the time and on some very important issues.
It is when you are libertarian on everything that you wander into the same ostrich territory that the far left regularly traps the Democratic party in.
posted by Tom Jefferson III on
If you are doing the salad buffet of libertarianism, then you should not call it libertarianism. If libertarians want to be taken seriously as some sort of viable political alternative, then being the lapdog to the right-wing GOP and the likes of Paul and Paul jr. is not the way to go about it.
Frankly, the only decent, compassionate and remotely reasonable libertarians (small ‘l) I have met have been Democrats.
posted by Jorge on
If libertarians want to be taken seriously as some sort of viable political alternative, then being the lapdog to the right-wing GOP and the likes of Paul and Paul jr. is not the way to go about it.
I think the only way libertarians should be taken seriously as a viable political anything is to renounce their ideology, but that is not my decision.
posted by Lori Heine on
Renounce our ideology? Jorge, you and all the other conservatives can just go on hoping. It isn’t going to happen.
Libertarian-leaning conservatives are sellouts on principle and conviction. That real libertarians are “ideological purists” is the standard bailout rationale for people who value power — violence and aggression — over principle. Its the dodge of narcissists who have no principles at all.
We are dedicated to nonviolence in politics and governance. Renounce our ideology? I don’t think so. Dream on.
Why, when you understand what we believe, you would want us to do that speaks volumes about the unprincipled, Lord-of-the-Flies world we live in.
posted by Tom Jefferson III on
Lori;
Somewhere along the lines — before my time — a bunch of libertarians got together and decided that they would be more then happy to the the GOP lapdog.
How many libertarians spoke out when Reagan or the other ‘New Right’ Republicans put them into the same New Right political viewpoint boat as the ‘Moral Majority’ or other such anti-libertarian ideas? Few, if any.
As long as the far right was willing to talk the talk about being anti-tax and pro-‘economic freedom’, many libertarians were perfectly willing to overlook the GOP attack on civil rights, civil liberties and its big foreign policy objectives.
Heck, even when the GOP’s economic policies were not libertarian, libertarians just turned a blind eye to it. It is hard to take libertarians seriously — beyond any viewpoints — when the ‘party of principle’ is really the party of ‘promise me a tax cut and I be your sweet-ass-*itch’.
posted by Lori Heine on
Tom, so your point is exactly — what? That “a bunch of libertarians” are every libertarian in the world?
I will repeat that there are two wings of the libertarian movement: the right and the left. Though the left wing ideologically predates the right, to be eclipsed by it for some time during the Goldwater/Reagan years, it has been on reemergence since the Dubya regime.
I am one former progressive Democrat who became a libertarian not because I wanted to be any conservative’s “sweet-ass-*itch,” but because I saw that the “War on Terr’ism” was eventually going to lead the country into perpetual warfare and a police state.
I have never argued, here or anywhere else, that right-wing libertarians do not exist, or that they have not often been guilty of kowtowing to the GOP’s moneyed interests. I merely object when the fiction is floated that they are the only libertarians, or somehow the only ones who “count.”
And it truly is an Alice-through-the-looking-glass experience to be informed that I do not really believe what I say I believe, but whatever it is more convenient for someone else to think I believe because, don’t you know, “all” libertarians are like whatever the big caterpillar with the golden hookah says they must be.
posted by Houndentenor on
The problem with discussing libertarianism is that every libertarian has their own definition and so every discussion breaks down at the level of defining terms and we never get anywhere. This is a good example of that phenomenon.
For what it’s worth, I agree with you about the war on terror and civil liberties. A good number of conservatives and liberals would agree with you as well. We should be able to build a majority coalition on this issue. The in-fighting only benefits those who want a police state because they think it will make us safer. I don’t think it’s necessary to spy on people who aren’t and never will be terrorists in order to track people who are. In fact, I don’t see how building an even bigger haystack is supposed to make it easier to find the needle. We can scale this back to a workable and more effective counter-terrorist effort without sacrificing our privacy or making ourselves any less safe.
posted by Lori Heine on
I will certainly agree that when everybody and his dog Rover calls himself a libertarian, it becomes difficult to tell who is and who isn’t, or if the term really has any meaning at all.
But it does mean something. Here’s one key to understanding what it means. Does the self-proclaimed libertarian believe in liberty only for him/herself and those most he/she is most like, or for everyone — even those who are very different, and perhaps disliked?
The former are bogus libertarians, the latter real libertarians. Libertarianism stands for liberty for EVERYONE — not just oneself or those one likes.
Another key. Are they willing to use state-backed force — real or potential violence — against those whose behavior they want to control? If they are, they are not libertarians of ANY stripe, no matter what they call themselves.
There’s always a pretty-sounding reason to increase government size, scope and power. Whether it’s that we’re fighting terrorism or that we’re feeding the poor. What it always really pays for, as we are now finding out, is even bigger guns and more oppressive laws to turn against us.
We are repeatedly seduced into thinking if we can only control “those people over there,” we will solve our problems. That we must arm the state to do violence against them in some way, for the greater good. Only it never results in the greater good — even for us. It only results in more oppression against everyone.
I have gay conservative friends who like to call themselves libertarians. Even though my opposition to our insane wars in the Middle East are enough to make them want to beat the crap out of me. They worship the god of war — their religion is the cult of death — and they put their ultimate trust in violence, in empire. But they’re libertarians — why? Because they want liberty for themselves, and for those who think just like them.
Then people like Tom Jefferson III will shrug and say, “they’re all libertarians. Ten thousand angels on the head of that pin, or twenty?”
Those who wish to oppress us love nothing better than to hear talk like that. It means that their ambitions can roll on unchecked.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
Does the self-proclaimed libertarian believe in liberty only for him/herself and those most he/she is most like, or for everyone — even those who are very different, and perhaps disliked? The former are bogus libertarians, the latter real libertarians.
That is a very useful rule of thumb, Lori. Thanks
posted by Tom Jefferson III on
–I will certainly agree that when everybody and his dog Rover calls himself a libertarian,
The Libertarian Party, the Tea Party and the Objectivist movement seem to be what passes for libertarianism, at least on a fair number college campuses.
Case in point;last semester the libertarian group showed a (laughable bad) documentary explaining how the federal income tax does not exist and sang the praises of Ron Paul, Rand Paul….
Likewise, when some reps from the local libertarian group came to speak, I asked whether they believed that Barack Obama was born in the U.S. or not….
It is nice that some libertarians are actually willing to admit that their is a left versus right wing within the philosophy.
Yet, the libertarian left does believe — at least historically — in some type of moderate Social Democracy. The ‘survival of the fittest’ economic model is really the product of the libertarian-right and the Ayn Rand/Tea Party crowd.
posted by Tom Jefferson on
Lori
1. Ron Paul and Rand Paul are not libertarians and should not be labeled as such. That they do get support from self-identified libertarians is (IMHO) another example of how the American libertarian movement is perfectly willing to be the lapdog to the right-wing GOP as long as the GOP uses the word ‘freedom’ a lot in speeches and promises a tax cut.
2. “I merely object when the fiction is floated that they are the only libertarians, or somehow the only ones who “count.”” — I am glad that you have admitted as much! Praise Buddha! I chatted with far too many self-identified college libertarians and college Objectivists who not only reject the idea that their is a libertarian-left, but are only too eager to join the Tea Party and get warm, fuzzy feelings for the Paul’s.
posted by Lori Heine on
As I do not believe that the Pauls are true libertarians, either, I am actually in agreement with you on this.
My original point, that right-wing libertarianism is not the only form of libertarianism, and that a lot of right-leaning “libertarians” are not real libertarians at all, stands.
I object to any attempt made to claim that right-wing libertarians are more truly libertarian, simply because a lot of college kids may think they are. As I object to the notion that there can be no objective definition of what a libertarian is.
I believe I have clearly articulated the classic definition of what a libertarian is. I meet that definition. I am not a “Paulian,” and I do not worship at the shrine of Ayn Rand.
As I write for a national libertarian magazine, I can’t be totally clueless about what libertarianism actually consists of.
I’m still not sure what your point is, in doggedly bringing up that many people are confused about what libertarianism is. Unless you simply prefer the waters to be as muddy as possible.
posted by Lori Heine on
I think what’s confusing about the current political landscape is that libertarian-leaning conservatives need to find a different name for themselves. “Conservative” is a noun, and “libertarian-leaning” is its modifying adjective, so they’re really still conservatives. But the word “libertarian” throws people into confusion
LL cons think liberty is kinda cool. Particularly now, when they don’t think they have enough of it. They seem to believe that libertarians are simply people who recognize the kinda-coolness of liberty, therefore they are libertarians. They don’t realize there is more to the definition than that.
I must say I like LL cons significantly better than social conservatives. Soc-cons are so dangerous and destructive that almost any new development that leads away from them is bound to be an improvement. But I know too many LL cons to mistake them for genuine libertarians.
posted by Tom Jefferson III on
—My original point, that right-wing libertarianism is not the only form of libertarianism,
A point that I have made here and elsewhere. The problem is that when the layman or woman or the average Jane or Don Six-pack believes that the Tea Party or the Cult of Ayn Rand or Rand Paul or Ron Paul or heck, Scientology or Lyndon La Rouch are any sort of libertarian.
Your definition would seem to be within the mainstream of the libertarian-right. This particular bent of libertarianism tends to dominate any group or party or publication that attaches itself to the libertarian philosophy.
The libertarian-left would have a — historically anyways — a slightly different definition in terms of the ideal economic system. This is because — again historically — the libertarian-left had its roots in political anarchy and the Social Democrats.
Yes, if you write for a “national libertarian magazine”, chances are it is grounded in the right-wing bent of the philosophy. Can you tell us which one? I have read a few issues of Liberty Unbound and Reason now and again.
—I’m still not sure what your point is,
Again, (1) how do the laymen and women definition the libertarian philosophy or what sort of people do they associate with it. (2) how interested are members of the libertarian-right in changing this layman’s definition, much less making sure that they do not simply seem like right-wing, Tea baggers that want to smoke pot.
posted by Lori Heine on
Mr. Jefferson III,
I believe in achieving basic progressive goals via nonviolent, non-aggressive means. You seem to have a tremendous investment in seeing this as “right/libertarian.” As that is how you are determined to see it, then follow your bliss.
If you go to http://www.libertyunbound.com right now, my essay “Two-Choice Tyranny” is listed, at the right side of the page, as number seven of the ten current most-read. I have another coming out soon. The author archives will take you to the past essays I’ve published there.
As far as members of the libertarian-right being interested in changing the layman’s definition of libertarian, or in looking like something other than Tea Partiers, I cannot answer. I’m not a right-libertarian, so I don’t know. I can’t imagine they’re very interested, since they seem to be doing little about it.
Libertarians like me, who are interested in changing that definition, will have to appeal directly to honest and reasonable people. We can’t worry about what right-libertarians are going to do.
posted by Tom Jefferson III on
I believe in achieving basic progressive goals via nonviolent, non-aggressive means.
Translation – you reject the ‘initiation’ of force and fraud. This is the standard buzzword slogan for the Libertarian Party and right-Libertarianism. It may sound all warm, fuzzy and Christmas cookies, but when you look at the actual policy implications of the libertarian-right, it is down right scary.
The right-libertarians believe that civil rights laws are bad because they are ‘forcing’ a business owner to practice equal opportunity and do other things, such as not sexually harass coworkers.
We can easily look back at our history and see what life would probably be like if the government did not tell a business what to do or not do. Once upon a time, the government rarely ‘initiated’ force on private business and free enterprise — beyond blue laws — and well, not too many people are eager to go back to that era.
I have read a few copies of Liberty Unbound and Reason magazine before. They generally seem to be promoting the right-wing versions of libertarianism.