Posted by Randy Barnett:
Should Libertarians Go Red or Blue?
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2009_02_15-2009_02_21.shtml#1234907336
I have been enjoying the recent dialogue over so-called
liberaltarianism (links are in Ilya's post). I don't have that much to
add except perhaps this:
In a two party system, such as ours, each party is a coalition that is
striving to get past 50%, unlike a parliamentary system in which
governments are formed by joining together enough distinct parties.
This seems to be one of the reasons why the Libertarian Party was
doomed from its inception (though I erroneously supported its
formation way back when). It would seem that draining both parties of
libertarians would have to make each party less libertarian at the
margin. Becoming a part of each party's coalition would make each
somewhat more libertarian at the margin, however slightly. It would
necessarily mean, however, that libertarians in either party would be
in a coalition with some with whom they greatly disagree. That is
politics in a two-party system.
Happily, some libertarians feel more comfortable with conservatives
and others with progressives (i.e. modern liberals). Some are
reasonably comfortable with both camps, depending on the situation.
Libertarians should simply gravitate to where their inclinations take
them. Some of this will turn on where each party is at a particular
moment. For example, are Republicans "big government conservatives"?
Are Democrats "New New Dealers"? Of course, other libertarians can
abjure politics and parties altogether for some other activity that
advances liberty.
I found this idea well summarized by a comment posted to [1]Will
Wilkerson's blog:
The reality is that Republicans think A and when in power do B,
while Democrats think C and when in power do B. Libertarians are
generally against B. What we need is a substantial presence of
libertarians in both parties, so that when in power there is an
internal narrative that advises against doing B.
The key is the "internal narrative." The tricky part is getting each
coalition to value its libertarian contingent. To achieve this,
however, would seem to require the sort of political engagement that
at least some libertarians dispositionally dislike--which is how they
gravitated to libertarianism in the first place.
Like I said, I don't have anything particularly novel to say about
this. But casting the issue in terms of 2 competing electoral
coalitions may be more constructive than either employing
Republican/Democrat or conservative/liberal dichotomies.
References
1.
http://www.willwilkinson.net/flybottle/2009/02/16/the-hope-and-horror-of-liberaltarian-alignments/
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