nathan thornburgh over at time magazine (one of those news websites in paper form that old people like to read) has published a fairly lengthy article giving the rise of the ron paul revolution and bob barr's libertarian campaign their due. called libertarians: a (not so) lunatic fringe, it breaks the libertarian movement down in fairly good detail, and details the difficulty holding the disparate parts of the movement together:
It's tempting to think of Libertarianism as nothing more than old-school Republicanism, but it's always been partially left-wing, drawing from a long history of American anarchism. The modern challenge is to unite those two wings--or, as magician (and stalwart Libertarian) Penn Jillette told me, "Convince the dope guys that the gun guys are O.K., and vice versa." And many Libertarians believe the time is now. It helps that the U.S. has been throttled for a century by two parties whose core differences are narrowing. The current general election has seemed at times a contest about who can crib off the other party's platform more, from McCain's enthusiasm for using government to fight global warming to Obama's hedging on warrantless wiretapping. For an electorate having a harder time distinguishing Coke from Pepsi, there's a thirst for something--anything--new.
i've said it before and i'll say it again - now is the time for the two party system to start to fall apart. according to the article (and various polls, i'm sure), barr's current approval rating stands at 6%, which is just about the same amount as obama has over mccain in national polls.
while the libertarian party alone probably won't supplant or destroy either party, they will likely serve a role similar to the uk's liberal democrats. while their economic theories are further left than american libertarians, they are equally committed to the philosophies of classical liberalism as promoted in texts like john stuart mill's on liberty.
incidentally, on the strength of their anti-war platform, labour's increasing nanny-statism, and conservatives just generally being assholes, the liberal democrat share of parliament is now up to just under 10% as of the 2005 general election. voter support was even higher, at 22% of the total vote.
i know joeverkill has mentioned voting for barr in the face of obama's supposed civil rights compromises. what about the rest of you? anybody have any libertarian interest?
Saturday, July 12, 2008
time magazine can has freedoms
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3 responses:
Interesting post analyst. I think first of all that I appreciate Joe's principled stance on the issue of voting but it seems like this time around the votes are gonna be siphoned off from the McCain.
This is simply because of the lack of any ideological soundness or consistency in his position. The McCain of 2000 would have been the darling of the libertarians partly because of his appealing iconoclastic personality; something that the independant voting crowd has always loved in a candidate.
While it is true that the traditional libertarian line tends to skew closer to republican politics, this time around with Obama's hands off approach to gun rights and gun control and his opposition to the war he is gonna hold the left leaning libertarians to his side.
Mill's On Liberty is a great book by the way. The parts that I read were among the most hopeful, forgiving, optimistic and least boorish pieces of philosophical writing that I have ever encountered. Mill had a sense of respect for humanity and belief in the good in man that more cynical philosophers like Hobbes would openly mock(had they been still alive). I prefered his approach and I credit it for planting the seeds of intellectual liberalism in my freshman seedling brain. It will always be an open question if his approaches would ever work in the real world.
i completely agree on all points. i'm very familiar with on liberty - i took a class on john stuart mill my senior year and on liberty was effectively the primary text. just like you, it has shaped my political belief as it exists today - while i claim libertarian ideology to not seem too eccentric, my political philosophy is best described as classical liberal (or utilitarian, if you want to split hairs). if you're curious for more work along the same vein, i highly recommend john rawls, who was a continuation of many of the same theories, but written in the 1960s. 'justice as fairness' is the best political doctrine i have ever heard.
classical mccain definitely fits the libertarian mold of no-bullshit straight-shooter. unfortunately, he sold his soul to the republican party, and will be forced to kowtow to the religious right. even though many libertarians are strongly right-wing christian (notably ron paul), i can relate to many of them out of the simple live-and-let-live ideology that we can agree on. they know better than to impose their religious beliefs on others.
modern libertarians do seem to be drawn to obama based on his general philosophy of reconciliation of america's plethora of ideologies, rather than the modern gop's ideological imperatives which often take the form of wedge issues like gay marriage and abortion. the true libertarian (or constitutionalist) knows that the concept of the victimless crime does not exist, and the government only exists to protect the inherent rights of the people. while the old guard of the democrat party favors federal intervention of favor of perceived social evils, rooting from interventions related to civil rights, etc., obama seems to promote a more modern form of liberalism based upon a new century with new and different civil rights issues requiring new forms of intervention.
this is why, even though i still support obama, the fisa issue still nags me quite a bit. i still believe that he'll address this as president, but i certainly hope he understands the necessity of privacy in a modern world where vast amounts of personal information can be collected at relatively little cost.
Voting in California, I have the luxury of sticking to my principles when I cast my ballot. It's generally pretty obvious from the beginning who the state is going to go for, and it's generally pretty obvious that the candidate in question (almost without fail a Democrat) will win by a landslide. I can vote for Bob Barr and feel okay about it, whereas if I was voting in Florida I'd have to think a little harder about it. In Florida (the state where I was born and raised), your vote can have actual consequences. Here in Los Angeles, it's generally more of an exercise in belief.
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