Reason has an
interesting debate on the
question of libertarian political strategy.
Should libertarians seek to forge an alliance
with conservatives or liberals or neither?
Conservative columnist Jonah Goldberg and Tea
Party leader Matt Kibbe argue for reconsituting
the libertarian-conservative coalition that was
badly frayed if not completely severed during
the Bush years. Cato Institute scholar Brink
Lindsey argues against that view. Although I am
much closer to Lindsey’s political views than
Goldberg’s, I find myself agreeing somewhat more
with Goldberg’s position in this particular
debate.
I. Brink Lindsey’s Retreat from
Liberaltarianism.
Lindsey seems to have stepped back from his much-discussed
2006 argument for a
“liberaltarian” coalition between libertarians
and liberals.
Today, Lindsey argues that libertarians should
instead try to occupy “the center,” because an
alliance with the left is no more viable than
one with the right:
Does that mean I think that libertarians
should ally with the left instead? No, that’s
equally unappealing. I do believe that
libertarian ideas are better expressed in the
language of liberalism rather than
that of conservatism. But it’s clear enough
that for now and the foreseeable future, the
left is no more viable a home for libertarians
than is the right.
It would be interesting to know what led to
Lindsey’s change of heart about
liberaltarianism. I suspect that the vast
expansion of government promoted by the Obama
administration and the
decline of relatively pro-market views among
liberal intellectuals were both
contributing factors. Lindsey’s new view of
liberaltarianism is now remarkably similar to the
one I expressed back when he made his
original proposal: that liberals
and libertarians have much in common in terms of
ultimate values, but relatively little common
ground in terms of practical policy agendas.
II. What Would Libertarian Centrism
Look Like?
I would also be interested to learn more about
what Lindsey means when he urges libertarians to
seek out the center. Lindsey does advise this:
Declaring independence from the right would
require big changes. Cooperation with the
right on free-market causes would need to be
supplemented by an equivalent level of
cooperation with the left on personal freedom,
civil liberties, and foreign policy issues.
Funding for political candidates should be
reserved for politicians whose commitment to
individual freedom goes beyond economic
issues. In the resources they deploy, the
causes they support, the language they use,
and the politicians they back, libertarians
should be making the point that their
differences with the right are every bit as
important as their differences with the left.
It’s not clear to me, however, that Lindsey’s
program is much different from what many
libertarian organizations are already doing.
Many of them have long championed such causes as
drug legalization (a signature libertarian
issue, if there is one), removing restrictions
on immigration, and curtailing law enforcement
powers, for example. Defense policy is an
issue that divides libertarians among
themselves, as Lindsey
himself has reason to know.
Still, more isolationist libertarians have not
been shy about expressing their differences with
conservatives in this field. Lindsey’s own
employer, the Cato Institute, is a good example.
Overall, it’s hard to name any prominent
libertarian organization or think tank that
hasn’t been involved in major causes that put
them at odds with conservatives. At the level of
the mass public, libertarian-leaning
voters have in fact tended to be “swing
voters” in recent elections, with
a relatively weak sense of partisan loyalty.
To the extent that this hasn’t resulted in “an
equivalent level” of cooperation with the left
as that with the right on economic policy, it
may be because few liberals have been willing to
reciprocate. It’s striking that Lindsey’s own
highly publicized efforts at forging
liberaltarian cooperation met with little or no
positive response among liberals. The same goes
for similar
attempts by other prominent libertarian
intellectuals. Another factor is
that the the left’s commitment to “noneconomic”
freedom has eroded over the last several
decades. Many on the left now favor such
policies as paternalistic regulation, censorship
of “hate speech,” government-mandated
“diversity,” and so on. There are still
important social issues where libertarians and
the left see eye to eye. But there are also many
where left-wing liberals favor not laissez-faire
but a different kind of government intervention
from that supported by the social right.
A successful libertarian centrism — if possible
at all — would require a much stronger
foundation that Lindsey lays out here. Among
other things, it would have to overcome the
difficulties associated with operating outside
the two major parties in a political system like
ours. The longtime failures of the
Libertarian Party are relevant
here. It would also have to reckon with the
reality emphasized by Goldberg: many libertarian
positions simply are not centrist in the
important sense that they are far from those of
the median voter.
Even if a strong centrist libertarian movement
were created, that still would not eliminate the
need for political coalitions with either the
left or the right. So long as libertarians are
not a political majority (and they are in fact about
10–15% of the electorate), they
cannot succeed without cooperation from other
political movements.
III. The Libertarian-Conservative
Alternative.
In the short run, I think there is no
alternative to some sort of political coalition
with conservatives, a position I argued for back
in 2008, soon after Obama’s election.
As I expected, Obama and the Democrats have
heavily emphasized expanded government spending
and economic regulation — precisely those issues
that divide libertarians from liberals while
uniting them with conservatives. Moreover, the
conservative backlash against Obama has to a
large extent taken a libertarian
small-government form rather than the nativist
or right-wing populist forms that could easily
have happened. It’s noteworthy that the Tea
Party movement has overwhelmingly focused on
libertarian themes, to the point where some
social conservatives have attacked it for
failing to emphasize social issues.
Most important, libertarians have a strong
interest in restoring divided government, which
would make it much harder for the Democrats to
enact more massive expansions of government
power. Historically, divided government has been
a great boon to the small-government cause.
For the moment, the only way to restore divided
government is to cooperate with conservative
Republicans. I hope for a Republican victory in
2010 for much the same reasons as I
wanted a Democratic one back in 2006.
I also think that some of Lindsey’s arguments
against a libertarian-conservative alliance are
overblown. For example, he argues that the
conservative movement is no longer a fit ally
for libertarians because it has been taken over
by “a raving, anti-intellectual populism, as
expressed by (among many, many others) Sarah
Palin and Glenn Beck.” I’m no fan of either Palin
or Beck. Still, just about any
major political movement has its share of crude
demagogues. As Lindsey admits, libertarians and
conservatives were able to productively
cooperate on many issues from the 1970s to the
90s. It’s not clear to me that Palin and Beck
are any more objectionable than Phyllis
Schlafly, Jerry Falwell, and Jesse Helms were.
The typical conservative activist of thirty
years ago was likely more anti-intellectual,
populist, and xenophobic than, say, today’s Tea
Party activists, who are
on average more educated than the general
population and often cite
high-brow writers like Hayek.
Finally, it seems to me that the political
right is now in flux. Having suffered painful
defeats in 2006 and 2008, and witnessed the
failure of Bush’s efforts to establish
Republican dominance through “compassionate
conservatism,” many conservative
Republicans may be open to moving in a more
small-government oriented direction. The
newfound prominence of libertarian-leaning
Republicans like Mitch
Daniels and Paul
Ryan is some evidence of that.
Libertarians might help influence the GOP in
that direction. By contrast, there seems little
chance of our being able to effectively
influence the course of liberal Democrats at
this particular point in time, when most of them
seem more committed than ever to expanding the
power of government and less willing than a
decade ago to consider reducing it. Political
defeat might change that, as it did in the 1980s
and 90s. But the defeat will probably have to
come first.
That said, I also think that there is a lot to
Lindsey’s critique of the right for its major
streaks of nationalism, illiberalism,
intolerance, and xenophobia. On these points,
Lindsey is often more persuasive than Jonah
Goldberg’s rebuttal. Hayek’s classic critique of
conservatism remains relevant
here. For these reasons, I don’t propose any
full-blown “fusionism”
of the kind once advocated by Frank Meyer.
I have too many deep disagreements with
conservatives to want that (see, e.g., here,
here,
and here).
Short-term or even medium-term political
cooperation is not the same thing as a deep
affinity. I also don’t propose that we ignore
the many flaws of the right or forget about the
wrongs of the Bush era. Political allies don’t
have to be soulmates. But we can and should
recognize that right now we have an important
common interest.
