Now that Donald Trump has all but wrapped up the Republican
nomination — and, with it, foreclosed any lingering claims that the GOP
is the party of limited-government conservatism — a small cohort of
notable Republicans have signaled that they are shifting their
affiliation to the Libertarian Party. The Washington Examiner’s Tim
Carney, already leaning that way, tweeted that he’s making the switch and longtime Republican strategist Mary Matalin recently explained that she would “never vote for Hillary and never Trump means always liberty. Hence, Libertarian.”
Wrong.
If
all that these converts see is a safe house where they can ride out the
storm, they’re missing the point: The libertarian ideal and the
Libertarian Party stand as reminders that neither of the two major
parties is committed to the principle that individuals are superior to
the state. And in this election year, if fear of a President Trump
results in libertarianism morphing into Republicanism-lite, it would
cease to serve that purpose. While I’m not active in Libertarian Party
politics, as a small-“L” libertarian, I want no part of diluting this
core principle just to boost electoral success.
But I get it. The
GOP has been taken over by a know-nothing vulgarian. For Republicans
still invested in their party’s traditional priorities — big military
budgets, tax cuts and morality-based social policy — Trump’s
ever-changing views on nearly every issue present a real dilemma.
Libertarianism,
though, isn’t a subsidiary of Republicanism. Like Republicans, we want
limited government, but we reject the corporate welfare of auto-industry
bailouts, the military adventurism of the Iraq War and the interference
with individual liberty represented by initiatives such as North Carolina’s H.B. 2
— all policies that Republicans embrace. Matalin, a former adviser to
President George W. Bush, and other Republican expats surely believe in
liberty as a concept, but her support for Bush’s big-government
conservatism suggests that at heart, she’s a statist. Which is her
prerogative. But it places her, and many other Republicans, at
loggerheads with libertarianism.
Read the rest here. The comments are also quite interesting.
There is a lot
about libertarianism that I really like and admire. My problem is that
when you dig down you find that most of the hardcore libertarians are
really closet anarchists. Sorry, but that is a bridge too far for me. An
orderly society can't function without some sort of authority.
I guess I just have to accept that there is no perfect system for the organization of society and go with the least bad.
Trump is supposed to be the "hater", not you.
ReplyDeleteI tried using the term anarchist to describe myself for a while, like many who follow the Austrian school of economics do, but it is wishful thinking. Some like to say it just means no rulers, but that there are rules.
ReplyDeleteBut the Austrians believe in private property, thus they believe, ultimately, in rulers. And they don't believe so much in rules; consider the antagonism to the modern state and its bureaucratic proliferation of rules.
Add in time, and you end up with those capable of owning property well tending to hold most of it, and telling those with less capacity think past next week what to do.
I'm "trending" with Chris Hedges and though I don't think I'm a socialist, nor do I necessarily subscribe to the idea of "inverted totalitarianism" as the description of what went wrong, at least Hedges is closer to beginning the discussion with real questions. To wit, though the mess is a lot bigger than Trump, he's simply the most vulgar of the current lot.
ReplyDeleteWhen has the Republican party ever been the party of limited government?
ReplyDeleteHow do you have limited government in a diverse polity of 350 million people?
PATRIOT Act, No Child Left Behind? Medicare B? TARP? War Powers Act? 2016 Omnibus Budget? TAA/TPP?
The Republican Party is not even a conservative party, much less the party of limited government.