Making common cause against ourselves: Why libertarians and liberals aren’t natural allies even when they agree on something

I don’t want to hear it, any of it, from any libertarian, unless you are living in a house you built yourself out of material you paid cash out of pocket for, no credit cards from a federally insured bank, on land you bought outright, no mortgage from a federally insured bank, that’s powered, heated, and cooled by solar, wind, or geothermal technology you installed yourself, no hiring contractors benefiting from government subsidies and tax breaks and specially written rules and regulations, with a septic system and a well you dug yourself, no connections to the town sewer and water lines.

You’re going to be paying some taxes, federal, state, and local, no getting around that, so you’re entitled to a few public and publically supported services. You can have internet access and a phone line and expect the police and the fire department to show up when you need them. You even get to complain on winter mornings when the town is late plowing the road up to your driveway. And you don’t have to homeschool your kids.

But you should have kids. Children are the test. Raising a family is expensive and time consuming and it’s what draws most people into some dependence on government, starting with schooling. And then there are those doctor and dentist bills. I assume you’re carrying good health insurance and won’t be buying a better policy through the exchanges (even though you could), but even so, the government’s still involved, regulating the insurance companies so they don’t gouge you or con you or drop you whenever they decide you’re costing them more than you’re making them, making sure your medicine is safe, effective, and affordable, subsidizing hospitals either directly or through grants and tax breaks, and taking care of some of your doctor’s poorer and less healthy (that is, elderly) patients by paying some of their bills through Medicaid and Medicare so that she doesn’t have to treat them free and try to make up for it by passing the costs on to you.

Don’t get me started on what happens if you’re sending them off to college.

I don’t expect you to live like a mountain man in a cabin in the north woods, hunting and trapping and growing your own food and trading for what you can’t supply yourself, although many of you talk as if you’d like to or think you and everybody else should and some of you talk as if you are in fact living like that and the suburban McMansion you call home sweet home is Fort Apache and your sales job at the IT firm involves wrestling with bears.

But, ideally, you should be a farmer and grow as much of your own food as possible. That cuts down on your reliance on the FDA, federally subsidized agribusiness, and government built and maintained highways and rail lines and ports to put the food on your table and see to it it's edible. If you don't farm, then you should own and run your own business.  I'll give you a pass on having to depend on government built and maintained infrastructure to keep the lights on and the doors open. Like I said, you pay taxes, and it's not your fault the great majority of your fellow citizens don't want to live in a Libertarian Utopia just yet and spend their weekends paving roads and laying sewer pipe.

But your business better be locally based, no franchises, and serving a local need and customer base, relying on local suppliers to as great a degree as possible and on government, at every level, to as little degree as possible.

You don’t have to believe in no government, but if you aren’t at least trying to take yourself off the grid and off the dole, then I’ve got to conclude that your professed libertarianism is just a high-fallutin’, long-winded, and, usually, very boring way to complain about your taxes. “That government is best which governs least” should not mean “That government is best that does whatever I want and need it to do without making me pay to help it do whatever others want and need it to do.”

That’s Republican thinking.

But then I’m prejudiced. I believe most of you are Republicans, just for one reason or another you’re afraid to admit it. My best guess is it’s vanity. You don’t want to identify with the insurance salesman-church deacon-sadistic gym coach-corporate yes man-country club-obviously self-loathing closet case-Rotarians looking for a hooker at a convention types who make up the media face of the Republican Party. I can’t blame you for that.

How’s that? I’m missing the point? I’m over-simplifying? I’m caricaturizing libertarianism by over-emphasizing the self-reliance bit?

I’m sorry. I’ve been taking you at your word. I thought you meant all that idealistic talk about how limiting, even eliminating government involvement in our lives will naturally lead to a return to first principles, that there will be a revival of a true communitarian spirit and society will reorganize itself so that all the things we’re dependent on government for (and so morally weakened and corrupted by government in the process) will by provided by a spontaneous pitching in and our renewed and revitalized democracy will thrive thanks to a mixture of self-help and mutual aid.  So it seems to me that self-help---self-reliance---is the key component of libertarianism. If it’s not, what is?

Liberty?

What does that mean?  How does it apply?

The liberty to live our lives as we see fit, to be who we are, to put our talents and skills to work as best we can for our own best benefit? The liberty to be left alone to think and act for ourselves?

I’m for that.  I thought the Bill of Rights and subsequent amendments and acts of Congress already guaranteed all that. In fact, as a liberal I believe that’s what government is for, to protect such liberty and see that is enjoyed by all Americans.

But maybe it’s proven it can’t be trusted to do that. It’s certainly fallen down on the job from time to time.  And there are more than a few states these days where the governors and the legislatures are determined to deny liberty to a great many citizens and limit its enjoyment and privileges to straight white men.  Of course, again, as a liberal, I believe that the answer to that is a strong and active federal government. But for the sake of argument, I’ll take your point for the moment, that liberty is best guaranteed by the government that governs least. as long as if by that you intend as a given that you get to enjoy such liberty as long as you don’t hurt anyone else or trample on their rights as you assert your own.

But you don’t intend that. You intend that you get to do whatever you want to make your money without anyone telling you how to go about it.  There’s no government telling you have to hire union workers or pay the workers you do hire a decent wage or give them benefits. No government telling you can’t pick and choose your customers based on any criteria other than their ability to pay.  No government telling you you can’t run your business for whatever customers you choose without having to make the place accessible to people in wheelchairs or who rely on service dogs, without having to serve any of those people because, you know, once you let them in the store…

You intend that you get to burn as much gas and electricity as you decide is necessary without having to worry about your carbon footprint. You intend that you get to use whatever materials and chemicals you decide are most cost efficient and dispose of the leftovers and the waste as easily and cost-efficiently as you wish. You intend that the goods and services you sell meet only standards you set yourself based solely on what you think you can get the suckers to buy without it losing you money and by “losing” money you mean not making every single dime you assume is yours to make.

You mean you shouldn’t have to pay taxes because you are a maker not a taker and don’t get anything out of government you couldn’t get more cheaply and more efficiently from private contractors and that includes good schools, decent health care, a secure and comfortable and healthy retirement, and even reliable police and fire protection.

And you mean that anybody who gets hurt by your taking and enjoying your liberties and anybody who can’t afford to buy whatever services you would force them to buy by eliminating the government programs and regulations and laws that help them acquire those services, and that includes the Americans With Disabilities Act, the Voting and Civil Rights Acts, and any right to collective bargaining, have only themselves to blame and if they can't get it together to take care of it themselves they can just go suff.

See, I know you. I’ve been listening to you rant about “liberty” for decades.  And it’s all about taxes and about being able to make as much money as you can without having to worry about anybody else or feeling obligated to contribute to the public welfare except in the magic way of letting the Invisible Hand of the Marketplace take care of it for you while you go about your business of putting it away by the sackful.

That’s why your intellectual heroes include Hayek and Rand and Milton Friedman and not Jesus and the Buddha and Thoreau.

That’s why so many of your organizations are bank-rolled by the Koch Brothers.

You are essentially Right Wing corporatists, when you are not out and out Tea Party-ists, you’re just glib enough to talk your way around your selfishness, self-centeredness, and greed.

As far as I can see, what you want is no different from what Ted Cruz and Mike Lee and Rand Paul want except for the availability of legal reefer, and by liberty you mean the liberty to deny to other the liberties and rights I count on the government you want to do away with to protect.

You can call yourself a Libertarian, but you are illiberal, and that’s really why this liberal doesn’t want to hear it.

Any of it.

___________________________

Our old blogging buddy and leader in spirit, Tom Watson, has been hearing it, and then some.  Tom wrote a column for Salon about today’s anti-surveillance state rally in Washington, branded Stop Watching Us, in which he makes the case that the coalition of liberals and Libertarians sponsoring the rally is bad business for liberals.

Tom’s point is that whatever degree of superficial agreement there is between liberals and Libertarians on reining in the NSA, the two sides are sides and so fundamentally opposed on a great many issues important to liberals that making common cause with Libertarians is in a very real way making common cause against ourselves.

As I added in a comment there, Libertarians have far more to gain from this alliance than we do:

Libertarian self-romanticism aside, politically in the United States right now, libertarianism is basically an apology for letting the corporate rich do whatever they please and very little of what they please to do is in any way *liberal*.  And, whatever future utopias libertarianism might someday wish into being, politically, right now, it is tied to the Pauls, Ron and Rand, both of whom are so tightly allied with the Right Wing of the Republican Party they might as well identify with the Tea Party. Rand Paul pretty much does. They aren't working to bring about a libertarian utopia; they are working for exactly the same things Ted Cruz and Paul Ryan are working for, except everybody gets to get high while they end Social Security, Medicare, and Obamacare, and defy the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, deny women the right to control their own bodies, chase Spanish speaking immigrants out of the country, force gay people back into the closet, and leave the disabled to fend for themselves. It doesn't matter that liberals and libertarians share a couple of political beliefs, their overall goals are opposed. Liberals get nothing out of the association, while libertarians get social acceptance and cover for their fellow traveling with Right Wing Republicans.

As you can guess, Libertarians don’t want to hear this, any of it.

Read Tom’s column, Don’t ally with libertarians: Ideologues co-opt an anti-NSA rally at Salon.

Comments

[JD]

Uff da. This a clinic on deconstruction of an argument. The libertarian in our neighborhood is also the municipal judge, so go figure.

[The Den Mother]

Wow. You have a lot to say, but it's all based on your remarkable lack even the most basic understanding of libertarianism. What you describe is anarchism, not libertarianism. Libertarianism is based on the idea that government is people banding together to do something for the community that either 1) people can't do individually, 2) non-public institutions can't do, or 3) non-government entities can't do as effectively. A corollary is keeping government functions as local as possible. I look forward to your corrected and re-written article after you have learned something.

[Jeremy]

Not all liberals, conservatives and libertarians have black and white ideas. Why people describe Libertarians as being 100% libertarian views is a prejudice premise. I personally am an environmenatlist, atheist,against killing your own kid and a libertarian. There needs to be a strong third party that stands up for people's rights while keeping the other two parties on check.

[Lance Mannion]

The Den Mother, can I call you The? What you're expecting is what every libertarian I've ever had to listen to go on and on about themselves expects, for me to "learn", against all evidence, to accept your self-romanticizing and self-flattering image of yourselves. But the whole first part of my post is based on that image. So, in what ways are you like that? In what way do you exemplify that? How's that house coming?

[Lance Mannion]

Jeremy, the keeping the two parties in check thing would carry more weight if so many of you didn't vote Republican.

[Jaquandor]

Interesting self-description of Libertariansm by Den Mother there. It's a nice softening of the idea, but in my experience -- and I've interacted with many, many self-described Libertarians -- they never, ever, ever admit the existence of a single thing that actually really truly does fall into any or all of those three categories (with the possible exception of national defense). It all sounds very calm and rational, until every single Libertarian argues that every single thing can be best handled by individuals or "the market". And frankly, push to shove, many Libertarians will, if pushed far enough, end up arguing that "the market" and "individualism" are SO SACRED in themselves that even IF they grant that individuals or "the market" can't do something as well as government, we shouldn't have government do them anyway.

Libertarians are, to me, about as interesting as people I know who get angry if you describe them as Republicans, insisting on their "independence", and yet when I press them on their voting behavior, they literally cannot name the last Democrat they ever voted for.

[Ken Muldrew]

"I thought you meant all that idealistic talk about how limiting, even eliminating government involvement in our lives will naturally lead to a return to first principles"

It's worth noting that always and everywhere, said "first principles" refers to the existence of a protection racket. Unless you have a government that is bigger and stronger than all non-governmental organizations, you will be paying taxes to a private business shakedown rather than the government. And unless you are the local strongman, you *will* be paying taxes, so the real question is deciding where you get the most value for your dollar.

[Eric Sieferman]

In my libertarian days, I found distinct types of people at meetings:
1. Republicans who wanted to smoke dope.
2. Barely disguised racists who complained constantly about government help to black moochers and lazy Mexicans.
3. Gun loon survivalists and end-timers.
4. Randist ideologues.
5. Gold bugs.
6. A small number of genuinely thoughtful folks who, for instance, were as opposed to government support of business as they were to the public social safety net. These folks have never been important in libertarian politics, but they're fun and sometimes educational.