As here, for instance. Via Liberty Alone, I learn of a remarkable new recruit to the ranks of those who are panicking about the pandemic. Yes, it is none other than the US Libertarian Party. They have just issued a press release reprimanding the US state for not being statist enough about this medically trivial event, which is in any case only being plugged up in order to divert attention away from other governmental blunders and to excuse further governmental usurpations, despite all the blunders. Why can’t they see that? Or don’t they care about such things any more? One can imagine a true “pandemic” that really did need measures like draconian border controls to defend against it (sickness is the health of the state), but if this trivial flu variant is it, then, to put it mildly, an explanation to that effect should have been added.
The UK Libertarian Party should treat this pandemic pandering as an awful warning of what happens to small parties – parties “of principle” – who become gripped by the desire to pile up lots of mere votes, and who forget what they were started to accomplish. First they pick a regular politician to lead them, and he then picks more regular politicians to help him, and before you know it, they are behaving like regular politicians.
But it is more fundamental than that, I fear. Start a political party, and before you know it, it is behaving like a political party. LPUK beware.
For what it’s worth, that’s why we built our principles into our legal constitution. And why we, possibly counter-intuitively, ran the party so tightly from the start.
As we start to branch out (literally), it is a warning that we shall heed…
DK
The trouble is many in the LP (US) are actually left-libertarians who sometimes are less libertarian that you might imagine.
Not surprising since many of them are unable to grasp the concept that its hard to be free when you are dead. (IE do nothing at all about the Islamist threat.)
Brian,
The US Libertarian Party has lost its way, is being sucked into the GOP and is trying to compete on their terms, and that is much of the problem.
When Libertarians try to stand inside an existing party, from which platform Ron Paul managed to obtain just 1.6% of the vote for nomination, it is doomed to failure, as the vested interests outweigh the libertarian benefits.
It would be like putting Sean Gabb up as a candidate for the leadership of the Tory Party, not a snowballs chance in hell.
Why did Ron Paul not stand for the US Libertarian Party, voters outside of the GOP. He certainly had the fund raising and backing, but not within the GOP.
One of the strengths of LPUK, unlike its US namesake, is that our message and policies are both moderate and consistent, where we do not have to flip flop to pander to vested interests.
We are often asked why we do not direct our attention to reform of the LDP or Tories where some say our interests would be better served.
Our answer is always the same – to those who are minded to seek and work for Liberty, the door is open at LPUK and we will welcome you in, but we will not join with those who will attempt to smother or corrupt us.
It’s the job of political parties to act like political parties because, well, that’s their job. It’s like complaining that pop stars act like pop stars. If you decide to be a pop star, you’re going to have to act like one.
Purism isn’t for political parties. The job of political leaders is to draw as broad a coalition of supporters as possible, while fooling each group in the coalition that they’re getting what they want, when really they aren’t- in fact the party may be working directly against their interests. As an example, Tony Blair was very good at this. Gordon Brown is a dud because he’s totally shit at it.
Purism is the job of theorists. A successful political movement needs basically three wings- the political wing, the theoretical wing, and the opinion forming wing. The theoretical wing decides what and justifies what should be done. This is often quite extreme, and needs plausible deniability as regards the other two wings. The theorists write books, articles and papers, and the other two wings act on them. For instance “Gays should have the same rights as heterosexuals”.
The opinion forming wing uses the media and political connections in the oligarchy and social institutions to normalise the ideas. The opinion forming wing makes the idea of gay rights in our example seem to be commonplace, even ubiquitous. It is supported in the media, by oligarchs, and by workers in the institutions such as schools. People who disagree gradually find their view marginalised because it is difficult to get heard; their voices are swamped.
The political wing are merely enactors. They appear to respond to the perception of popular clamour generated by our second wing above. In other words, they are the last to declare a position, once the “extremism” of the theorists has been normalised by the machinations of the opinion formers. The politicians thus generally will appear to be more conservative; they may well be attacked by their own theorists and opinion formers as not acting sufficiently radically. “We applaud these tentative steps by the government, but much more needs to be done…”
Which is why libertarianism makes no headway. We are hopelessly lacking in the crucial opinion-former wing. Without the capacity to normalise libertarian opinions, they will remain extreme in appearance and perception. We’re not short on theorists, but we lack boots on the cultural ground. Without them, a party is doomed to extremist marginalisation, or to adopt a more and more mainstream position to attempt to conform to currently normalised values.
Parties always need to look like boot dragging conservatives, being pushed towards radicalism by the (fake) clamour for something to be done.
What’s the conflict here? The Libertarian Party is for limited government, not no government. One of the constitutional duties of the U.S. government is self-defense and protecting the American people from foreign threats. I see the Libertarian Party’s position as consistent with that principle.
A better word than “fake” there would be “organised” or “engineered”.
I also probably should have added in a fourth wing of activists who generate boots on the real ground, such as ACORN or various green groups, etc.
A bit of nous on naming would help your cause. Why not something like the Party of Liberty of the United Kingdom (PLUK), and the Party of Liberty of the United States (PLUS)? We could have the Party of Australian Liberty (PAL). Wouldn’t you vote for your PAL?
And you need an eye-catching T-shirt! How about the slogan “The only good tax… is a dead one!”?
This is a typical example of why political libertarianism cannot work:
This is written by a “right libertarian”. He can extend sympathy to “left libertarians” who stand for social liberties – drugs etc., but ultimately he cannot rid himself of his natural conservative concerns – the “Islamist threat”, for example. In order to uphold conservative ideas, he requires the use of the power of the state, i.e. anti-libertarianism.
This means that the majority of libertarians are likely to be conservatives who tolerate social freedoms, or to a lesser extent, socialists who tolerate capitalism. Both sides require that the power of the state be used to reduce the power of the state. Please explain how this is going to work?
Then somebody writes:
Self-defence and protecting from foreign threats – again, conservative values, protected by statist means.
I thought libertarian meant non-statist? I wouldn’t mind a tiny government if that was the lower limit of what we could achieve, but with you libertarians, that clearly isn’t going to happen if you get in power.
IanB says:
Which is right on the nail. I’m sorry to pick on the conservatives, but the chances of getting a contradictory comment from a libertarian liberal are slim at best, so I’ll assume that the natural libertarian nature 🙂 of you conservatives will prevent you from picking on me for assuming I am some sort of twisted liberal democrat, which is what usually happens. As it happens, I am more of an Objectivist, just so you know.
It’s funny but to use a term of one of the above commenters, “no government”, is the logical outcome of a libertarianism with the integrity to actually achieve what it claims to want.
I just re-read Heinlein’s “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” recently, and it occurred to me that with the internet and blogs, we might well now have a system superior to the computer called “Mike”. So see you all soon on the barricades maybe?
Well, it’s just a thought. Brilliant author by the way, uncanny predictions of the future.
Libertarianism is not anarchism. All Anarchists are Libertarians, (unless they’re the delusional “anarcho-socialists”), but not all Libertarians are Anarchists. Those Libertarians who are Anarchists have no need of a political party, so the Libertarian Party exists for those Libertarians who are not Anarchists.
I hope that clears things up.
BTW, “left-libertarians” generally are “left” on the economic side of things. They are also rarely involved with the Libertarian Party.
Few Libertarians actually believe that they are more free when they are dead. What we do believe is that if we wander the world searching out other people’s problems to stick our nose into, we will, from time to time, get that nose bitten off. We prefer, therefore, to concern ourselves with what’s good for AMERICA, and the rest of the world can deal with it’s own problems. They aren’t ours, we didn’t created them, we shouldn’t be forced to pay for solving them.
I can see how this might look like a “leftist” position. In a pig’s eye.
Sigh.
TomC, surely you must admit that there has been a time or two in history when large, organized bodies of men wanted to march into someone else’s home and kill everything in sight. And that therefore, the “someone elses” have a strong interest in forming large, organized bodies of their own in self-defense, whatever they do with the rest of their lives.
Why does recognizing that fact, and not wanting to be caught on the pointy end of a big sword, make one a Statist?
I bailed on the Republican Party when they lost their way, but my Libertarian lifeboat seems to have sprung a leak. Pretty soon I’ll be swimming with the sharks.
When the USS Republican hit an iceburg, I got into a Libertarian lifeboat, but it seems to have sprung a leak. Soon, I’ll have to try my luck with the sharks.
I apologize for the double post. They’re taking away my keyboard now.
I’m not going to defend the USLP (most of the time we’re our own worst enemy) or this release, but I do think I understand the motivation behind it. As Rich Paul has already noted, most LP members aren’t anarcho-capitalists; we accept the notion of a country and revere the Constitution. Thus, defense of the borders is seen as one of (if not the) primary duties of the federal government, which should be focusing on that task rather than on such things as nationalizing the auto companies. So I can see why the LP would like to poke a finger in Obama’s eye for his failings on what can be couched as a national defense issue.
That said, I very much dislike and disapprove of this release for some of the reasons cited in Brian’s original post: the whole swine flu (sorry, “A/H1N1”) episode is a “medically trivial event” and seems to be primarily a public diversion from the government’s current depredations. (“Pandemic pandering” is a clever phrase.) This type of release simply plays into the government’s hands. In other words, my objection is more tactical than strategic. I don’t think it’s entirely fair to characterize the LP as accusing the government of “not being statist enough” simply for asking for a defense of the borders. A “nation without borders” is a nonsensical concept.
Firstly, can anyone point me at the LPUK’s legal constitution? I cannot seem to find it on their web site.
On LPUK:
I think LPUK are following the path of trying to appear to be a moderate party with moderate, practical policies that moderate sensible people would actually vote for.
But this is a terrible idea. The people won’t vote for liberty – mass opinion leans strongly against free markets and towards socialism. Labour socialism over the past twelve years, Tory socialism before and most likely Tory socialism tomorrow.
The masses are misguided of course, molded and influenced by the hegemonic opinion/culture forming forces such as IanB describes above.
In this sort of context the function of a libertarian party is not to get elected and change things – because you cannot.
Instead a party can act as a ginger group and as a calibrating pole in the political discourse much as same the RCPB(M/L) or some such mark the borders of the far left.
A libertarian party should set forth the most strident, militantly libertarian position it can construct and defend – the more horse frighteningly scary the better. It also better have a damn good grasp of the philosophical, economic and historical underpinnings of
libertarianism and be able to articulate them.
At best LPUK are stuck in the world of school vouchers and voluntary home information packs.
The Libertarian party here in the United States talks the talk, but does not walk the walk. The many years they have been in existence,they have accomplished nothing.
Ron Paul tells members what they want to hear and remains part of the problem.
For those who have the mentality, they must belong to some group, joining the Libertarian party medicates their feelings, and makes them think they can avoid self-responsibility and self-control of individual Freedom.
Anne Cleveland
octogenariansblog.com
Frankly I could not care less what is good for AMERICA. I feel no more obligated to someone in Denver than I do someone in Dublin, Dubai or Durban. Any party that wants me to accord special looting rights or demand special concerns to people with the same color passport as me will not be getting my vote any time soon.
The constitution is a neat idea but it has one problem: The people who signed it are dead. Until/unless people care enough to do what it takes to sign it again, it will continue to be ignored.
Liberty cannot be argued or voted for, it can only be asserted.
Second what DavicNcl says. Libertarian parties as they currently exist offer something like “Roughly the same as our competitors, only LESS COMPETENT!” Don’t get me wrong – I vote Libertarian as a protest vote, but it’s an irrational thing to ask of the average Joe. Since the LP is plainly unable to win elections using its current strategy, it seems like it could become useful in exactly the way DavidNcl suggests – by dragging the political discussion in a reasonable direction. That way we at least get public debates that might maybe someday yield some policies we can live with – even if we’re not the ones enacting the policies necessarily.
You may have no more personal obligation to somebody in Dublin than in Denver, but the government off Denver is required to concern itself exclusively with problems in Denver. It has no charter to govern Dublin. Nor does the state of Colorado. Nor does the American Federal Government. Their business is solely to deal with the areas where their charter *does* apply.
I cannot speak to the LPUK, as I am on the other side of that big, gray, cold, wet thing. I have a few thoughts on the LPUS, and its status. Much of the Conservative base of the Republican party is of a somewhat Libertarian bent. Believe it or not, Conservative does not = Fundamentalist, Evangelical Christian, although they are part of the mix and I do not have any objection to their adding their voices to that mix. Since the Conservatives are hated by the mainstream Republican party far more than they hate the Democrats; quite a large chunk of the base really would like somewhere else to go.
The LPUS would, it would seem, be a natural refuge to many. However, they “went stupid” after 9/11. As I understand it [correct me if I am wrong] one of the few justifications for the use of state power, according to Libertarians, is to defend the country from outside attack. In the wake of 9/11, the LPUS went more moonbat anti-war than the Democrats [who did not mean it] who at least publicly sided with the idea of taking out those who had attacked us. This drew a line many could not in conscience cross.
Ron Paul’s experience in the Republican nominating process, while electorally unsuccessful, may have been another nail in the Institutional Republican party’s coffin. Mind you, I am not a Ron Paul supporter. My wife and I went as delegates to the State Republican Convention starting out supporting Fred Thompson, switching to Romney, and ending up with the race functionally decided before our State convention met. This involved running for, and being elected at every level from precinct on up.
The Paul campaign did everything the right and legal way, running for delegate slots at every level the way that we did. I cannot fault them in the slightest. They did it the way the civics textbooks say it should be done.
The State Convention selects and elects delegates to the National Nominating Convention from amongst its own delegates. The original McCain people had a plurality and included those running the state party and convention. There were roughly an equal number of those of us who had not supported McCain, and Ron Paul supporters. A goodly number of those who had come with no commitment to McCain, went with him in the name of “party unity”.
When we had the introductions of those running for National delegate, the true face of the Institutional Republicans came out. Keep in mind that throughout, the Paul people had been polite, civil, and indeed model citizens. When their people came up for introductions, the McCain supporters loudly jeered and boo-ed them. Every one of them. This rudeness was not met in kind by the Paul people. For us, the turning point was when the McCain people boo-ed a Special Forces veteran of the Iraq war, who was disabled from his wounds received there.
My wife and I were seated separately. I had been elected as a full delegate while she was there as an alternate who took the seat of someone who had not been able to attend. Without consultation, we both ended up voting for a full slate of Paul delegates, based on how shabbily they had been treated.
They ended up not getting any of our National slots. I do not know if it was because of the unified voting of the McCain people, or if it was due to the inventive means of vote counting that has in the past been part of our State Conventions.
I do know that if the LPUS really wanted to attract a large part of the Republican party over to them; they would stand up for defending this country when attacked and stand up against the creation of the corporatist state economy that Obama is building on the ashes of the free market.
Since they have done neither, I assume that they are perfectly content to be electoral non-entities.
For myself, when the actual Republican primaries come around for the 2010 elections [assuming they happen], if the National party ends up as expected throwing their full support against the Conservatives running for the Senate nominations in Pennsylvania and Arizona; the day after it becomes official I will be at the county clerk’s office changing my registration to Constitution Party, knowing that there is no welcome for me in the LPUS.
Subotai Bahadur
You mean like when the Gestapo or the KGB used to made their house calls in the middle of the night? Or when the KKK had to be formed to counter the black “threat”?
I just thought the idea was more BNP than LP, as a “time or two” maybe doesn’t necessitate a political response.
But basically, I was just being frivolous. Imagine that you’re surrounded by people addicted to playing poker and for some reason you’re determined to persuade them that playing poker is wrong and that life would be better if people didn’t play poker; some might think it a bit odd then, if the basis of your method was to take the players on at their own game of poker in order to do so?
Being libertarian is wanting to be free (ish) of government. Wanting to fight the so-called Islamic threat is statist, and requires more, not less government.
I’m not sure that the founding fathers, the most libertarian government ever, would have agreed with you on this. Keeping the borders open was one of their most valued principles. The Constitution you revere is not the same one they drew up.
I’ve never voted in 30 years of being eligible. For the simple reason that to do so would be to tacitly involve myself in the very system that enslaves me (and everyone else). For some reason, I just happened to notice the slavery.
Fixed it for ya.
The problem with the Librarians (U.S. version) is that, unlike in the UK or Europe, American voters are mostly center/right of center in their outlook. So the minute that Candidate Librarian sticks his foot in one of the several bear-trap issues (e.g. drug legalization or pacifism), people dismiss him as a freak — in the case of drugs, no different from some Berkeley hippie.
Ron Paul may be a darling of libertarians everywhere, but most non-libertarian people think he’s a nutcase. (For proof of this assertion, see his vote count.)
So Libertarianism is going to get a more sympathetic hearing in Yurp, but I’m afraid that it’s a lost cause Over Here.
By the way, as scornful as I may sound about libertarians on occasion, I think they perform a valuable service, as a kind of conscience to American conservatives — a way to remind conservatives to avoid their bear-trap issues (e.g. abortion) and shy away from their religious urges.
The Libertarian Party of the USA spent twenty years illustrating the meaning of the phrase “not ready for prime time,” then around 1990 finally flew up its own arse and disappeared. There is absolutely no point in spending time on it.
TomC –
I don’t understand why you believe this to be such a contradiction. All you have described in your post is a textbook libertarian (if such a beast exists!) – permissive on social and economic issues, nevertheless holding that government has a small role to play in society. For example, defence of the nation. Certainly, government-organised “self defence and protection from foreign threats” is something most conservatives (and socialists!) would support, however this does not make it an exclusively conservative value.
In most aspects of society, this is true. However most (or at the very least, many) libertarians believe that there are a few legitimate roles of government. One is responsibility for national defence. Again, this is not a “conservative value” – it is a value shared by folk of all political stripes. Certainly, the differences lie in what each political movement constitutes as “national defence”, and that is how you sort the libertarians* from the conservatives/greens/socialists/liberals/Islamists/Marxists etc etc…
*and discern between the various ideological branches of libertarianism
And yet these same American voters elected a president more left-wing than any current European ruler!
@ James Waterton:
Except in early July most folks in the USA will be celebrating the anniversary of a rather significant victory in the field of national defence that was won without government or taxation.
Whilst it was started by tax-evaders, they ended up hoist by their own petard. Perhaps the Constitution should be called Frankenstein?
And if there’s no such thing as a free lunch, then who did pay for George’s army?
The Other Rob:
Of course, although if the losing side of that war had have provided the sort of government envisioned by most Libertarians, such action would not have been necessary in the first place.
M,
You’ve read the tea leaves incorrectly.
Obama was elected more because of his sparkling persona, and the failings of the Republicans, than because of his positions. In poll after poll, about 60% of American voters self-identify as either very conservative (20%) or mostly conservative (40%). That forty percent is important, because the centrist edge is easily moved to the left by a “centrist” Democrat candidate, while the conservative edge is easily dissuaded from supporting an unpredictable figure like McCain.
Reagan, for example, did not win by appealing to the center; he won because he appealed to the bedrock conservatism which runs through the American population — hence his enormous popularity among working-class rural Democrats as well as conservative Republicans. (I should point out that Reagan was detested by “centrist” Republicans — the northestern so-called “Rockefeller Republicans” — of the day almost as much as by the Left.)
Kim du Toit nails it. Obama was not elected because of his policies; indeed, most people hadn’t a clue what they were. He was the candidate of “hope and change”, two highly maleable words which mean whatever the hearer hopes/wishes/believes them to mean. Consider his primary selling points[1]:
> He wasn’t Bush.
> He was/is a terrific reader of the teleprompter[2], which was (obviously, in retrospect) misinterpreted as eloquence.
> He was young, reasonably attractive and earnest.
> He was a new, fresh face, and not part of the “old guard” in American politics (which was Hillary Clinton’s achilles heel).
> His ivy league education and University of Chicago credentials gave him a patina of respectability.
> He was a minority, but only somewhat, which made him attractive to both the feel-good “affirmative action” voters and actual minorities.
> He wasn’t tired, old, cranky, unpredictable John McCain.
> He wasn’t Bush.
As a candidate, Obama was the ultimate political chameleon. As President, his true colors are starting to show, and many people are finding that they don’t like them. Of course, many are so invested in him that they don’t care, or are willfully blind to his agenda, so it will take much indeed to dislodge their support. (As Edwin Edwards once famously remarked, he would have to be “caught in bed with a live boy or a dead girl” to lose them, and I’m no too sure about the former.) But I think his negatives are starting to accumulate, and the initial glow of the affirmative action president is beginning to fade. It will be interesting indeed to see if buying the support of Big Labor will be sufficient to offset his complete alienation of Big Money. I’m betting against it.
[1] Note that I didn’t use the word “qualifications”, as he demonstrably has none. Clearly that didn’t matter to a large enough section of the electorate.
[2] In other words, a great actor, skilled at believably delivering lines written by others. In the 21st Century that will probably be the primary qualification of successful politicians. What is somewhat curious is that once before we had a skilled actor as President, and in many quarters he was (and to this day remains) vilified and ridiculed for this. But that criticism has yet to be levelled against Obama.
As Dick Morris pointed out at the time the error (“error” is a bit of a mild word) was made – John McCain lost the election the day he came out in support of bailing out the banks.
Government spending on a scale so vast that it made his previous efforts at spending restraint (in contrast to the wild spending of the “centre left”, for that is what the former President was, George Walker Bush) look like a sick joke.
“But Obama supported the spending also”.
But he did not go to Washington and get involved in the talks (John McCain even suspended his campaign) and many of the Obama supporters (for reasons others have explained above) did not care what he did anyway.
He was this young attractive man – who gave them sensual feelings up their leg (and was just the “journalists”).
Besides he gave them chance to prove they were not racists.
So we have the first President of the United States with a Marxist background (without most voters even knowing).
And someone who, for decades, supported the corruption of the Chicago Machine (and the corruption does NOT mitigate the statism) against all honest people – of left as well as right.
And someone involved up to his neck in the dirty tricks of the leftist activist organizations – from the Charitable Trusts who paid Obama (Charitable Trusts set up by Republicans with money but with a lack of paranoia – and, therefore, soon taken over by Bill Ayers, Barack Obama and other such) to ACORN and so on.
Sometimes civilizations end in tragedy – earthquake, tidel wave, invasion……
And sometimes a civilization can end in farce.
Re names.
Have American Libertarians thought about personalising their party? If you called yourself Maverickists, in honour of the original Maverick, a rancher who did things his own way, you might have more appeal!
Except for one thing. A ‘maverick’ isn’t a rancher. It’s a horse without a mother. Thus the line from Gay Porn With Airplanes, er, Top Gun where Tom Cruise meets Kelly McGillis at the bar:
“What’s your name?”
“Maverick.”
“Does your mother not like you?”
Okay, two things: Maverick was also John McCain’s nickname. I don’t think most American libertarians like him a whole hell of a lot.
My dictionary defines a maverick as an animal without a brand, or a loner. The motherless meaning must be recent. And that TV show ‘Maverick’ probably gave independent people a bad name. Nonconformity in others is always frowned upon- though it’s alright if we do it!
Can you suggest another brand name for Libertarians? Perhaps you could use the fancy greek word for liberty- Eleutheria?