First, war. War is the antithesis of the libertarian philosophy of
consent, voluntarism and trade. With every war in American history
Leviathan has grown larger and our liberties have withered. War is the
health of the state. And now, fulfilling the dreams of Big Brother, we are
in a perpetual war.
A country cannot long combine unlimited government abroad and limited
government at home. The Republican party
has become the party of war and thus the party of unlimited government.
With war has come FEAR, magnified many times over by the governing party. Fear is pulling Americans into the arms of
the state. If only we were better at
resisting. Alas, we Americans say that
we love liberty but we are fair-weather lovers. Liberty will flourish only with peace.
Have libertarians gained on other margins in the past eight years? Not at all. Under the Republicans we have been sailing due South-West on the Nolan
Chart – fewer civil liberties and more government, including the largest new
government program in a generation, the Medicare prescription drug plan, and
the biggest nationalization since the Great Depression. Tax cuts, the summum bonum of Republican
economic policy, are a sham. The only
way to cut taxes is to cut spending and that has not happened.
The libertarian voice has not been listened to in Republican politics for a
long time. The Republicans take the libertarian wing of the party for granted
and with phony rhetoric and empty phrases have bought our support on the
cheap. Thus – since voice has failed – it is time for exit. Remember that if
a political party can count on you then you cannot count on it.
Exit is the right strategy because if there is any hope for reform it is by
casting the Republicans out of power and into the wilderness where they may
relearn virtue. Libertarians understand better
than anyone that power corrupts. The
Republican party illustrates. Lack of
power is no guarantee of virtue but Republicans are a far better – more libertarian -
party out-of-power than they are in power. When in the wilderness, Republicans turn naturally to a critique of
power and they ratchet up libertarian rhetoric about free trade, free
enterprise, abuse of government power and even the defense of civil liberties. We can hope that new leaders will arise in
this libertarian milieu.
Next Comments →
In my view the current priority is avoiding a war with Iran.
“Apotheosis” or “antithesis”?
exactly.
I think if McCain had gotten elected in 2000 instead of Bush, we probably would never have invaded Iraq. That was a neocon pet project and they used 9/11 to justify it.
Its even possible that a McCain administration might have paid more attention to the intelligence about the threat to airplanes. If you’ll recall, Bush and company were focused on wiggling out of the strategic arms treaties with the Russians, which probably helped kill democracy there, not on terrorism. This despite the fact that the threat has been developing for years.
Would Obama be better? Its very tough to say. But he certainly would build better relationships with the rest of the world. And we definitely need that.
I hope someone does a counter-post on why libertarians should vote for McCain, since there’s a very strong case to be made that (1) Obama is a huge collectivist and (2) McCain’s policies are at least somewhat libertarian.
The Republicans have been terrible at implementing Libertarian policy at any level during the last eight years. However, it does not logically follow that the Democrats will be better.
Indeed, other then getting out of Iraq there is no indication that they will. However it is worth remembering that during Bill Clinton’s tenure we invaded, bombed, and interfered with several small countries, albeit for different reasons. There is no guarantee we will not find ourselves back in the same mess ‘for humanitarian reasons’ under a Democrat administration.
I would agree that another war must be avoided at all costs. I’m skeptical that putting Obama in place would really provide this guarantee. I think at the end of the day, divided government has the best track record for preventing lots of things libertarians dislike – including war.
Obama is more of a traditional Democrat/Neo-Con on Foreign Policy than many of us would like to admit. He strongly supports war in Afghanistan, and I can imagine a host of Darfur-like crusades in the name of repairing America’s image abroad. His rhetorical ability combined with a lack of restraint in Congress make for a dangerous pair.
“Libertarians” should not vote for Obama. We should vote for Obama and a Republican majority in Congress. Or, we should vote for McCain and a huge Democrat majority in Congress. The latter is more likely. War with Iran is unlikely.
Not all libertarians agree about the War on Terror or the Iraq part of it. Obama’s interest in increasing the state is far more troubling to me and frankly, I’d rather be fighting terrorists over there than over here, thank you. I agree that some aspects of Leviathan need to be trimmed back, Bush’s failure to veto spending items for six years was far worse for us than the War was in that respect. Nothing Obama says has convinced me that he wants to sail south on the Nolan chart slower than the GOP.
Well, done. It’s odd how the party that speaks the loudest about loving freedom consistently does the most to curtail it.
Likewise, on economic policy there’s a huge gap between rhetoric and reality. Your article pointing out that there have been no tax cuts, only a tax SHIFT, under the GOP should be required reading for all Americans.
Speaking of Obama supporters, Where is Andrew Sullivan?
I’m honestly kind of worried.
Alex,
An excellent summary of the failure of the Republican party in both the Legislative and Executive branches that I absolutely agree with.
However, you have not shown how the Democratic party, with control of both the Legislative and Executive branches (I’m assuming Dems control Congress after this election irrespective of which party wins the White House) will be any better; do you expect them to sail north-east on the Nolan Chart?
I still believe Voice is the more appropriate choice, the damage done by the acknowledged big government-statists of the Democratic party will be irreparable after our journey to the desert.
I agree with the majority of this post, especially the part about the GOP taking the libertarian wing for granted. But while Obama may be correct about the Iraq war, he does not oppose the use of military force throughout the world. As recently as 2007, he advocated redeployment of troops from Iraq to other conflicts. http://obama.senate.gov/press/070718-obama_statement_76/
Opposing a wildly unpopular war (Iraq) is a nice benefit, but it’s not enough to inspire a libertarian following. A true anti-war politician would oppose any war except perhaps that which is fought in self-defense.
Call me crazy but shouldn’t Libertarians maybe want to vote for a Libertarian. Plus as much as Obama likes to rant against the war in Iraq, I don’t beleive he is against all war, just this one.
Alex,
You make one essentially a single point, and that is that a libertarian must oppose the war. Let me tell you why you are wrong.
Libertarianism, as I understand (and define it) is the belief in self-ownership. The principle that you own your life and consequently you own the property that you create during your life. No other person has a higher claim on your life than you do, and conversely, you have no claim on the lives of other people.
Some people use force, or threats of force to deny others of life, liberty, or property. It does not matter if these people act alone or in a group and call themselves “government”, the effect is the same.
One of these people is called “Saddam Hussein”.
You have the right to protect your own property, and you may ask others to help you.
We are the others and we are here to help. If you want to defend libertarianism you must support the overthrow of dictators like Saddam Hussein. They are a much greater threat to libertarian ideals.
I do not support a draft and I never will under any circumstances. However, so far, none has been called for, and I am willing to offer my material assistance – a portion of my property – to defend the lives and property of others. If you are unwilling, I understand and I wish there was a entirely voluntary fund to contribute to. That is sadly not the case and would be difficult to change. Rather than lament the imperfect system I will work with what we have.
You are entirely within your right to refuse to help the Iraqis. However, the overthrow of tyrants is not only consistent with libertarian ideals, it is the very soul of libertarianism.
– Jay
Shouldn’t this post be titled “Why Libertarians Should Not Vote Republican/McCain”?
The alternative is not simply Obama, but staying home. In a close election staying home would help Obama (if libertarians were planning to vote Republican) and save some time/resources in the process.
Since when are higher taxes and increased public spending (on universal health!) defined as libertarian?
I’m a libertarian who opposed going into Iraq, but I still can’t agree with Alex. The problem I see is that we now not only have to get out of Iraq, but we have to leave Iraq in a way that leaves it somewhat stable. The region seems volatile enough to me that withdrawing from an unstable Iraq would be more dangerous for us in the long run. I trust McCain more (or distrust him less) to leave us with a situation in Iraq that won’t come back to bite us in the ass.
Furthermore, I don’t believe McCain’s more likely to lead us to a war with Iran than Obama is precisely because he does take a stronger stance with them. I don’t think Obama will be an effective negotiator because he’ll be seen as weak and inexperienced, and his VP proposed the most boneheaded idea for dealing with Iraq outside of Rumsfeld’s office. When McCain talks to Iran (and he will)I think they’re more likely to listen.
The mistake I see Alex and many other people making is failing to understand that McCain is not Bush. Republicans are not all the same, and McCain tends to disagree with those in his party more than most. Like others, I think we would be in a better place today if he had been elected in 2000 instead of Bush.
Obama intimated he would invade Pakistan and wants to drawdown the Army in Iraq, and redeploy for a surge in Afghanistan.
Cynically, the best bet for libertarians is Obama with a Democratic Congress and hope 2010 is a repeat of 1994.
Bill Clinton also attacked a country on faulty intelligence, albeit on a much smaller scale, when he bombed Sudan after the Kenya embassy bombings. With the patriotic zeitgeist after 9/11, I could not imaging Gore or McCain not attacking Afghanistan when Osama was clearly stationed there.
Also, considering the apparent easyness of the Afghanistan campaign and the ongoing acrimony between Hussein and America, a similar Iraq invasion was not out of the question either for Gore or McCain. Bill Clinton, after all, had Desert Fox which was likewise panned by every country other than Great Britain.
Finally I wonder how much influence libertarians can have in the presidential election. Bush needed quasi-socialist programs in 2000 and 2004 to win since he needed some of the quasi-socialist middle. With a hardline stance against new government programs, such as NCLB or the prescription drug plan, he could not have won either election. If libertarians drop their vote in the presidential election, the Republicans will go farther to the left, not farther to the right.
Instead, libertarians can have the most influence in local elections, particularly in primaries. The north Atlanta suburbs, for example, probably has a majority of fiscal libertarians. Yet they have blindly voted for the incumbent, Tom Price, even though he has supported major pork bills. More Ron Pauls and Mark Sanfords will do the most to help the influence of libertarians in this country.
No, sorry, It’s all about the economy, stupid!
Jay,
Respectfully, your position, held by many reasonable libertarians and objectivists has been discredited.
I believe this has been shown by events (being greeted as liberators by the Iraqis) as well as described in books like The Undercover Economist and The J-Curve.
Regimes are not held hostage by a tyrannical leader, they are corrupt through-and-through. The figurehead simply is the last man standing, holding the corrupt system in it’s most stable form. Ahmadinejad may very well be crazy, but he may well be rational by appeasing his people with his belligerence.
Add to this that the threat of pre-emptive strikes, when actually carried out, forces other nations to build up defenses and you have all you need to discredit the entire neo-con foreign policy.
An extremely rare, yet quite gigantic miss.
1992-94 with Democrats in both houses was a Libertarian nightmare, and remember that Obama votes with the Democrat leadership 97% of the time. (John McCain crosses party lines three times as often.) I don’t know why you would be opposed to adding prescription drug coverage to a wildly popular health plan for seniors given that we pick up the tab for extra doctor visits when they get sicker and end up in a nursing home if they don’t take their pills. It’s a far smaller power-grab than Hillary-care was or Obama-care would be.
I want our international relationships to be based on respect and mutual self-interest, not trying to make the theocracies and socialists like us. As a warrior, McCain gets it. All Obama ever fought for was a vote.
Finally, Alaska is about as Libertarian a state as you can find, and I want that kind of thinking around the table in the oval office. Drill-baby-drill should be the Libertarian battle cry. Remember, every barrel of oil pumped here is $100 of wages, royalties, taxes, and dividends that doesn’t go the the mid-east.
I agree that war is not libertarian, but have p=0.13 that (elect Obama, avoid war) is a Nash equilibrium.
So the thing you’re trying to avoid, REALLY big government, will be accomplished by voting for Obama????????
Excellent post AT.
Just like “paleoconservatives” (such as Pat Buchanan and the guys at “American Conservative”) developed in response to “neoconservatives,” so there are paleo-libertarians. I had hoped that you were not one of them.
The reason I abandoned the Libertarian Party years ago, and hold Ron Paul in contempt today, is because of the paleo-libertarian element. War, it is said, is the health of the state, so war is bad, so American paleo-libertarians adopt a radical isolationist and even pacifist view of the world in regards to foreign policy. Some, but not all, including Ron Paul adopt a neo-Confederate hostility toward the federal government.
Such isolationism creates a quirky view of the world. Pat Buchanan’s new book suggests that the US and UK should have stayed out of World War Two and left Hitler and Stalin fight it out in mainland Europe. Apparently, we would all be more free if Hitler won. Isolationism creats cognitive dissonance. If we don’t want war, and war happens, then WE did something wrong. It is easier to blame ourselves for our failings than to accept that there is evil in the world. To recognize evil would mean to accept the need for a foreign policy that countered evil, and that would mean building a military, and that would mean Big Bad Government and taxes and so forth. Better to accept defeat and allow taxes to rise.
We get oddballs like Murry Rothbard who, when the Soviet Premier visited New York, cheered the Soviet rather than Eisenhower because Eisenhower killed more people. Libertarianism gone mad.
The Republican Party under Hoover or with Charles Lindberg and the “America First” gang was removed from power, for which we may all be grateful. Eisenhower’s internationalism won over Taft’s isolationism. For a while, both Republicans and Democrats worked together for a bipartisan foreign policy that understood that US security depended on a stable world, and that US freedom could not survive without such security. Why is that so hard to understand?
Now, it is the Democrats turn at rancid isolationism and pacificism. Bill Clinton’s Democrats were coldly indifferent to the challenge of Islamic radicalism, and who cared about silly old Afghanistan anyway? In 2 days, we will remember the consequences of isolationism. It wasn’t pretty. I could happen again.
If you think that Obama could keep the country more secure than McCain, say so, and explain why. But please spare us all the Higgs “war is the health of the state” crap.
that is idiotic. libertarians should vote for the Libertarian candidate. i guess voting is just a game huh?
I largely agree with this assessment, but I often fear the Democrat version of what the Republicans did for Bush’s first six years (not cut spending like they said they would) with regards to war. While Republicans will outright go to war, Democrats claim to respect diplomacy and sovereignty and go not on wars, but on “peace keeping” missions that are essentially mini-wars. I have no doubt a President Obama would go to Darfur and Burma to effectively nation build and have a net result that’s not all that different.
The big advantage for McCain on the other hand is that his party does not control the house and senate.
So, the primary reason a libertarian should vote for Obama is so that he can vote against Republicans? That seems less than compelling.
Further, you do accurately list Republican faililngs, but that leaves one half of the story untold. You’ve failed to address why Democrats would be preferable to Republicans.
If only I could vote, I would follow your advice.
Even if this is true, oil in the middle east is important.
The libertarian vote for should go to neither Obama nor McCain, but to Nader—to get him elected but simply to promote his main messages: Stop the war on drugs. Knowing that I’m writing towards a relatively educated audience, I won’t go into why libertarians want to liberal drug policy, and why it probably the most important libertarian policy that will affect America. Instead, I will note that voting for Nader promotes this argument, even if you disagree with him on every other issue. Further, I will note that McCain and Obama are not as different as they would have you think.
McCain wants to leave Iraq in 2013; Obama wants to leave 16 months after taking office (which comes to half way through 2010). A difference of 20 some months will not change the history of the world. Further, the Iraqi government is currently working on a deal for a gradual withdraw of troops, and the new president is not likely to rewrite this deal. I don’t care who becomes the next president. However, I do care whether they address the issue of liberalizing drug policy in the U.S. Nader is the real reform candidate, even for libertarians.
I think some of these comments are missing the point. This is not an endorsement of Obama. Note the “(1)” in the title. I expect this will be followed by “Why Libertarians Should Vote for McCain (2)” and possibly “Why Libertarians Should Vote for Barr (3).” Obviously, there are arguments against Obama, and I’m sure we’ll hear them.
Even after he outsourced foreign policy to Joe Biden?
Just FYI: that sort rant fits in well at a place like Huffington Post, but it’s very disappointing to read at Marginal Revolution.
Note how the so many of the comments conform to the Amens you get at lesser sites. That’s a clue to the level of readership this stuff attracts.
You really need to guard against lowering your standards like this.
Alex, it’s not Dems vs. Reps IN THE ABSTRACT. It’s a far-left democrat president with 56-57 Dem Senators and a Dem house vs a centrist republican president with 57-58 Dem Senators (because Janet Napolitano will appoint a socialist goon to replace McCain) and a Dem house.
You’re making the fundamental analytical error here by failing to consider the query in context.
That argument doesn’t hold much water. Obama has said no on school vouchers and privatizing Social Security and wants to tax the “windfall” profits of oil companies (why don’t you google Google’s profits?) while the Democrats in congress are busy passing laws against smoking, eating, and plastic bags. The best possible scenario is McCain and a Democrat congress–hopefully they can’t pass anything else.
Alex,
How dare you make people have the wrong impression as to what your website is about.
Next thing you’ll be including properly labeled but highly misleading charts!
Alex, yes, Bush & Republicans have blundered in many ways (Medicare, farm subsidies, arguable anti-terror strategy…). McCain, no doubt, will make some boneheaded moves. You may be right, Republicans might get their act together better in a libertarian-favored way if totally frozen out, but their big losses in Congress are already creating that environment. Obama PROMISES much higher taxes and (irreversible) moves toward socialized medicine. Naive and wishy-washy on foreign policy doesn’t make war less likely. On civil liberties, is the appointment of more justices who back decisions like Kelo supposed to help? I would suggest that many libertarians need to distinguish between political philosophy and politics. They should be connected, but they are not one and the same. Adams and Burke understood that. Even PJ O’Rourke views libertarians as too utopian. In reading some of the comments, it’s not hard to see why.
I see little different in either party’s actions. This leads me to think an Iraq-like invasion would not be impossible for the Democrats to execute. … I’d argue their problem with this war is more that it wasn’t their idea, rather than some ideological objection.
If I want to piss off the GOP, I’d rather do so by voting libertarian. At least with that line of action, I can live with myself.
Voting twice for the “lesser-evil”-Bush has resulted in heartache and a guilty conscience. If I want to sleep better at night, I’m going to have to vote my gut.
(Bush I knew how to keep Iraq small, and go home.)
Who said libertarians were kooks? They’re just funny.
Odograph,
You point out a different axis of analysis between us. I give no bonus points to the number of other people in the world who support our wars. If a war was just (defensive), and voluntary, I’d fight the whole world. Luckily, our government is likely to never make me that offer.
“This seems mostly a retrospective negative evaluation of the last most recent regime. But we’ve had lots of regimes over centuries – shouldn’t we use that entire dataset to infer what the next candidate will do, and not just cue off of the political party of the last regime?”
Given McCain’s voting record, you already know. You just don’t want to admit it.
FWIW, I look at the internationalism from a pragmatic perspective (realpolitik), and don’t think I’m making any particular moral argument.
The moral argument would be that to go to war, you have to be SURE you are choosing the lesser evil (never a good) … and on that front I think we’ve slid too far, accepting collateral damage (even when it’s kids) far more than we should.
“Now, it is the Democrats turn at rancid isolationism and pacificism. Bill Clinton’s Democrats were coldly indifferent to the challenge of Islamic radicalism, and who cared about silly old Afghanistan anyway? In 2 days, we will remember the consequences of isolationism. It wasn’t pretty. I could happen again.”
You have GOT to be kidding me. In 2 days we will remember the consequences of supporting Israel with its settlements – lock stock and barrel, bases in Saudi, and unremitting mucking around in that region in general. Let me know how you’d react if a bunch of Mexicans started building settlements in Texas, and if Russia put military bases in our backyard. Like, say, Cuba. Oh, wait. I already know how you’d react to that.
BTW Obama talks a big anti-free trade anti-NAFTA line but then Austan Goolsbee says don’t worry about that he is only lying.
In my opinion, the only time to do a “protest vote” is when your state has tipped so far it doesn’t matter. If you are in a close or swing state, I’d suggest not.
Next Comments →
Comments on this entry are closed.