In Your Heart, You Know the Right Hates Him
David Weigel | December 7, 2006, 10:06am
Reasonoid-made-good Matt Welch wonders,
over at an LA Times blog,
what role Barry Goldwater would have had in today's GOP. He was a
libertarian; the modern GOP isn't running thick with libertarians. So,
no; not much of a role in the party, certainly not a presidential
nomination.
That's all a jumping-off point for Welch's reasons why a "Liberaltarian" voter bloc is more or less a pipe dream.
1) There's rarely such a thing as a libertarian in local politics
(where most politics are practiced), because it's awful hard to grant
favors (or jobs) to either labor or business while cutting the size of
government.
Tell that to
Norm "Firecracker" Westwell! Still, basically true.
2) Self-described libertarians over the age of 40 who don't
belong to the Libertarian Party (which is to say, most of them) are
overwhelmingly likely to consider the GOP their default home, because
of taxes, the memory of anti-communism, and hatred of all things
McGovern/Carter (even though Carter was arguably the greatest
deregulation president ... though that's a rambling essay for another
time).
Also
true, but not the strongest argument against a growing
libertarian-Democrat alliance or free-floating Democratic bloc.
According to Pew, Boaz et al, there are
more libertarians under
40 than over 40, and that ratio is only going to get worse for the
oldsters unless Glenn Reynolds discovers the nanotech equivilent
Philosopher's Stone. (He probably considers this more likely than I
do.)
And in the partisan era these libertarians were born into, they watched
a pork-crazed Republican Congress and a disastrous Republican
presidency drastically expand the government left by sleazy but
basically pragmatic Democrat - expanding it into abortion clinics,
church charities, elementary schools, and of course Iraq.
3) Libertarianism just ain't that popular to begin with.
Ah,
and here we go. Absolutely the full set of libertarian virtues and
beliefs isn't popular, and will never achieve mass popularity. I don't
think Liberaltarians (or libertarians who recently voted for Democrats,
like me) expect that to fundamentally change. The way I read
Lindsey's original article,
I assumed we were talking about libertarians trading the battered wife
status they have in the GOP with a unloved but respected wife status in
the Democratic Party. We'll get a little movement on some of our
issues, but more importantly we'll get swing status. Two parties that
need Colorado, Nevada, Arizona, and the rest of the West to win the
presidency will naturally have to consider libertarian ideas in a way
they never had to when 1)libertarians were locked into the GOP
coalition and 2)the West was less populous.
That might be a pipe dream, but it's a reasonably optimistic
possibility that doesn't depend on libertarian ideas becoming
drastically more popular than they are.
John | December 7, 2006, 11:25am | #
A lot of libertarian ideas (drug legalization to name one) are out of the mainstream. Doesn't mean they are not correct, but being correct doesn't change the fact that they are out of the mainstream. Since both parties try to build a majority, they are equally bad on a lot of issues. I have yet to see a major figure in either party come out against the drug war and I don't see one iota of difference between the Reagan, Bush I, Clinton and Bush II administrations in its prosecution. Although the Republicans sometimes mouth commitment to small government, the past ten years has shown either party will spend like made to pay off its supporters given the opportunity. Further, even when the Republicans do show some commitment to small government they are pretty easily cowed by the Democrats and the partisan media.
The biggest bitch among Reason readers with the Republicans is foreign policy and anti-terrorist measures. Regardless of the merits of the arguments, how much of that is the Democrats playing Libertarians for chumps? Clinton, intervened in Bosnia and Kosovo. Now that the Democrats control Congress, I don't see any serious movement to force the U.S. out of Iraq or repeal any of the provisions of the Patriot Act Libertarians find so objectionable. In addition, the Patriot Act passed Congress nearly unanimously. It is kind of hard to believe that we wouldn't have the same thing after 9-11 regardless of which party was in charge. Had Al Gore been President after 9-11, we most certainly would have still gone into Afghanistan and gotten the Patriot Act. We probably wouldn't have gone into Iraq, but who is to say that we wouldn't have gone somewhere else like back to Somalia or Darfur. The point is that regardless of your opinion of Iraq, I don't think you can make the case that the Democrats are any less interventionist than the Republicans.
But, there are differences between the two parties that should matter to Libertarians. First, the Democrats are absolutely beholden to the unions. This should be loathsome to libertarians. Is there a bigger rent seeking anti-market force in America than unions? Second, Democrats are much less likely to support free trade than Republicans. True, there are free trade Democrats and protectionist Republicans, but the majority of Democrats are protectionist and the majority of Republicans are free traders. Third, the Democrats are much more anti-property rights than Republicans. The radical Greens wield a lot of influence over the Democratic Party. If you are in anyway concerned about regulatory takings, the Democrats can be a very objectionable party. Fourth, the Democrats are much more likely to support nanny-state regulations and prohibition through litigation of socially objectionable products. The Democrats have given us the tobacco lawsuits, the failed suits against gun manufacturers, the new war on fat food just to name three.
The one big difference between the two parties that cuts for the Democrats from a libertarian perspective is the religion factor. Republicans are much more likely to be religious and be moralistic about things like sex and porn and marriage. That is huge factor. Of course, I wouldn't discount the possibility of Democrats playing to the evangelicals more in the future. That is a lot of votes to be had and it is not that hard to tell them that Jesus would want them to pay more taxes and support more government social welfare programs.
Which party is better really comes down to what pisses you off more. I generally find the bible thumpers to be an annoying nuisance. I get pissed off about people trying to determine what I can eat and what I can say and what I can own, so I vote Republican. If you are more pissed off about gay-marriage, then you vote Democrat.
The Old Andrew | December 7, 2006, 12:09pm | #
I am old enough to remember Goldwater's candidacy...he didn't impress me then, or since.
What enthusiasm he generated among Republicans was largely owing to his hawkish foreign policy rhetoric (pre-Vietnam) and resistence to civil rights (he was the original "Southern Strategy" candidate...running poorly everywhere BUT the South).
His economic Libertarian musings were a drag on his candidacy, and his socially liberal views were a secret (in his campaign book he feigned piety).
After receiving one of the worst rebuffs from the public of any Republican candidates ever, he spent the rest of his career as an irrelevant Senator.
The sense in which the Goldwater candidacy launched the modern conservative movement largely boils down to the story of how it launched the political career of Ronald Reagan. Reagan WAS the movement from 64 to 80.
HERE's an interesting question. Could RWR be the candidate of "under-40" Libertarians, if he were alive and in fighting trim today? Likely not, because he was a pro-lifer and doubtless would have opposed same-sex marriage.
What really puzzles me is why many self-described Libertarians are so strict, dogmatic and intolerant of GOP politicians who ARE genuine economic conservatives, if they happen to be social conservatives also... or even in the case - as with Giuliani - when they're not.
But you will hear the "Libertarians For Blah-Blah" case made for Democratic politicos who are straight-ahead tax-spenders, protectionists and nativists...even whe the same politicos are foreighn policy hawks, indifferent to civil liberties issues, and apt to run to the Center on every controversial social issue.
The answer I suspect, is that the rank and file Libertarians-under-40 are so emotionally invested in the Blue State culture, that they see virtues in Democrats that just aren't there...and not-so-Under-40 pundits in the libertarian media see opportunities in the Blue-State media which are there.
grylliade | December 7, 2006, 2:10pm | #
The words "dirty towelheads" were yours. I've studied Islam enough to know it's NOT a peaceful religion.
Study more. Islam is neither peaceful nor warlike; it's a religion. Had Islam had the same intellectual history as Christianity, it would now be a peaceful religion. I personally trace the difference to the way that reason was treated in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in the religions. Christianity decided that reason could be used to interpret the world as consistent with its theology; witness the influence of Thomas Aquinas, whom several historians I know have labelled as the most important figure in Western history because of this. Islam decided that reason should take a back seat to faith, and so it turned its back on the vistas opening up before Western civilization and became the narrow, medieval religion we most often see today. Had it gone the other way, Islam would have been the one to reclaim the lost treasure of Greco-Roman civilization, and the Renaissance would have made Muslim civilization the center of the world.
Now, I'd say that the heavier strain of Semitic theology that exists in Islam, as opposed to the Semitic theology tempered with Greco-Roman thought that exists in Christianity, made it more
likely that Islam would follow the path it did, and Christianity would follow the path
it did. But . . . look at the accomplishments of Muslim civilization before its turn away from reason to faith. In almost every way it was more accomplished than Western civilization, oftentimes even centuries later. Whatever the Qur'an said, it was often ignored to allow the upper classes, at least, to enjoy the finer things in life. Was it more warlike than Christianity? At first. But consider: Christianity was established as the religion of the Roman Empire when it began its major spread. Christianity didn't
have to conquer; its conquests had unwittingly been made centuries before by pagan Roman generals. Islam, on the other hand, started off as the religion of a couple of minor trading cities on the coast of the Red Sea. It had no chance of spreading
except through conquest. Which method it embraced. But I think that if you look at both religions four centuries after they were founded, Islam and Christianity had spread equally as far. And had Christianity not had the tremendous good fortune of the Roman Empire, it might have more readily adopted conquest as its major method of spreading.
So yeah, given the last few centuries of history, you
might be able to say that Islam is not a peaceful religion. But when you look at Islam in its historical context, I think it's no more nor less inherently violent than Christianity. It's simply that historical circumstance has favored Christianity embracing peace and reason, and Islam embracing faith and war.*
* And before you atheists jump all over this: I'm fully aware of the ways in which Christianity has embraced neither peace nor reason. However, again,
in historical context, Christian civilization has been among the least hostile to reason, and Christianity has often been at least formally opposed to war, if not very active about it.
grylliade | December 7, 2006, 4:22pm | #
Clearly he was talking about Islam TODAY. And for that you don't seem to be disagreeing in calling it narrow and medieval.
Christians in third-world countries generally have a narrow, medieval faith. Look at Archbishop Peter Akinola, the Anglican primate of Nigeria. He has supported legislation to make homosexuality punishable by up to five years in prison. He has publicly advocated (however subtly and deniably) violence by Christians against Muslims in Nigeria. When a priest in his own church came forward to say that he was gay, and that he supported the ordination of gays in Nigeria, Akinola denied that the man even existed, and had ever been ordained in the church, even though it was provable that he had been. I'm certain that other examples exist.
The Episcopal Church in the United States, belonging to the same Anglican Communion as Akinola's church (for now, at least), consecrated an openly gay man living with his partner as a bishop. It has consistently advocated liberalizing Christian doctrine to stay consistent with the latest discoveries, whether they be in science or ethics (sometimes too eager to do so, in my opinion). This from a denomination often known as "the Republican party at prayer."
The same difference exists in Islam. Muslims in the West, at least those who have assimilated to Western society, are no more likely to be warlike than their non-Muslim counterparts. Yes, those Muslims who have consistently been denied membership in the society in which they live have been violent; effectively, Europe has allowed the importation of the third world into their own countries. But in the United States and Canada, Muslims have assimilated well. Sure, there are exceptions, but the same can be said of Christians in the United States. For Islam to
not be a peaceful religion, you'd have to see a marked difference in the adherents of Islam compared to the adherents of other religions
in the same environment. And that you don't see.
Or are you trying to excuse its violence by calling attention to its "unfortunate" history that got it there?
Of, for fuck's sake. Is that the nuclear option of conservatives? "You're just being a whiny liberal." It's not an "unfortunate" history; it's just history. If making the lives of Muslims in Muslim countries better meant erasing Islam from the face of the earth, I would support doing that. That, I think, is what people who say that that Islam is not a peaceful religion really mean: that Muslims will never embrace modern liberal society until they give up Islam.
That is what I object to. Rather than seeing Islam as an obstacle, I think we should rather view it as a potential ally. Islam has a lot of "hooks" to hang Enlightenment values from, and I think that that's the only way that Muslim countries will accept them. Or at least the easiest way. Making Islam out to be the bad guy, as somehow uniquely advocating violence in the modern world, is the surest path to never having peace in the Middle East. And in the end, that's my objective: a more peaceful world. Not in the wishy-washy, "can't we all just get along" way, but in the "dammit, it's the right thing to do" way. So fuck you and your insinuations that I'm trying to justify violence. Islam's history is no more justification for violence than "Islam is NOT a peaceful religon" is a justification for violence.
Johncjackson | December 8, 2006, 1:31am | #
As far as local politics and favors, I have found the biggest issues ( in my communities) locally are things like property taxes, school funding, liquor sales,etc.
And almost always these issues come down close to 50/50. For example, property tax increases are defeated 3 out 4 times normally, and pass or "lose" somewhere around 55/45 or closer. locally there are very few issues.
And a hardcore libertarian could easily take a stand and still agree with 40-50% of the voters. For example where I am if you oppose poperty tax increases for building new schools, support Sunday liquor sales, and oppose a sales tax increase and minimum wage increase- you agree with probably 40% of the voters. And on any 1 issue you might just be in a majority- Not out of the mainstream whatsoever.
Also "local" politics varies a lot more than national politics. As everyone knows ( right?) there are very "liberal" areas, very "conservative" areas, and more "libertarian"( though of course not 100% pure).
As I am not a political strategist, I could be wrong.
However, "nationally" there are a lot more issues and things are a lot more complex. Ds and Rs seem to hold contradictory positions, while "Ls/ls" ( in our minds, at least) take principled stands on issues. However, these consistently principled positions, on the whole, will only appeal to 1% of voters. Once you go through everything from abortion to immigration, borders, taxes, drug laws, sex laws,etc- it is difficult to find many people who agree with you on everything ( and/or not get completely pissed off by one of your "extreme" positions even if they agree with you 80%).
A Libertarian can ( and has won) win County Executive on a property tax issue. But that doesn't work on the bigger national stage. A town council, county, or other local candidate doesn;t really need to get into abortion, immigration, The Gold Standard, the fed, national sales tax, Ayn Rand, Hayek,etc.
