Memo to My Fellow Trump Haters: Libertarianism isn’t Republicanism

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.