Squashed

The Libertarian Awakening

In 2001 the Libertarians were the guys who had the booth at the street festivals sandwiched between the Revolutionary Maoists and the Revolutionary Stalinists. Now you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a Libertarian.¹ So where did they all come from?

My unscientific survey concluded that (unsurprisingly) the vast majority of Libertarians are children of Republicans. The politics of parents certainly don’t determine the politics of the children—but one of the awkward truths of political thought is that the apple rarely falls far from the tree. (This isn’t me talking down on Libertarians—it’s just how it is with every political group.)

The relative strength of the Liberty Movement has a lot to do with a crumbling in support for Republicans among young people. Proposals like “let’s all be scared of people who are different and/or gay” simply aren’t resonating like they use to. And maybe the brain needs at least forty-years of buffering to handle the cognitive dissonance necessary to simultaneously maintain that we have to immediately cut spending and that we shouldn’t under any circumstances touch military spending. The Republicans have always struggled with young people. But now they seem to be struggling even with young Republicans.

So what’s next? A huge chunk broke off the Republican glacier. Where is it headed? Will the wayward Republican children rejoin the fold? That seems unlikely, unless the Republicans can bring their platform into the 21st century. Will Libertarianism be a strong, independent force going forward? I don’t think that’s likely either. Opposition to things like Medicare gets harder when people you love start retiring.² Will the Progressives see an influx? It’s not inconcievable. Advocacy for a more humane foreign policy could plausibly lead to support for a more humane domestic policy.

A question for the young(ish) Libertarians

It’s clear enough that a lot more young people identify as libertarian than did a decade ago. It’s less clear to me where all the Libertarians came from. I’m curious. For those of you who identify as libertarian, which political party did your parents, more often than not, vote for?

Bait and Switch

Traditionally, the Democrats have sought to preserve civil liberties and reduce military adventurism. Running the country means that princpled stances sometimes run into other principled stances and compromises are made. Compromise means controversy. Civil libertarians have reason to be frustrated.¹ So do those who categorically oppose military intervention.² No politician is entitled to your support—and nobody should blame you for looking around.

Many of those looking for somebody with a more hardline stance on civil liberties and against military action found Ron Paul.³ Ron Paul, a Republican, has emphasized that he cares about “liberty,” by which he means a combination of protecting civil liberties and an extreme hands-off approach toward economics, even when that comes at the expense of a lot of people without a lot of money or influence. And if you joined Ron Paul for his civil liberties stances, maybe you’ll adopt—or at least tolerate—some of his economic stances as well.

So what happens when Paul loses the race and Romney gets the nomination? Romney’s stances on civil liberties and military action is far worse than Obama’s. He wants to “double Guantanamo” and stick with the Afghanistan war indefinitely. Apparently he’s against allowing same-sex couples to adopt now too. But, like Paul, he’s a Republican. And he’s going to make a hard sell that he’s going to protect the same kind of “economic liberties” that Paul did.[^4] And a lot of Paul supporters are going to come around—even though Romney is dramatically worse than Obama on the issues the primarily claim to care about.

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Government intervention, foreign and otherwise

Bonnie and I have gone back and forth on the relationship between pacifism and libertarian non-intervention. I think we agree on the following:

1. We can slash the U.S. military budget. Dramatically.
2. Our dual goals in Afghanistan are to reach something resembling lasting peace and withdraw. The speed and manner of withdrawal hinge on whether we beleive we have a chance of accomplishing something like lasting peace.
3. Where possible, we have a responsibility to clean up our messes, but we should not use this responsibility to advance imperialist ends.
4. Non-intervention is neither synonymous with pacifism nor inherently concerned about the welfare of others. There is, of course, room for overlap.
5. To the extent that private non-profits can accomplish humanitarian ends, the government should not get in the way.
6. To the extent that private non-profits cannot currently accomplish humanitarian goals, we should not scale back critical government, humanitarian programs.
7. When forced to choose between evils, we want to choose the lesser evil. Even then, we can be upset with how evil the lesser evil is.
8. When evaluating any proposed intervention (military or otherwise), we should consider probability of success is a critical metric (and probably assume that the actual probability of success is lower than we anticipate and way lower than the general on Fox News says it is).
9. We should be very suspicious about the motives of those who call for military intervention on humanitarian grounds.
10. Humanitarian efforts to save lives and alleviate suffering are important.
11. Randians are sort of jerks.
12. Drone strikes are creepy.

Policywise, Bonnie and I might agree on a lot of this—which makes me wonder why she considers herself a libertarian and I consider myself something of a leftist. Is one of us just wrong?

Let me offer a couple other things where we might disagree.

1. When faced with an important humanitarian goal, if there is no private solution in sight, it is more important to make sure the right thing is done than to fret about the proper role of government.
2. If we forgot that we left unexploded bombs all over Cambodia during the Vietnam War that children are now salvaging for scrap metal, we really ought to go back and clean up our litter—even where that means taxpayer money.
3. If we’re faced with a situation like the Rwandan genocide where the timely and efficient deployment of peacekeeping troops could realistically prevent around a million deaths, we should not rule out peacekeepers.
4. When somebody is indiscriminately firing heavy weapons into a civilian population and we have the ability to efficiently destroy those weapons, we should not categorically rule out airstrikes.
5. When U.S. made weapons are causing an increase in violence in a foreign war, some minimal arms control efforts are reasonable.

If an effort to provide food, shelter, medical care, basic security, and so on is doomed to cause more harm than good, of course we should avoid it. But when we have a solveable problem, a viable public solution, and no viable private solution, are we really going to throw up our hands and pretend we can’t do anything? And if we aren’t going to, are we really libertarians?

(Source: squashed)

Let me straighten this out

laliberty, libertarians:

It’s cool when unions go on a job strike when they’re unhappy with the working conditions under a company, but citizens can’t go on a tax strike when they’re unhappy with the living conditions under a government?

When working conditions routinely led to long-term impairment, mutilation, and death, some workers were understandably upset. Their options were:

1. Put up with it. The Good Lord gave you two arms for when one gets stuck in a meat grinder.
2. Quit. Functionally, this means losing your livelihood and, in many cases, having to leave your community to work elsewhere. At a time when you were likely to only work for one company your entire life, this essentially means sacrificing everything in your life.
3. Do something about it. Strike. Create a picket-line at a time when picket-lines were not-so-peaceful and not-always-so-legal. Deal with the consequences.

Is it so shocking that many people, once they got organized, chose the third option? Since then, we have a lot fewer limbs lost in industrial accidents.

And the strikes have calmed down quite a bit too. We have an uneasy truce between labor and capital. Working conditions are a lot better for the workers. Strikes are a lot better for management. Much of this has to do with legal protection of unions, provided the strikes stay within certain guidelines. A lot of grief is averted.

So yes. It’s okay when workers strike over working conditions. When they do so, they accept the consequences. And if taxpayers want to whine about the heavy foot of government? If they want to accept the concequences of a tax strike … well … they can do it.

Does that make it “okay”? Would I judge you if you went on a tax strike because you’re unhappy about living conditions? Yes. It’s not because a tax strike is inherently an unacceptable tool. Thoreau did a tax strike over slavery and war. I admire him for that. But if you go on a tax strike because you’re unhappy about “living conditions” for the decently affluent in the United States? I would judge you because your cause is stupid.

Proportional Representation, the U.K., and the Senate

England’s electoral system is almost, but not quite, as peculiar and flawed as our own. Their Liberal Democrats just won a quarter of the votes, but only got a tenth of the seats. (Save your tears. They get to be king makers in a hung parliament.) Since representatives are elected locally, the Lib Dems only won where they had the most local support. A strong second or third was worthless. I was set to write a post on how they really ought to have a system like ours, except that we do the same thing. We like having local representatives.

It’s worse in the Senate. The Senator from Wyoming has as much power as the Senator from California. I like Wyoming—but this simply isn’t in the spirit of one person, one vote.

We’re not going to change this system anytime soon. But suppose we could? Would you replace the Senate with a proportional body? If, for example, the Green Party or the Libertarian Party gets 3% of the vote, they would get three senators.

Or is this just an invitation for polarization? Would we be electing guys from the Mexicans Go Home Party who have the strong support of 2% of the population and the loathing of everybody else?