Collective rights, petty debates and real pain.

Because many libertarians came to their philosophy from the Right they often bring with them a style of discussion that betrays their roots. While philosophically their position may be correct the way in which they express themselves conveys meanings they do not intend and alienate the people whom they are hoping to address.

Libertarians believe in individual rights. I have no problem with that. Rights do reside entirely in the individual. There is no such thing as collective rights, just the rights of the individual. So it would seem logical for a libertarian to shun terms like “woman’s rights” or “gay rights” or “minority rights,” etc.

We should be clear that people use the term “rights” in two different ways, and without clarifying which one is using can lead to unnecessary confusion. When a libertarian says that someone has “rights” they are referring to the ideal situation, not to the actual situation. It is to the libertarian vision of individual rights that they are referring.

This causes an immediate problem as others may be using the term to describe the actual legal state of rights, not the ideal state of rights. Yes, gay people have precisely the same rights as straight people in the ideal sense of the term. In the actual sense of the term they do not.

Two men, each identical in every important sense of the word, who attempt to join the military may be treated entirely differently if one of those men is gay and the other is not. There is an inequality of legal rights, even if in the ideal sense of the word the two men should have precisely the same rights. Similarly two couples will be treated very differently when it comes to marriage rights if one couple is gay and the other is straight. Legally the rights of gay people in America today are not co-equal to the legal rights enjoyed by their heterosexual siblings.

Often when the term “gay rights” is used it is a term meant to address the inequality of rights that exist, not the ideal sense of rights. It is an attempt to move the actual rights enjoyed by gay people to an equal plain with the rights enjoyed by straight people. The term “gay rights” is often used by someone who has no intention of creating a system of unequal rights. It is not a “special” right that is being sought but precisely the same rights that have been denied gay people by law. Similarly the term “women’s rights” is not generally meant to be a situation where women have different, or superior rights, but precisely the same rights as men. This does not mean that some people use the terms to disguise a campaign for unequal rights, but most people who use these terms do not mean that at all. More often than not their opponents are actually the advocates of unequal rights before the law, individuals who wish to reserve special privileges to a class, race, gender, or sexual orientation.

Consider the likes of Maggie Gallagher and Jennifer Roback Morse. They fight for a system of marriage rights that excludes one class of people—gay couples. They want legal privileges reserved to another specific class of people alone. Yet opponents of equality of rights argue that it is the gay couples that are seeking “special” rights, when in truth they are attempting to eradicate special rights in favor of equality of rights.

There is also another aspect of “rights” which libertarians simply tend to forget, or never realized. While it is true that a person does not have rights because he is a member of a specific group it is true that individuals frequently have their rights violated precisely because he is a member of a specific group.

A woman who is gay may ideally have precisely the same rights as any other adult, but she may be denied some of those rights because she is gay. Taxation may violate rights on a relatively equal basis. A general sales tax hurts everyone regardless of what group he may be a member of while Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell disqualifies individuals on the basis of a collective trait, not an individual one.

Racists attack blacks, or Jews, or foreigners, not on the basis of their individuality, but on the basis of some collective trait. Ayn Rand described racism as the “lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man’s genetic lineage—the notion that a man’s intellectual and characterological traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry.” Rand is correct this is what racism does.

Modern prejudices or bigotries basically argue that an individual is not judged by his individual characteristics but simply because he is a member of some larger collective. Instead of judging on the basis of the content of their character the stigmatized individual is judged on the basis of his membership in some collective. Thus a woman may be deemed of lesser value because she is a woman, a black man may be treated like a criminal because he is black, and a gay man may be attacked physically or verbally simply because he is gay.

The bigot ignores all the aspects of the individual and instead focus on some shared collective trait. “All Muslims are... All homosexuals do... The problem with Jews is...” They don’t need to evaluate the individual because they assume the collective trait dominates. Thus all homosexual men are disqualified from the military, not because of any trait of the individual, but because of their group status. A Jew may be attacked, not because he or she has done anything wring, but just because they are Jew.

When individuals are attacked because of their group membership they will quite naturally and reasonable focus on how members of their group are being singled out for attacks. While the terms “gay rights” or “minority rights” or “woman’s rights” are not philosophical precise they are a reasonable response to the attacks these people suffer because they are members of groups. They are not singled out for attack on the basis of their individuality, but on the basis of a shared collective trait, usually one of no significance.

But, consider how libertarians respond to this understandable reaction by members of oppressed classes. The libertarian will often tend to ignore the fact that such people are being attacked for their membership in some larger collective. Instead of recognizing what is being conveyed they will attack the use of the collective rights terminology. So they will launch a high-sounding dismissal of the concept of “gay rights” while ignoring the way gay people are denied their rights due to the shared trait of their sexual orientation.

They are technically correct but they have defeated their own purpose. They are ignoring the real troubling issue at stake to concentrate on a less significant detail. By launching into a discourse on how rights are not collective traits they are not informing their listener about the nature of individual rights. They may mean to do that but they are not doing that. They are actually sending the message that they don’t care that the rights of certain people are being denied because of some collective trait. And that makes them sound like conservatives who are often the most vocal collectivists when it comes to denying equality of rights before the law.

The libertarian sentiment should naturally side with those who suffer oppression in a state or culture because of collective traits. Libertarians, who tend to be individualists, ought to be on the side of individuals who are being singled out because of collective, insignificant traits.

Libertarians ought to weigh the two sins being committed. On the one hand the victim uses a term that is imprecise and seems to convey that rights reside in collectives. On the other hand what they are addressing is how they are being harmed by a hate that singles them out collectively not individually. Of these two the violation of individual rights is surely far more severe than a loose use of a term.

The first reaction of the libertarian should be to acknowledge that an individual is having their rights violated due to a collectivist concept regarding who they are. First address the issues of the oppression and collectivist hate. Before you begin lecturing someone about loose terms address the real, significant violation of rights that these victims are attempting to convey. Don’t major on minors.

When I hear the terms “woman’s rights” or “gay rights” I see what people are attempting to convey, not a philosophical debate. Turning it into a philosophical debate ignores the pain and oppression that these people have experienced at the hands of bigots. That is what I would expect from conservatives, not from libertarians. Focus first on the main issues, defend the rights of the individual which are being violated, make an ally and a friend, and they worry about terminology. Put the intent of the phrase ahead of the literal interpretation and give the philosophy lecture after you are established your credibility.

Three rules for good living.

First, my apologies for being away, but I'm back.

Today I was doing some shopping and found myself humming some of the music of Virgil Gibson, the lead singer from the original Platters. I recently became a fan, not a fam in the rabid, stalking sense, just a fan in the sense that I enjoy his music, I enjoy his style and I like the man, even if we would vehemently disagree about religion.

During my recent trip I spent a short time talking with Virgil, who had expressed something to me about how he was impressed with libertarians and basically realized that is what he has always been. He also told me about some of his charitable activities and the projects that he works with, especially with kids.

I was thinking about his charitable work today and with my own increasing emphasis on the need for charity to create a better world, one we can be proud of living in. From all of this I formulated what I consider to be the three rules for good living.

Rule #1: Never do anything to violate the life, liberty or property of another person.

This is the prime directive of libertarianism, which is an ethical system that tells me how I must treat others, at the very minimum. It is not the be all and end all of life, but it is the foundation on which all else has to be built. A good house must be built on a firm foundation. You need the foundation in order to have a good house but the foundation is NOT the house. You need more.

Rule #2: Take responsibility for yourself. It is your responsibility to pay your bills, correct your own mistakes, and sustain your own life.

The nature of our species is such that for us to live we have to have input. By input I mean we need certain resources directed to our uses. We need food, liquid, shelter, medical care and such. I like to look at life like a bank account. There are withdrawals and deposits and there is a balance. If you overdraw the account somebody has to pay.

If you overdraw your life account some else has to pay. There really is no such thing as a free lunch. We must find the resources we need someplace. We may borrow from others or we inflict the costs on others. If we do not pay the costs ourselves we are actually violating our first rule for living—–by imposing our costs on others we harm others.

This is easy to forget because the harm we inflict is often indirect. If I mug an old lady to buy something I right the harm I inflict is direct, explicit and guilt-inducing. It would be for most people, which is why only a few engage in open criminal assaults on others. This does not mean that they eschew such practices altogether, unfortunately they want the self-directed benefits of robbing others while trying to avoid the guilt-inducing aspect of the activity——they seek indirect means of inflicting harm on others and surround it with high-sounding, often altruistic, motivations.

The most efficient means of indirectly exploiting others is to hire political officials to do the work on your behalf. Frederic Bastiat put it well: "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."

You must take responsibility for yourself make sure your deposits do not exceed your withdrawals, and make sure you don't inflict harm on others. And you must make sure you don't inflict indirect harm on others as well. Don't hire state agents to steal on your behalf.

Rule #3: Try to do some good for others.

The first two rules prevent you from doing harm to others. And they require you to act in the voluntary sector in order to secure the inputs you need for life. That will mean that you must engage in trade. And if you only engage in voluntary exchange of goods and services then each such transaction will benefit others. That is one of the miracles of free exchange——it can increase total wealth with increased production.

For instance, if you sell a vegetable to a family you value the proceeds you receive higher than you value the vegetable. Similarly, they must value the vegetable higher than what they gave you. Both of you exchanged voluntarily and both of you were better off because of it.

And while market exchanges are wonderful, the reality of the world is that there are places in the world, and people who are unable to make those exchanges——often through no fault of their own.

I have seen enough of the world to know that there are governments and systems which create obstacles preventing people from doing well. One of the most absurd claims made against libertarians is that they believe the poor and needy are at fault for their state. That undercuts a basic principle of libertarianism——that institutional structures can inflict great harm on people.

Throughout the Third World people suffer because their governments inflict marketing boards on them, which confiscate the wealth they produce. These boards force food producers to sell to them at below-market rates. The boards, who should I say the politicians who control them, then sell the produce at market rates keeping the proceeds while ripping-off the poor. We have ethanol subsidies that push up world food prices so that the poor have trouble feeding themselves. Around the world political structures reduce the supply of medical care while encouraging greater consumption, resulting in a constant process of rising costs and frustration.

While there is no shortage of individuals who made decisions that overdrew their life-account, the world if filled with people who are victims of coercive institutional structures which make it difficult for them to achieve a decent life.

Thre is a real, pervasive, and unavoidable need for human compassion and charity to undo some of the harms inflicted by coercive institutional structures.

Libertarians preach voluntary charity as being superior to state welfare. I believe that myself. And that brings me to a very important lesson for libertarians: libertarians who want private charity must themselves practice it.

Charity is necessary to undo these harms. I would argue that coercive charity is unlikely to effectively reduce the harms inflicted by coercive structures. Coercion begets coercion, harms inflict further harms. It is a never ending cycle of pain. Mitigating the pain inflicted by institutional structures requires peaceful, voluntary actions outside those structures.

Charity, voluntarily given, is inherently libertarian. It is also, I believe, one of the most subversive means available to undermine the coercive structures that are harming our world. Anyone can talk about healing our world, but it takes individual compassion to actually do it. Even if we were to successfully change the structure of the world, to one of entirely voluntary interactions and exchanges, it would take decades, perhaps centuries, to undo the misery and harm already inflicted. Long after a utopia is implemented, if such a thing is even feasible, there will be need for human compassion and charity.

Libertarians should practice what they preach. Those who are unable to do so should just shut up.

That brings me full circle to what Virgil Gibson was saying. He basically said he was an instinctual libertarian without realizing it. He was someone who believed in not harming others, and trying to undo the harms they had suffered already through his charitable actions. For me that made clearer the intimate link between fundamental libertarian principles, such as the non-initiation of force and voluntary exchange, with that of individual compassion and charity.

And just for the fun of it, here is some of Virgil in action.

Riches of embarrasment: when libertarians associate with wackjobs

One of the great problems of the campaign to get libertarians to move to New Hampshire was that the organization pushing the campaign included a lot of right-wing cranks in the campaign. And that means the movement was associated with some wackjobs.

Add in the continuing worship by some libertarians of the extremely cranky Ron Paul as a problem as well. Paul has long been associated with extreme Right nut groups like the John Birch Society and even nuttier types like conspiracist loon Alex Jones. Paul does have libertarian tendencies but then most people do, at least on some issues. But he is decidedly anti-libertarian on issues as well and, worse yet, he promotes certain theories and organizations that are just insane, perhaps literally. The continuing deification of Ron Paul as some sort of libertarian hero legitimizes the wacky groups Paul associates with, including the Birchers, Jones and others.

One example of how these leads people astray is a story that has gone viral with the wacky Right. According to them a young couple, Jonathan Irish and Stephanie Taylor (who is married to another man) had a child together and the wicked State came in and "kidnapped" the child merely because Irish is a member of the Right-wing Oath Keepers group.

If that is all there was to the story then it would be of concern. And some libertarians, who tilt farther Right than the tower in Pisa, started spreading the story and protesting it. I didn't mention it for two reasons. One is that I assumed that there was more to the story than meets the eye. Second, the Oath Keepers association made me wonder what else was going on. The one time I saw an Oath Keeper speaker it was at a truly wacky conference, which of course included Ron Paul, and some absolutely insane types. Oath Keepers seemed to be typical far Right types to me and nothing for genuine libertarians to be excited about.

I figured I would wait and see what materialized before shooting off my mouth and making claims that would prove embarrassing. I have long ago realized that any association with these Right-wing groups, who are notoriously dishonest in how they report facts (as are far Left groups), hurts libertarianism more than it helps.

What I read about the so-called victims in this case reeks of low-class white trash. Now, that is not a crime, but it ought to cause one to consider the values of the people involved and what else may be going on.

Irish lives off of state welfare, while hating the state. His girlfriend, Taylor, is married to another man. Irish makes excuses for his welfare taking. He says he takes government welfare because he is blind in his left eye. Of course, plenty of people who are blind in one eye manage to find productive jobs, and earn their own way. In fact, plenty of people who are blind in both eyes manage to do that. If this were a recent disability I could understand, but this was a condition he had since childhood. He apparently is well enough to stage demonstrations and be a political activist but becomes too disabled when it comes to looking for a job.

He also says that his girlfriend suffers form a "stress-induced" problem which means she can't work and that he has to stay with her to take care of her. I certainly can understand that sometimes there are stress-induced problems that people have—been there, done that. But, I also know that "stress-induced" conditions are easily manufactured and often have been, especially when it comes to collecting welfare from the state.

Irish is quite vocal about how he is a victim of the state. And he is absolutely convinced he is being persecuted for belonging to the nutty Oath Keepers, a group founded by a former staff member for Ron Paul. Supposedly the group is for law enforcement and military types who promise to never violate the Constitution (however they interpret it). But I have to wonder if that is really true, especially if Irish is a member. He's unemployed so not in the military or law enforcement. And certainly any disability that prevents him from working would prevent previous military service as well, especially since he had the blindness in the one eye since childhood. Further research shows Oath Keepers lets anyone join.

Personally I wouldn't mind active police members or military service members refused to perform unconstitutional acts. But I wouldn't count on Oath Keeper members from what I see. All the board of directors, that are listed on their web site, are inactive in such endeavors. That is, they are former police officer and former members of the military—though obviously people like Irish apparently qualify as members as well. Dare I say it is easy to pledge to disobey invalid orders when one is not being given orders. Oath Keepers is as much a group of law officers as the Union of Concerned Scientists is a scientific organization. Both are political groups masquerading as something else.

Of course Oath Keepers is milking the matter for all they can. Their web site has a long rant about the matter that briefly mentions that there are "very serious allegations" in the affidavit that Irish was given. But Oath Keepers "out of repspect for the privacy of the parents" won't tell anyone what they are.

Shouldn't that raise some red flags? There are clearly issues involved in this case which have NOTHING to do Oath Keepers, issues that the OK founder admits are "very serious allegations." But that doesn't stop people from jumping to the conclusion that Irish is a victim of an over-active state. He may well be, or he might not be.

So what are those other allegations? Oath Keepers won't tell you, I will. As for privacy, there is no privacy in this case since Irish has been publicly portraying himself as a victim and holding press conferences.

Let us recount some of what has happened. Irish and Taylor have moved-in together. Taylor has two children with her actual husband who were apparently living with her and Irish at one point. The couple lost custody of those children during a trial sometime ago. At that time a judge determined that Irish physically abused the other two other children. Now this is rather serious and ought to overshadow whether Irish is a member of some far Right group.

In addition, the affidavit says that Irish has a "lengthy history of domestic violence," and that in previous incidents Taylor said he choked her and beat her. Previous incidents of violence by Irish were sufficient enough that he was ordered to take a domestic violence course but he dropped out of that.

The affidavit seemed to mention Irish's association with the Oath Keepers but that was not the reason for taking the child into custody. Oath Keepers is mentioned because Irish has gone out and armed himself rather heavily. It would seem that this was mentioned because of the history of violence on the part of Irish. If I were dealing with someone with a history of violence I would want to know if they were armed. Irish, of course, glosses over the abuse and claims that the mention of OK and his guns is the REASON for the custody order. But having already been found guilty of domestic violence, against children and Taylor, seems to be the main issue here.

Defenders of Irish seem to take no account of his history of violence against children. One protester, who said he was part of the "freedom movement" used absurd logic to defend Irish. The man said: "Maybe he's not that great a guy. Maybe he has a record. But just because the government says it's so, I don't believe it. The fact that there are documents about it is meaningless. but what they do is no different if I kidnapped the baby."

If that statement is accurate, the man is a moron. He said that he refuses to believe the domestic violence simply because a government agency said it happened. That is asinine.

It is true that government can alleged domestic abuse where none existed and use this as a tool for other means. But, more often than not, the government tends to ignore real abuse that has been committed against children. A substantial portion, if not the vast majority, of such custody orders are instituted after abuse has been documented. There are all sorts of political pressures that distort government intervention in child custody, that is absolutely true. But that there are bad cases of this doesn't mean that all allegation and convictions of child abuse are false.

Anyone can allege abuse and a huge number of the allegations are proven unfounded. But when courts rule that abuse has taken place, the likelihood is that abuse has taken place.

There is no shortage of paranoid delusion conspiracies on the part of the Right. But such thinking has no place in libertarianism. There are plenty of innocent people who are victims of state-induced injustice, we don't need to manufacture cases and try to make guilty people look innocent.

Police reports show numerous domestic violence incidents with the man. He and his married girlfriend have already lost custody of two of her children due to his abuse. When such cases happen, and they do happen, it is not atypical for the state to take custody of other children when they are born. That the state frequently botches up doesn't make this case a botch-up as well. And the incentives in the state system are perverted in the opposite direct—that is they are more likely to miss real abuse than they are to allege it when it doesn't happen.

Llosa's "Confessions of a Liberal"

After I posted the article about Mario Vargas Llosa being a libertarian one reader very passionately disputed that. The dispute posted did not actually offer any evidence that Llosa was not a libertarian but merely accused me of imposing American labels on other parts of the world. Having actually lived in both hemispheres, five countries and four continents, I am rather aware of how words are used. For instance, in much of the world if you say you are liberal the term implies you are libertarian in your outlook. The same is not true in the United States.

In the US many genuine liberals use modifiers to distinguish themselves from the illiberal socialists who have dishonestly taken the label "liberal" to apply it to themselves. These genuine liberals may used modifiers such as I just did, "genuine," or others like "classical," or "old." When Ludwig von Mises wrote his defense of libertarian thinking in 1922 he called it Liberalism, When it was republished in the 1980s a subtitle was added, "In the Classical Tradition," to distinguish it from the pretend liberals on the radical Left. The famed libertarian Milton Friedman often referred to himself as a liberal. The libertarianish ACT Party, in New Zealand, has as its subtitle, "The Liberal Party."

I found that in places in Europe the use of the word libertarian had similar problems. When I was in Paris for the bicentennial, in 1989, I took some time out to meet with Pastor Joseph Duce at his church. Duce was an outspoken advocate for gay equality and did a lot of counseling on sexual matters. It was widely believed that some very senior government officials had sought him out on such matters, which may be the motive for his murder at the hands of mysterious "police" agents. Duce heard I was at a libertarian conference and told me libertarians didn't want him on the radio because he was a minister. I was baffled. The more we talked the more I pieced together. He used the word to describe far Left anarchists. When I said the term had another meaning in the US and explained it to him he was fascinated and called his church staff in to listen to the discourse. He was quite taken by the ideas. Not long after that visit uniformed police, with badges and ID showed up at his home and "escorted" him to the police station. He disappeared. Years later his body was discovered in a wooded area.

So, it is very true that the same word is used in different ways, in different places, at different times. So what did Llosa mean by the term "liberal?" Llosa, lucky for us has not be reticent to describe his beliefs. In one interview he said that he got interested in "liberalism" and then said that the branch of liberalism to which he referred was "libertarianism." He capped that off with the comment: "That's what I am."

When the far Left attacked him as " neo-liberal" he ridiculed the label. He said he was not a neo anything, just a liberal, and he meant in the same free market sense as Milton Friedman, who he admired greatly. That Llosa means libertarian in the same sense as it is used in the United States is absolutely clear. He gave a talk, Confessions of a Liberal, where he outlined his views.

He supports depoliticized, or free, markets. He wants separation of church and state, private property to be respected, supports legalized abortion, and wants gay marriage. His "liberalism" would be called libertarianism in the United States. His support for an economy free of political manipulation distinguishes himself quite clearly from his the socialist/progressive Left. He has, in fact, changed from being a socialist to being a critic of socialism. But he is NO conservative either. He doesn't assert a belief in a god, doesn't hate gay people, and certainly is not fearful of Hispanic immigrants. He does not hold to the conservative social agenda. Llosa's politics dispute socialism and conservatism. He wants freedom in both the economic sphere and the social sphere. That is the essence of libertarianism.

In 1988 Llosa penned the foreword to one of the the most important libertarian works in human history, at least in my estimation: The Other Path, by fellow Peruvian Hernado de Soto. In the foreword Llosa makes clear his commitment to depoliticized markets and praises the black markets of Latin America as reasonable response to the mercantalist policies of the governments. Llosa made the same points that I have made in this blog—that elites use political regulation to redistribute wealth and rights away from the poor to themselves. He wrote:

"The path taken by the black-marketeers—the poor—is not the reinforcement and magnification of the state but a radical pruning and reduction of it. They do not want planned, regimented collectivization by monolithic governments; rather, they want the individual, private initiative and enterprise to be responsible for leading the battle against underdevelopment and poverty.

Allow me to reprint some excerpts from his speech "Confessions of a Liberal." You will note that Llosa directly addresses the differing use of the terms that I discuss at the beginning.


"Here in the United States, and in the Anglo-Saxon world in general, the term "liberal" has leftist connotations and is sometimes associated with being a socialist and a radical. On the other hand, in Latin America and Spain, where the word was coined in the 19th Century to describe the rebels who fought against the Napoleonic occupation, they call me a liberal--or, worse yet, a neo-liberal--to exorcize or discredit me, because the political perversion of our semantics has transformed the original meaning of the term—a lover of liberty, a person who rises up against oppression--to signify conservative or reactionary, that is, something which, when it comes from the mouth of a progressive, means to be an accomplice to all the exploitation and injustices befalling the world's poor."


"With regard to religion, gay marriage, abortion and such, liberals like me, who are agnostics as well as supporters of the separation between church and state and defenders of the decriminalization of abortion and gay marriage, are sometimes harshly criticized by other liberals who have opposite views on these issues."

"Thus, the liberal I aspire to be considers freedom a core value. Thanks to this freedom, humanity has been able to journey from the primitive cave to the stars and the information revolution, to progress from forms of collectivist and despotic association to representative democracy. The foundations of liberty are private property and the rule of law; this system guarantees the fewest possible forms of injustice, produces the greatest material and cultural progress, most effectively stems violence and provides the greatest respect for human rights. According to this concept of liberalism, freedom is a single, unified concept. Political and economic liberties are as inseparable as the two sides of a medal. Because freedom has not been understood as such in Latin America, the region has had many failed attempts at democratic rule. Either because the democracies that began emerging after the dictatorships respected political freedom but rejected economic liberty, which inevitably produced more poverty, inefficiency and corruption, or because they installed authoritarian governments convinced that only a firm hand and a repressive regime could guarantee the functioning of the free market. This is a dangerous fallacy. It has never been so. This explains why all the so-called "free market" Latin American dictatorships have failed. No free economy functions without an independent, efficient justice system and no reforms are successful if they are implemented without control and the criticism that only democracy permits. Those who believed that General Pinochet was the exception to the rule because his regime enjoyed economic success have now discovered, with the revelations of murder and torture, secret accounts and millions of dollars abroad, that the Chilean dictator, like all of his Latin American counterparts, was a murderer and a thief.

Political democracy and the free market are foundations of a liberal position. But, thus formulated, these two expressions have an abstract, algebraic quality that dehumanizes and removes them from the experience of the common people. Liberalism is much, much more than that. Basically, it is tolerance and respect for others, and especially for those who think differently from ourselves, who practice other customs and worship another god or who are non-believers. By agreeing to live with those who are different, human beings took the most extraordinary step on the road to civilization. It was an attitude or willingness that preceded democracy and made it possible, contributing more than any scientific discovery or philosophical system to counter violence and calm the instinct to control and kill in human relations. It is also what awakened that natural lack of trust in power, in all powers, which is something of a second nature to us liberals."

"Defending the individual is the natural consequence of believing in freedom as an individual and social value par excellence because within a society, freedom is measured by the level of autonomy citizens enjoy to organize their lives and work toward their goals without unjust interference, that is, to strive for "negative freedom," as Isaiah Berlin called it in his celebrated essay. Collectivism was inevitable during the dawn of history, when the individual was simply part of the tribe and depended on the entire society for survival, but began to decline as material and intellectual progress enabled man to dominate nature, overcome the fear of thunder, the beast, the unknown and the other--he who had a different color skin, another language and other customs. But collectivism has survived throughout history in those doctrines and ideologies that place the supreme value of an individual on his belonging to a specific group (a race, social class, religion or nation). All of these collectivist doctrines--Nazism, fascism, religious fanaticism and communism--are the natural enemies of freedom and the bitter adversaries of liberals. In every age, that atavistic defect, collectivism, has reared its ugly head to threaten civilization and throw us back to the age of barbarism. Yesterday it was called fascism and communism; today it is known as nationalism and religious fundamentalism.

A great liberal thinker, Ludwig von Mises, was always opposed to the existence of liberal parties because he felt that these political groups, by attempting to monopolize liberalism, ended up denaturalizing it, pigeonholing it, forcing it into the narrow molds of party power struggles. Instead, he believed that the liberal philosophy should be a general culture shared with all the political currents and movements co-existing in an open society supportive of democracy, a school of thought to nourish social Christians, radicals, social democrats, conservatives and democratic socialists alike."

"Of course, I certainly do not like everything that occurs in the United States. For example, I lament the fact that many states still apply the aberration that is the death penalty, as well as several other things, such as the fact that repression takes priority over persuasion in the war on drugs, despite the lessons of Prohibition. But after completing these additions and subtractions, I believe that the United States has the most open, functional democracy in the world and the one with the greatest capacity for self-criticism, which enables it to renew and update itself more quickly in response to the challenges and needs of changing historical circumstances. It is a democracy which I admire for what Professor Samuel Huntington fears: that formidable mixture of races, cultures, traditions and customs, which have succeeded in co-existing without killing each other, thanks to that equality before the law and the flexibility of the system that makes room for diversity at its core, within the common denominator of respect for the law and for others."

"In my opinion, the presence in the United States of almost 40 million people of Latin American heritage does not threaten the social cohesion or integrity of the country. To the contrary, it bolsters the nation by contributing a cultural and vital current of great energy in which the family is sacred. With its desire for progress, capacity for work and aspirations for success, this Latin American influence will greatly benefit the open society. Without denouncing its origins, this community is integrating with loyalty and affection into its new country and forging strong ties between the two Americas. This is something to which I can attest almost firsthand. When my parents were no longer young, they became two of those millions of Latin Americans who immigrated to the United States in search of opportunities their countries did not offer. They lived in Los Angeles for almost 25 years, earning a living with their hands, something they never had to do in Peru. My mother was employed for many years as a factory worker in a garment factory full of Mexicans and Central Americans, with whom she made many excellent friends. When my father died, I thought my mother would return to Peru, as he had requested. But she decided to stay here, living alone and even requesting and obtaining U.S. citizenship, something my father never wanted to do. Later, when the pains of old age forced her to return to her native land, she always recalled the United States, her second country, with pride and gratitude. For her there was never anything incompatible about considering herself both Peruvian and American; there was no hint of conflicting loyalties.

Perhaps this memory is something more than a filial evocation. Perhaps we can see a glimpse of the future in this example. We dream, as novelists tend to do: a world stripped of fanatics, terrorists and dictators, a world of different cultures, races, creeds and traditions, co-existing in peace thanks to the culture of freedom, in which borders have become bridges that men and women can cross in pursuit of their goals with no other obstacle than their supreme free will.

Then it will not be necessary to talk about freedom because it will be the air that we breathe and because we will all truly be free. Ludwig von Mises' ideal of a universal culture infused with respect for the law and human rights will have become a reality."

I have mentioned three clear, explicitly political essays that Llosa wrote. They are the afterword that appeared in The Liberal Tide, the foreword that appeared in de Soto's The Other Path, and Confessions of a Liberal. All three essays, are defenses of a libertarian point of view. What I especially appreciate is that Llosa spoke truth to power. His essay, Confessions of a Liberal, was presented to the conservative American Enterprise Institute. That is the speech were he said he was an agnostic, supported separation of church and state, supported Hispanic immigration to America, was in favor of legalized abortion and gay marriage and opposed the war on drugs. Yet the talk was also a defense of the free market. This is classic, and classy, libertarianism. Llosa tells conservative opponents of liberty the same thing he tells Progressive opponents of liberty.

Libertarian wins Nobel Prize in literature.

The great Peruvian novelist, Mario Vargas Llosa, won the Nobel Prize in literature.

Llosa began his career as a Marxist and was originally a supporter of Castro's revolution in Cuba. But over the years Llosa has become progressively more and more libertarian.

When Peru attempted to nationalize the financial system in 1987 Llosa led protests, drawing as many as 120,000 people to his rallies. He later launched a campaign for the presidency. After the first round of voting Llosa was in the lead but forced into a run of with Alberto Fujimora. Fujimora had the support of the Far Left as well as various evangelical churches and organizations who united forces in order to stop the common enemy of classical liberalism.

Facing constant death threats from the radical Left Llosa left Peru. Llosa's novels exposed authoritarianism and defended the individual. And it is for this that he was awarded the prize: "for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt, and defeat." While LLosa continues to write fiction he is president of the Fundaction Internacional para la Libertad. His son, Alvario Vargas Llosa is a libertarian writer living in the United States

Llosa wrote an essay, in response to attacks from the socialist Left that he was a "neo-liberal." In that he described how many Latin American Leftists, such as himself, "have evolved from being bitter enemies of economic liberty to embracing the wise confession of Vaclav Havel: 'Though my heart may be left of center, I have always known that the only economic system that works is a market economy... This the only natural economy, the only kind that makes sense, the only one that can lead to prosperity, because it is the only one that reflects the nature of life itself.'"

In that essay Llosa wrote:

The present battle is perhaps less arduous for [classical] liberals than the one that our teachers fought. In that battle, central planners, police states, single-party regimes, and state-controlled economies had on their side an empire that was armed to the teeth, as well as formidable public relations campaign, conducted in the heart of democracy by a fifty column of intellectuals seduced by socialist ideas. Today, the battle that we must join is not against great totalitarian thinkers like Marx, or intelligent social democrats like John Maynard Keynes, but, rather, against stereotypes and caricatures that attempto to introduce doubt and confusion in the democratic camp; hence the multiple offensive launched from various trenches against the monster nicnamed neoliberalism.

Llosa said that classical liberals must realize that "we are working toward an attainable goal. The idea of a world united around a culture of liberty is not a utopia but a beautiful and achievable reality that justifies our efforts."

Llosa himself says he was completely surprised by the award. Llosa long believed that his libertarian sentiments would exclude him from possible winning. As he joked: "I have taken all the precautions necessary for them never to give it to me." One bookie in England, who takes bets on such things said they would be sending Llosa a "crate of champaign" "because he's helped us dodge a massive payout." Llosa was an outsider pegged with a 25-1 chance of winning. Peru's president, Alan Garcia, said: "This is a great day, because the world has recognized the visionary intelligence of Mario Vargas Llosa and his libertarian and democratic ideals." Llosa himself said in an interview that "I became very enthusiastic with the branch of liberalism which is libertarian, so this is what I am."

Llosa's full essay in included in The Liberal Tide: From Tyranny to Liberty, which is well worth purchasing. Those who insist on using Amazon may purchase the book for $11.95 here. Those who wish to buy it directly for $11.95, given the full profit to a libertarian organization instead of giving 20% to Amazon, may order a copy by calling 480-684-2651.

Utopian libertaians and the fantasy tea pot

This blog has argued that the so-called Tea Party movement is nothing for libertarians to get excited about. But many libertarians don't listen, particularly the Utopian types who believe that some radical libertarian agenda is going to sweep America. Sorry, but that is simply moronic. It isn't going to happen. This doesn't mean that a libertarianish vision may not come to dominate American politics but the types who imagine some radical vision of that libertarianism are not going to find it happening in their lifetime, or even that of their great-great-great-great grandchildren.

Since these types simply ignore the reality of the situation they find succor in imagining libertarian successes where they aren't. Yet, ironically, they ignore libertarian reforms where they are. Witness how they still cling to the illusion that Ron Paul is a libertarian. Or, even worse, that Randal Paul is libertarian. But the wackiest bunch are those who honestly think the Tea Party movement is libertarian.

We have seen phenomenal successes in watching Americans become more tolerant of gay people, with support for equality of rights rising at a rate that pollsters find astounding. Normally social values change slowly but in that area there has been rapid change. One reason is that the equality movement often argues their case on the basis of traditional American values about the individual's right to equality before the law.

Quite honestly, where the hell are the libertarians? Now and then some libertarian puts out a press release. But all these Utopian frauds are silent about this issue. They can imagine healing the world and yet can't get their brains around a single issue where libertarians could be leading a successful charge against the power of the state. Instead, these libertarians are embracing the knuckle-draggers in the Tea Party movement.

Why? The reason is simple, simpletons don't look any deeper than the surface. Polls show that Tea Party members want "smaller" government, so do most Americans actually. Tea Party activists loudly talk about that and the crank issues like auditing the Fed—which won't accomplish a thing.

The rhetoric of the Tea Party can sound vaguely libertarianish provided you don't actually bother to look at any of the other beliefs held by these people. I reported here about my visit to a Tea Party rally, which I argued was filled with hateful xenophobes who were more worried about bashing Mexicans than they were taxes. But they would get up and say they want smaller government and the libertarians would drool in response—like mindless Pavlovian dogs.

What did this smaller government mean? Talk to the "patriots" and they want government regulating the workforce heavily to prevent Mexicans from getting jobs. They want government to go after landlords who rent to Mexicans. They want Mexicans stopped from opening bank accounts. How do they accomplish all of this—with a system of rigid controls to monitor the ID of people seek jobs, try to rent apartments, or open bank accounts. The particularly inane libertarians will even applaud the bigots for wanting to "protect the borders" (from maids, busboys and gardeners) but urge them to ignore the ID requirements. You can't have the one without the other. The xenophobia of the loony Right fuels the laws that libertarians are find onerous. Yet libertarians applaud movements that throw gasoline on the fires that libertarians say they want put out.

Now we have a survey of Tea Party movement activists. The Public Religion Research Institute looked at the make-up of Tea Party activists, who they are, and what they want. And guess what? They aren't libertarians by any stretch of the imagination.

Who they most closely resemble are the worst elements of the Religious Right. They have more in common with the Neanderthals in Christian fundamentalism than they do with libertarians. A survey of Tea Party activists shows that they say they support small government—not this is what they claim they want but their other values betray that claim.

About half of all Tea Party activists told the pollsters that they are active in the Religious Right. They are almost exclusively Republican in party preferences and they are less libertarian on social issues than average. Realistically they are less libertarian than the average American not more so.

What the survey found was that the Tea Party was mainly a white, evangelical movement. These are people who think Fox News is a source for accurate information and who think Sarah Palin is the messiah.

Here are a few of the findings regarding the Tea Party.

First, only about 11% of all Americans consider themselves as part of this movement.

Second, they are not politically independent as they are often portrayed. According to survey: "More than three-quarters identify with (48%) or lean towards (28%) the Republican Party. More than 8-in-10(83%) say they voting for or leaning towards Republicans candidates...." In the general population about one-third of Americans identify with the Republican party, one-third with the Democrats and the rest are independents. These Tea Party types are more Republican than about any other group, right up there with fundamentalist Christians.

Third, the survey found that: "Americans who identify with the Tea Party movement are mostly social conservatives, not libertarians on social issues. Nearly two-thirds (63%) say abortion should be illegal in all or most cases, and less than 1-in-5 (18%) support allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry. In other words, on these issues they are actually less libertarian than the average voter.

When the survey looked at the demographics of the Tea Party they found a "striking similarity between the demographic of Americans who consider themselves part of the Tea Party movement and Americans who consider themselves part of the Christian conservative movement." The survey found: "On nearly all basic demographic characteristics, there are no significant differences between Americans who identify with the Tea Party movement and those who identify with the Christian conservative movement." The only significant difference was the fundamentalists were more likely to be women and Tea Party activists were more likely to be men.

Tea Party activists are more likely to say they are conservatives, than do fundamentalists. They are more likely to say they are Republicans than do fundamentalist Christians. In this sense the Tea Party is actually worse than the Republican Party.

When compared to the general population the Tea Party nutters are more likely to be white evangelicals (36% to 21%). About one-third of the American people imagine that the Bible is the "literal" word of God. With the Tea Party it is 47%. Only 64% think God "is a person with whom one can have a relationship" but 71% of the Tea Party believe that. When it comes to the delusion that America was, or is, a Christian nation the Tea Party types are actually more deluded that evangelicals or the public. About 42% of all Americans buy into the "Christian America" theory, about 43% of evangelicals do, but 55% of the Tea Party thinks that way.

And, as I have argued, the Tea Party movement is far more antagonistic to minorities than the general public. Asked if government has "paid too much attention to the problems of blacks and other minorities" 37% of public says that is true. But for the Tea Party members agreement with the view is 58%.

Where immigration has divided the general public it has unified the Tea Party. About 48% of Americans think immigrants are a burden while 44% say they make the country better—almost an even split especially if margins of error in polling are taken into account. But 65% of Tea Party members take the anti-immigrant view, which is similar to the view that evangelicals take on the matter (64%).

When it comes to marriage equality rights for gays the Tea Party is on par with evangelicals in their fervent opposition. When given three choices for gay couples, about 37% of the general population opt for full marriage and 27% support civil unions, with one-third wanting no legal recognition for gay couples at all. But only 18% of the Tea Party movement support marriage equality, a statistical tie with the 16% of evangelicals who do.

The survey found that 58% of the general public think undocumented immigrants should have a means by which they can become legal citizens. Evangelicals are not quite so supportive with only 48% favoring such a move. The survey quite naturally found that the most anti-immigrant group around, even more anti-immigrant than Republicans in general, were Tea Party members, were 61% said they opposed immigration reform.

What it comes down to is that the Tea Party advocates want small government for themselves and organized state oppression for groups they dislike. These people are not libertarians and this survey shows that. So when will these deluded libertarians wake up and realize that?

Penn on government and libertarianism.

I agree.

Mushy libertarianism vs the religious impulse.

One of the themes that I periodically pay attention to is what I call the mushy libertarianism of the American mainstream. I wrote that the mainstream politics in this country is libertarian but "not consistent" and "not principled." I have called this mushy libertarianism a revival of the Mugwumps.

A new poll from Associated Press backs up my general analysis. Over and over the dominant opinion, among Americas, leans in a libertarian direction. Here are some of the details:

Three-quarters of the public say that the US Constitution "is an enduring document that remains relevant today." Sixty percent say that that the "rule of law" should come first, even if it does at the expense of public safety.

The Religious Right regularly argues that the rights of gay people should be subjected to a majority vote. The majority doesn't agree. Just 35% say, "If a majority of people want something to happen, the rights of a few shouldn't stand in the way" and 62% agree that "the rights of everyone should be protected, even when that means saying no to something majority of people want to happen."

Only one in four Americans would support giving the president more power, even if it would improve the economy. Three-quarters of the public opposed the idea. Half the public say "it is up to each individual to secure health insurance" and less than half say the government ought to provide it. But 83% oppose the central feature of Obama's health care plan, government mandates requiring people to buy health insurance.

Half of all Americans say they favor a way for illegal immigrants, already in the country, to legalize their position, while just under half oppose the idea. Seventy-percent agree that "people should have the right say what they believe even if they take positions that seem deeply offensive to most people."

A clear majority, 58%, now believe that same-sex couples are entitled to same benefits as opposite-sex couples and that government should not distinguish between them. In 2008, 51% agreed, in 2009 it was 54%. While support rose by 7 points opposition declined by 5 points. Even more encouraging, from a libertarian point of view, is that a majority of Americans now believe the federal government ought to recognize gay marriages: 52% to 46% opposed. This is the second national poll in recent weeks showing a majority of Americans now support gay marriage.

Fifty-one percent of Americans say that gun control laws "infringe" the right to keep and bear arms. A plurality, 42%, say that the government restricts too much information from the public.

One area where the majority goes wrong is that 64% do not thinking that banning minors from violent video games is a proper function of government. One thing you can be sure of is that if people are afraid their children are at risk they turn into raving maniacs willing to lynch anyone. This is the sort of irrational fear that the National Organization for Marriage relies upon with their anti-gay scare commercials.

Other results of interest include the fact that 43% of the public are not confident in the federal government, only 10% are strongly confident in the feds. Similarly 37% are not confident in state governments, where 10% are, and 49% are not confident in Congress, where 7% are. Other areas with high levels of distrust are: banks, 52%; large corporations , 42%; labor unions, 41%; the media, 38%; blogs, 54%; organized religion, 35%; and public schools, 37%.

Other matters of interest is that 36% of the public consider themselves to be born-again Christians and 24% say they don't belong to a religion.

A different poll indicates that almost all opposition to equality of rights for gay people is rooted in religion, and not based on other concerns. Sixty-percent of conservatives admit that they oppose same-sex marriage because of their religion. All the evidence shows that opposition to legal equality exists because people want their religion legislated onto others:

Almost six-in-ten regular churchgoers (59%) say their clergy speak out on the issue of abortion, higher than for any other issue in the survey except hunger and poverty (88%). Despite divided opinions on abortion among Catholics as a whole, seven-in-ten Catholics (70%) who attend church at least once a month report that their clergy speak out on the issue of abortion. Similarly, 65% of white evangelical Protestants and 55% of black Protestants who attend services at least once a month report that their clergy talk about abortion, while fewer mainline Protestants (39%) say this.

Among those who attend religious services at least once a month and say abortion should be illegal in most or all cases, two-thirds (66%) report having heard about the issue from their clergy. Among regular worship attenders who think abortion should be legal in most or all cases, fewer (50%) report having heard about this issue from their clergy. Half of those who say their clergy speak out on abortion cite religion as the most important influence on their views on abortion, compared with 29% of those who do not hear from their clergy about the issue.

On the issue of same-sex marriage, about four-in-ten Americans (41%) say they favor allowing gays and lesbians to marry legally while 48% are opposed. A slight majority of Democrats (52%) favor same-sex marriage, while independents are evenly split (44% favor, 45% oppose) and two-thirds (67%) of Republicans are opposed. Democrats are divided sharply along racial lines; 63% of white Democrats favor same-sex marriage, compared with just 27% of black Democrats and 46% of Hispanic Democrats.

This sort of theocratic viewpoint applies even to laws forbidding gay people to openly serve in the military—something the Republican Party just killed in the U.S. Senate with unanimous support from their caucus. In other words, not a single Republican Senator voted to allow gay people to serve in the military.

On the matter of gays in the military 60% of all Americans support equality. Even a slim plurality of Republicans, 47-43%, support equality. Of all the various subgroups the only group to oppose allowing gay people to serve in the military are white evangelical Christians, where a plurality 47-43% oppose the measure. Most blacks support equality here, most conservatives do, most independent voters do—only white born again Christians oppose the measure and that appears to be the ONLY group in American politics that Republicans listen to.

More ont he Mushy Libertarian Middle

Here is a New York Times video report on Colorado university students in this upcoming election. What they found was that students are more reticent about Obama where they previously were supportive. What we hear is that they are more likely to go Republican because they are concerned about the economic issues. But note that they report that students are economic conservative and socially liberal. The students want less of what the Democrats are giving out in economic terms but want to end the wars, support gay marriage and are socially tolerant. This is what I call the mushy libertarian middle.



The Coming Era of Liberaltarianism.

Lately there has been a lot of controversy over the liberaltarian moniker. It is not a term I use, nor is it one I find useful. I think I understand the reason it exists—to draw attention to the vast areas of common ground between classical liberals and progressive liberals. But when it comes to the libertarian label I just prefer using libertarian to say the same thing.

A libertarian is someone who believes in liberty and this broadly translates into three areas: civil liberties and social freedom, economic freedom and property rights, free trade and a non-interventionist foreign policy. It behooves libertarians to emphasize all three areas as they are interlinked.

Some libertarians, however, pander to the bigots on the Right in the hopes of attracting funding, or winning votes. So they truncate liberty: they amputate freedom by ignoring, or downplaying, civil liberties. Some actively try to appeal to the xenophobes by belittling immigrants and calling for measures that appeal to Tea Party types.

If a libertarian only spoke about social issues and foreign policy he would be doing a disservice to libertarianism by giving the impression that it is nothing but another version of left-wing ideology. Similarly if a libertarian ignores those issues to focus exclusively on areas of agreement with the Right he too does a disservice by giving the impression that libertarianism is just another version of right-wing ideology. Both commit the same crime.

Due to the rise of authoritarian socialism in the last century many classical liberals found themselves in alliance with conservatives. Conservatives, true to their nature of clinging to the traditional were, at that time, clinging to a tradition that was fundamentally classical liberal. So an alliance between libertarians and conservatives, in opposition to autocratic socialism made sense.

But things have changed. Both the Left and the Right have changed. The Left in most the world no longer has the same slavish dedication to dirigism that they once had. The political Left, to a large degree has shifted politically toward the center. The communist empire that attracted so many of them collapsed and so did the ideological assumptions of many on the Left. You now have former socialists like New Zealand’s Michael Moore, the former prime minister, writing in defense of globalization and free trade. This isn’t the Left of fifty years ago anymore. It isn’t even the “New Left” of the 1960s, which was just a more obnoxious version of the old Left.

Similarly the Right has changed as well. But where the Left got better the Right got worse. Gone are the Goldwater-Reagan types and what we have instead is a mishmash of theocratically inclined bigots of one type or another. Witness the Glenn Beck revival meeting appealing to Americans to return to God as one example. The Tea Partiers seemed more concerned about Mexicans than Big Government.

The Right got ugly. Goldwater and Reagan both had strong classical liberal sentiments. And these days there are a lot of people on the Left who should be bringing flowers to Ronnie’s grave. While he made some awful appointments in the judiciary he also made some brilliant ones. Judge Walker, who ruled against Proposition 8, was originally a Reagan appointee. Supreme Court Justice Kennedy, who authored the decision overturning sodomy laws, was another Reagan man.

The Right of the 1980s was not obsessed with bigotry. What did happen, however, is that the Christian fundamentalists abandoned the Democratic Party. Until the 80s the fundamentalists were Democrats, since Southern Democrats were the most consistently hatefully, bigoted politicians around. But when the national Democratic Party adopted the civil rights movement white fundamentalists abandoned their natural home for the GOP. Unfortunately they brought with them the stilted, bigoted views that they always held. They eventually, for the most part, came to accept black people as their legal equals but they still harbor a natural tendency to find scapegoats to hate. At the moment their favorite targets are gay people and immigrants.

The reasons for the old libertarian-conservative alliance simply don’t hold true anymore. Sure, the Right is attempting to revive that alliance by inflating the “Islamofascist” threat. But the Right is always searching for bogeymen with which to terrify people into supporting them. Given that the political Left is the natural home of libertarians, given that the modern Left is today more libertarian than their fathers were, given that the threat of authoritarian communism is gone, given that the Right has adopted a policy of hateful theocracy, it makes senses that libertarians would return to their first political alliance: one with the Left.

When classical liberalism arose it was the opposition to the conservatives of the day. But classical liberalism scared people and a synthesis arose, which combined the desire for liberal ends with the use of the means of conservatives, state power. That new movement was the progressive or socialist Left. They shared the goals of classical liberals but wanted to use the state power that the conservatives had held for centuries. Classical liberals and socialists worked together to end the state/church alliance, reform property rights, and enlarge the franchise. But with the rise of the Soviet Union and its totalitarian/imperialistic form of socialism that alliance ended. The conservatives of that era were now clinging to the recent classical liberal past so an alliance made sense. It no longer makes sense today.

American critics of the “liberaltarian” agenda have argued that it is an illusion and can’t exist. This is the viewpoint of conservatives who fear that libertarians would desert them for sure. But this is not the case at all. There are many examples of working political parties that have this sort of emphasis.

The Democratic Alliance in South Africa was run for years by the libertarian-leaning Tony Leon, who inherited Helen Suzman’s Houghton seat when she retired. Helen herself was rather libertarian. The Free Democrats in Germany have a gay man as their leader, are pro-market, want to reduce the size of the state, reform welfare, and pursue a pro-peace foreign policy. They are in government today. In New Zealand an atheist libertarian, Rodney Hide, leads the ACT Party. ACT MPs helped put civil unions into effect for gay couples and voted for the bill that legalized brothels. They are in government today.

The current UK government is a hybrid of Liberal Democrats and Conservatives. But the Tories are different from Tories of the past. They fully embrace equality for gay people and aren’t pushing some sort of Anglican theocratic agenda. It is not far off to call the current UK government a liberaltarian one. Alex Massie, at The Spectator, makes another important point about liberaltarianism. He says that any of the indexes of economic freedom show “there’s little to no necessary contradiction between social liberalism and economic freedom.”

He notes this is especially true if you get outside of America’s polarized politics. The Heritage Foundation’s Economic Liberty Index shows that various socially liberal nations are today considered more free market than the United States. He writes:

Heritage hammers Denmark and Sweden for high levels of government spending but both countries are ranked "freer" than the US in matters as non-trivial as business, trade and investment freedoms. Indeed, Sweden and Denmark each score better than the United States in seven of the ten areas measured. (Britain comes out 5-4 ahead of the US with the property rights fixture ending in a draw. Germany is tied 5-5 with the Americans. Canada, Australia and New Zealand also do better than America.)

Massie also points to the Free Democrats in Germany and the Lib Dems in England. He acknowledges that many hard-core libertarians would find plenty to complain about but says these groups “are much, much closer and friendlier to what I’d term real liberalism than anything on offer from either party in the US or from any of the alternatives in the UK and Germany.” I concur.

I would go so far as to argue that there have been strong cultural shifts in America toward libertarianism. The political process, however, is not showing that shift. The political process is going to be the last place where this shift will be noticed, at least in the US where bureaucratic inertia will keep the statists in power for a long time. The double-blow of hardcore authoritarians like Bush and Obama, one from the Right, the other from the Left, will hurt freedom. But the shift, at the ground level, has already taken place.

Here are the facts. Most Americans don’t like high taxes and heavy regulation. And today, most Americans want some form of legal recognition for gay couples. The hard-core statists have sifted themselves: those on the Left are Democrats while those on the Right are Republicans. But the largest group of voters say a pox on both houses and see themselves as independents. They tend to be relatively libertarian.

Long term I’m optimistic, the short term is a bitch however. Long term even the Republicans will eventually embrace social liberalism. The libertarian middle is gaining ground. The middle ground of American politics is libertarian, perhaps not consistently so, but libertarian nonetheless. Only the political system itself, which entrenches the two statist parties, hides this shift from public view. For the time being the libertarian middle shifts from Democratic to Republican. In the last election they abandoned the GOP because of Bush. This year they will flee to the Republicans in opposition to Obama. At some point one of the two major parties will discover that the libertarian middle can be attracted if they make some major concessions to freedom. They will discover that the few rabid statists they lose at the ballot box are more than compensated for and that it is worth making the change toward a freer society. The first of the two big parties that discovers that will have a long-term majority in office.

The rest of the Storey

I just started reading M.A. DeWolfe Howe's book, Portrait of an Independent: Moorfield Storey 1845-1929. Storey was a fascinating man and ought to be a major hero to libertarians. Let us start with the fact that he was a Grover Cleveland Democrat, a defender of depoliticized markets, an opponent of protectionism and an advocate of gold. He was a leader in the New Democratic Party which opposed the policies of William Jennings Bryan. What makes Storey interesting is the rest of the storey, or in this case, the rest of the Storey.

Storey was also a major opponent to U.S. interventionism during the birth of American empire building: The Spanish-American War. Storey, a Boston lawyer, became the president of the The Anti-Imperialist League. In addition to that role he was the first president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the NAACP. Storey was a defender of individual rights particularly the rights of minorities. He defended immigrants as well during the wave of anti-immigration hysteria that gripped the US in Storey's time.

I recently saw a signed statement by Storey, one I wish I could afford to buy, where he wrote:

"Between the principle of freedom, that all men are entitled to equal political rights, and the dogma of tyranny, that might makes right, there is no middle ground."

It was signed Moorfield Storey, March 2, 1920.

There are a few minor flaws in the statement but I like the intentions and spirit of it.

Storey fought a case before the Supreme Court in 1917 that overturned a segregation law in Louisville, Kentucky, on the basis of property rights. In Buchanan v. Warley, Storey argued that the law violated the rights of property owners to sell their homes to whomever they wished. The Supreme Court states Storey's argument well in their ruling. He said the law:

...violates the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, in that it abridges the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States to acquire and enjoy property, takes property without due process of law, and denies equal protection of the laws.

The Court also described well the views of the segregationists:

This drastic measure is sought to be justified under the authority of the State in the exercise of the police power. It is said such legislation tends to promote the public peace by preventing racial conflicts; that it tends to maintain [p74] racial purity; that it prevents the deterioration of property owned and occupied by white people, which deterioration, it is contended, is sure to follow the occupancy of adjacent premises by persons of color.

Disgusting, but this was 1917. However, Storey prevailed and the law was overturned. This was a victory for individual rights, property rights and for one libertarian lawyer, Moorfield Storey. The ruling was the first exception to state segregation laws and is now seen as a precursor to the Brown v. Board of Education ruling of 1954. Law Professor David Bernstein calls the case "one of the most significant civil rights cases decided before the modern civil rights era." Bernstein notes that the ruling impeded the attempts of whites to prevent blacks from moving to urban areas. He says that the "African-American urban population in the United States almost doubled between 1910 and 1929..." By coincidence 1929 is the year of Storey's death.

And it is possible that this relatively unknown libertarian lawyer, unknown in our modern age that is, may have turned the tide for the civil rights movement. Bernstein finds that between 1868 and 1910 the Supreme Court heard 28 cases regarding the rights of African Americans but that blacks lost 22 of those cases. From 1920 and 1943, after Storey's success, the court hear 27 such cases and African Americans won 25 of them.

Storey is someone I can admire, admire greatly. Here is an excerpt from Howe's introduction which eloquently describes Storey, but one that applies to any true libertarian.

The Independent in American life and politics is frequently a minority man. When the majority come over to his way of thinking, his instinct for unpopular causes, his habit of a Voice crying in the Wilderness, often induces something akin to loneliness in him—the well-know loneliness of the crowd—and off he goes to the espousal of a new minority cause. The great majority, to which, in the very nature of the case, most of us belong, regards this species of knight-errantry as a foolish, futile, and often troublesome thing. Why disturb the comfortable existing order? The last election , says the great majority, settled all that. If the country at large had not wanted to raise the tariff, to hold the Phillip pines, to keep out of the League of Nations, to endorse and enforce the Eighteenth Amendment—indeed, to adopt any of the courses approved by congressional majorities, it would not have chosen the legislators and executives who now control our national policies. Of course there must be an opposition—a conflict between the 'ins' who naturally want to remain where they are and the 'outs' who naturally want to take their place. This is to be expected. But the foolish, futile, troublesome Independent, never committed for more than a single campaign to any party, caring more for a cause than for a candidate and a label—what a nuisance he is! Out upon him!

This is not far from the popular view of the congenital Mugwump. Yet there is another view, and, with the considerable erasure of party lines which has taken place in recent years, others besides congenital Mugwumps have come to admit that there is something to be said for it. This is the view that the Independent, whether in the minority or for the moment in the majority, serves a substantially valuable purpose in present-day affairs. It is he who keeps raising awkward questions, who is not satisfied with leaving a second-rate well enough alone, whose conscience insists upon talking out loud instead of whispering the confidences that so many of us keep locked in our bosoms. He is doomed to many disappointments and disillusions. He is tempted, and, being no less human than mankind in general, sometimes yields to the bitterness against contemporaries who could accomplish many things that seem good in his eyes and in reality accomplish so few. Through the very fact of his frequent association with minorities, he forgoes the larger opportunities that fall to consistent members of the majority in giving the forms of finality to public policies. But it is through him that these forms, when they fall short of their highest possibilities, fall short also of finality. He is the man who embodies the idea that nothing can be settles until it is settled right. He is often a remarkably uncomfortable fellow to have about, but when you look at his activities in the large, at the tendency they represent, rather than at their frequently irritating details, you are bound to admit, not merely that the community would be much poorer and weaker without him, but that he embodies a positive element of its richness and strength.

Of the type of Independent to which Moorfield Storey belonged, there is at least one more thing to be said—a thing peculiarly applicable to him. It is the glory of the Independent, perhaps not least in his own eyes, that partianship is foreign to him, that he is free to detach himself from bonds that restrain others, to ally himself with any interest that seems at a given time entitled to his respect and support. He is inclined to look down upon the partisan, the man who clings through thick and think to any organization, especially in the field of politics. He would scorn the attribution of partianship, and reject indignantly the name of partisan. Yet often—and hardly ever more clearly than in the case of Moorfield Storey—he is a Partisan of Ideas. Allegiance to a political party may mean little or nothing to him. He may even look upon it as a sort of distillation of chauvinism from which his whole nature revolts. But an idea, like that of abstract justice of the defense and rescue of the under dog, may hold him for a lifetime, may sustain him in his adherence to any number of righteous causes, and make him so eminently, so victoriously, just such a Partisan of Ideas, as Storey was.

Great! I concur completely and confess that I too am a Partisan of Ideas

Good in a godless world.

I begin with the premise that there is no god, no supreme being, no deity. I begin with that premise because I have found no persuasive evidence to indicate such a supernatural being exist.

What does that leave? Apparently it leaves us in a godless world, one with natural, not supernatural explanations. That would mean that existence is impersonal, without care, concern, or any emotion.

A lecture I was listening to today, about debates between skeptics and believers, throughout the ages put it this way: Maybe there are just some people doomed to go their whole life without being happy. And the universe just doesn’t care.

But does that mean we live in a universe devoid of caring, concern, love or similar things? It does not. My very first thought was this means that we are obligated to provide these things.

Prayer is useless when action is needed. If there are people in the world who hunger we can’t appeal to a god, we must find a way to feed them. If there are people who are oppressed and mistreated, then we must work for justice.

But just as my thoughts went in that direction I realized I was engaging in another fiction, one not dissimilar to the assumption of a deity. We can’t do anything. There is no us. There is just me, at least in my case. In your case there is just you. There are only millions of “I’s.”

There is no collective brain, no one body shared by the many. If action is taken then someONE takes it. SomeONE wills it. SomeONE encourages others, who cooperate but each of them chooses to act as another ONE. Working in harmony does not negate the fact that individuals, not collectives, choose to act.

Nor am I saying that some sort of collective action is impossible. Politics is the attempt to make non-consenting collective action possible. True, some degree of collective political action can achieve a smattering of the objectives that those who coordinate it wish to achieve. But, it is too easily corrupted. As I have long argued the concentration of power, which is what politics is, works to the benefit of the powerful, not the powerless. When we cease to act as individuals we corrupt the very good we are attempting to do.

The system of coercive coordination is inherently counterproductive and riddled with perverse incentives. Not even the best of intentions can save the process. The problem is systemic in nature. Having the right desires will not change the system. It is not a matter of changing personnel, it is a matter of changing methodologies from that of coercion to that of cooperation.

State action is not cooperation, but the opposite of cooperation. The slave didn’t cooperate with his master; he obeyed him. A woman doesn’t cooperate with a rapist, she submits to a greater force. Cooperation, that is non-coercive coordination, exists only because individuals consent to act together.

Not only is the god concept a fiction of a similar kind to the collectivistic concept; they also share another trait in common. Both are attempts to evade responsibility. If action must be taken then I must take it. If injustice is to end then I must work to end it. I can’t pass this responsibility off to a deity or to the collective “we.”

A godless world does not mean a loveless world, it means that what love exists in the world must come from each of us as individuals. It is not possible for me to love everyone, but I can love where it is possible. It is not possible for me to develop the whole world and create universal prosperity. But it is possible for me to help one small part of the world to develop economically and to help make that portion of the world a better place. I can’t heal the sick, but I can help make healing possible. I can’t end all injustice, but I can fight it where I see it. I can’t be all-things to all-people, but I can be something to someone.

True, when famine sends children to bed hungry, or worse, the universe doesn’t care.

But I do.

When that great collective action, known as war, rips families apart, rains devastation on vast numbers of people, and sends young men to premature and senseless deaths, the universe does not care.

But I do.

When bullies beat someone for being black, gay, Jewish, or just different, the universe doesn’t care.

But I do.

When organized bullies of moral majoritarians do the same to those they hate, through the political process, the universe does not care.

But I do.

And because I do, I must act. I can’t pass that off to a god who isn’t there, or the collective “we.” I must make the choice to take action.

I can hope that everyone will act the same way, but I must act as if no one will. I can’t choose for others, I can only choose for myself. And I choose to act.

What choice do you make?

The limits of libertarianism.

Libertarianism is like being short. Just how tall do you have to be, in order to be short? Would a millimeter in one direction or the other be enough to move one in one direction or the other?

There is always an element of personal preferences involved in such definitions. And, it would be bad for libertarianism in general, to define the word too strictly, according to our personal preferences. Doing so could eliminate every one from this category but our individual selves. We would be similar to fundamentalist Baptists—each convinced he is a true believer, but suspicious of every other Christian he meets.

Similarly, if our definition is too loose, everyone is a libertarian. It makes libertarianism a meaningless term. To have no limits is to define libertarianism out of existence: to strip it of any substance. This is particularly dangerous since virtually everyone in Western, liberal, market-based nations is libertarian on one issue or another.

Very, very few people consistently oppose individual liberty and individual rights. As for limited government: everyone believes in limited government! Who actually says they want unlimited government? No one. Not even rampant statists such as Paul Krugman believe in the unlimited state. It might comfort my anarchist friends to know there are far more people in America (and probably most countries) who believe in no government, than who believe in unlimited government.

But I wouldn’t get too comfortable. I’m not sure the difference between “unlimited” government and the rampant statism proposed by some, albeit with some limitations, is actually all that meaningful.

What defines a libertarian? What is the core principle? Some argue that it is the principle of non-initiation of force—that no individual should be allowed to initiate force against another individual. That would encompass a violation of either their life, their liberty or their property. I do like the principle, certainly it is a good personal moral value for one to hold and should be used.

For most of everyday life, this principle will serve you well. But there are feasible situations where it wouldn’t. In libertarian bullshit sessions people invent creative scenarios to illustrate this. For instance: If you are on your 10th floor balcony and slip over the railing, grabbing the flag pole on the 9th floor balcony in order to save yourself. Are you violating the property rights of the tenant on the 9th? Are you obliged to let go in order to remain libertarian?

Very few of us are careless enough to fall over a railing, and those who are never seem to be lucky enough to land on the flagpole (except in Hollywood. But it illustrates a point. Are there times when the unusual circumstances justify a violation of the rights of another? If so, does one such incident mean you are no longer a libertarian?

I start with a relative loose definition for libertarian and then fine-tune it, hopefully reaching a place that is neither fundamentalist nor meaningless. First, a libertarian starts out with a presumption for liberty. In every situation a libertarian first assumes that the use of state coercion has to be justified on a case-by-case basis. Liberty is the default setting.

That alone removes the likes of Paul Krugman, Barack Obama and George W. Bush from the category. But, clearly having this, as a primary definition, is not sufficient. Some people would have very low thresholds for the proof necessary to justify coercive measures. But it is a good place to start.

From there I move to the three main categories of politics: economic, social and international. Economic areas of life are fairly well understood: it is all the buying, selling, exchanging that goes on in the realm of material goods, property, labor, etc. The international realm includes matters of foreign policy, international trade, and the international movement of people—though this latter category also falls into the social sphere. The social sphere is areas of individual life: matters like freedom of speech, censorship, sex laws, drug laws, prohibitionism, etc.

In the social sphere, there is almost always overlap with economic freedom. For instance, the conservative who wants to ban erotica is wanting to ban the production, distribution, sale and ownership of a product. Those are all economic activities. A social conservative, who wants to do this with things like porn or drugs, is clearly not in favor of a free market, at least in these areas. Similarly the conservative campaign to make it a crime to hire individuals who are in the U.S. without bureaucratic permission slips is a violation of labor contracts between willing buyers and willing sellers.

This is one reason that conservatives seem to endlessly betray their claims to support a free market. The free, depoliticized marketplace leads to results contrary to the centrally planned, social sphere that conservatives envision. Since depoliticized markets betray the conservative’s social goals, the conservative betrays free markets. They can’t achieve their social goals in a world with truly free, depoliticized markets. For conservatives, free markets are more rhetorical than real.

In actual existence, these three broad categories overlap constantly. Consider foreign policy: matters of war and peace. War is always accompanied by state attacks on civil liberties and economic freedom. There has never been an exception to that rule. As we saw, something like drug prohibition not only impacts civil liberties but is also a flagrant attack on free markets and property rights. The three main spheres of politics—economics, social, and international—overlap and are interrelated. Tinkering with one of them has consequences for all of them.

The libertarian, with a presumption for liberty, then would logically have to favor depoliticized markets, social freedom and a pro-peace, non-interventionist foreign policy coupled with freedom of movement for capital, labor and goods. The interrelated nature of these freedoms makes this a package deal, in this blogger’s opinion.

The two polar opposites then in politics are the authoritarian and the libertarian.

The authoritarian would have a presumption of state control. That would lead them to advocate a violation of social freedom, political control of the marketplace, and an aggressive, coercive foreign policy. Adolph Hitler comes to mind as a prime example of this sort of thinker. Similarly, so do Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mugabe, and Mussolini.

The conservative tends to support just one sphere of liberty: economic freedom, although they are forced to do so inconsistently by their other policies. Most conservatives are foreign interventionists and tend to oppose social freedom. Their support for free markets is tepid at best and usually no deeper than a campaign promise.

The progressive, often erroneously called a liberal, tends to oppose economic freedom, but claims to favor civil liberties, social freedom, and is usually pro-peace in foreign policy.

However, foreign policy is always the messy issue. There are conservatives who support non-interventionism in foreign policy—often they are called the “Old Right” or paleo-conservatives. Similarly, there is a history of people on the Left advocating empire-building and aggressive foreign policies. Many of the Progressives in America, during the “Progressive Era” were rampant imperialists; similarly socialists in England were often the most vocal advocates of British imperialism.

Realizing these exceptions doesn’t disqualify the general rule of thumb that I use. We can thus conclude that the four general political positions are as follows:

Libertarian: non-interventionist foreign policy, supportive of social freedom, advocates depoliticized markets.

Authoritarian: aggressive foreign policy, opponent of social freedom, advocate of heavily politicized markets.

Conservative: aggressive foreign policy, opponent of social freedom, advocate of less regulated markets.

Progressive: less aggressive foreign policy, supports social freedoms, advocate of politicized markets.

If you attempted to outline this as a bar graph you could put the Libertarian on the far left. Moving to the Right you would find the Progressive next, then the Conservative and finally the polar opposite of the libertarian: the Authoritarian.

In my mind, one deviation does not disqualify one as a libertarian. For instance, Ron Paul’s position on abortion is not sufficient to classify him as a conservative, though it does raise warning flags. However, a convergence of issues can place one outside this category. Paul’s consistent support for socially conservative issues does place him outside the libertarian camp. For instance, he voted to keep sodomy a crime in Washington, D.C., he says separation of church and state is a “myth,” supports a state’s rights point of view over individual rights, opposes equality of rights for gay people; and opposes abortion.

Collectively, Ron Paul’s record on matters of social freedom is weak, as would be expected from conservatives. His foreign policy record is mixed. He tends to oppose war, and is well known for that. But his record on the free movement of labor, capital and goods is not as good. His voting record tends to be protectionist, even if his rhetoric is not. And while I don’t automatically assume that opposition to open immigration disqualifies one as a libertarian, I do think a general voting pattern in opposition to easier immigration, does say something important.

There are always individuals who are good on an issue, contrary to their general political sentiments. William F. Buckley was the epitome of conservatism: bad on foreign policy, bad on social policy, and fair on economic policy. Yet he came to oppose the war on drugs.

This is why I don’t tend to use single issues as a litmus test for classifying someone politically. But I do use the convergence of evidence in each category. Recognizing exceptions doesn’t change general trends. The conservative will tend to be on the wrong side of social freedom issues, especially when in matters that impact minorities. I can pick any random Republican and tell you how he will vote on matters like marriage equality or immigration, and generally be right. It’s not that I’m psychic; it is the nature of conservatives to be the way they are. Similarly, I know how the Democrats will generally vote on such matters as well. From a libertarian perspective I know that Robert Mugabe will be disgustingly bad on virtually any issue you mention.

This sort of foreknowledge, based on understanding the principles of the individual, gives one a general understanding of the person. I know that the chances are that Paul Krugman will be horrendous on most economic policy. He’s into economic S&M: he loves bondage when it comes to markets. I know the Laurel and Hardy of politics—Michael Moore and Ann Coulter—will be shrill, hysterical, dishonest whatever they are talking about, and usually wrong.

I don’t exclude someone from the libertarian camp over one issue, for the most part. Of course, there are theoretical single issues that would do so. If someone were a “pure” libertarian, however you define it, with one exception, that they favored gassing Jews, then the rest pales in comparison to the one deviation. I don’t care how pure someone is; if they advocate the wholesale violation of the rights of a body of people who are peaceful and who are not violating the rights of others, then they have moved outside the libertarian camp.

How serious must be this violation of rights in order to put one beyond the pale? That can be open to debate. I would tend to say that anyone advocating the sort of policies being used today against immigrants sans permission slips is not a libertarian. Measures like SB1070 in Arizona are an example of those policies. Laws that require businesses to get state permission to hire someone, or prevent banks from opening bank accounts for these people, or landlords from renting to them are part of a general trend. The wholesale violation of the rights of individuals in a broad range of categories is enough, in my mind, to disqualify one as a libertarian, no matter how pure they are in other areas.

Again, I am not disqualifying someone on a single “deviation” or even random deviations here or there. But when the deviations from liberty are grouped in one of the three main spheres of politics then the person is not a libertarian. And when those deviations tend to make broad exceptions that are imposed on one class of people alone, provided it is a class of people who are not guilty of violating the rights of others (such as rapists), then that sort of systematic denial of rights moves one outside the libertarian camp as well.

So, for me, a libertarian is one who has a presumption of liberty in the three main spheres of politics. He or she would support economic freedom, support social and civil liberty, and advocate a pro-peace, pro-trade foreign policy. He would apply these principles across the board to all groups of people. Making exceptions that consistently fall in one sphere of liberty does disqualify one as a libertarian. And making exceptions that fall on one group of peaceful people also disqualifies one as a libertarian.