The principles will live on but his headlining the party convention has thrown into relief deep, longstanding philosophical rifts that can no longer be ignored
The American liberty movement is in a shambles because many alleged libertarians bought into the scamdemic narrative that was pr omoted by Donald Trump in early 2020. It was an obvious psy-op whose purpose was to get stupid and pathetic Americans to give up their liberty and destroy the social fabric that makes civilized society possible.
More and more libertarians view non-libertarians as hysterical, irrational, and dangerous. They are working on ways to separate themselves from the violent majority.
An interesting historical perspective on the roots and evolution of the Trumpian milieu, something not often done. Seems somewhat odd the emphasis on Rothbard, considering he died almost 30 years ago, and was more of a strategist and polemics than a strong theoretician. Also it might be noted another strategic alliance arose at least informally in the Trumpian world, that with the Russian far "right" such as with Sputnik et.al. and thinkers like Alexander Dugin.
Well, this article didn't age well. The actual outcome of the Libertarian convention - Trump is booed by the audience throughout his speech, and the whole thing ends with a mutual "fuck you". LP nominates cosmopolitan Chase Oliver as its candidate, and the Mises Caucus ends up losing big.
I found it interesting that the Libertarian Party convention was pretty cool to vocally hostile to Trump's attempt to woo them to get his endorsement. His speech was booed by the majority although there were some MAGA fanboys trying to cheer him on. Above everything Trump displayed his two most obvious traits ignorance and arrogance. He only got cheers for promising to commute the sentence of the founder of Silk Road--- a conduit for the distribution of illicit drugs. Which is weird because he has also promised the death penalty for selling drugs.
He was also heckled for being a liar--- who knows where that idea came from--- and a war criminal.
He has as much kinship with libertarianism as he has with actual conservatism. None.
When the crowd gave him no love he took to his default position of mocking the audience.
Libertarian impulses run deep in America. The government needs to stay out of our bedrooms, our pharmacies, our uteri, marriage management, gender identity choices, markets, end of life decisions, etc. Wherever the individual can choose without harming another or others the local, state and federal government should not interfere.
There is a wall of separation between religion and state and there should be a wall of separation between business and state. The law of torts should become the main occupation of the courts instead of criminal law. Contract law should replace the nonsense of the social contract.
Now few would support all of these but among all of these almost all Americans from right to left on the philosophical spectrum would support some of these.
Many official libertarians want total freedom but without principle of equality or equal treatment. This leads to behaviours "I am a libertarian but the government can prevent Muslims from migrating and can punish woke left-wingers"
I think this gets the cause and effect backwards. Trump didn't kill anything. Libertarians, just like Conservatives, had this coming for a long time. They have no real grasp of political theory and no ideology. They were ripe for being overrun by populist lunacy sooner or later.
The saddest part of all is that no lesson has been learned at all. All the NeverTrumpers, et al, can see the dangers of where things are going but are still continuing with their hodgepodge of very superficial and contradictory political ideas without facing up to their own intellectual bankruptcy as being the cause of all this.
In the mid-Sixties my wife and I began a brief association with a group of libertarians. We soon found that the individuals had no understanding of what beset people without resources. My wife was poor and Black and one reason we were attracted to Libertarianism was what is called here their cosmopolitanism (not the drug issue - we never were interested though many friends liked legalization) and their rejection of religious doctrine as a basis for policy. Over the years the self-identified Libertarians I've encountered - and I've associated with quite a few here in Arizona - have veered more and more to crazy-villle a la Rand Paul. So thanks for clarifying their trajectory.
The libertarian movement ceased to be a viable force the moment that the courts mandated that all states recognize gay marriage. The gay conservative faction was a rather important part of the coalition and it lost its reason to continue. And within weaks, gay rights became gay privileges followed by gay social engineering of elementary school students. Compared to that, Trump is more libertarian than many who linger in the libertarian movement.
The other big issue is the Consmopolitan school's belief in open borders. This is insanity when combined with birthright citizenship and a welfare state. Even Milton Friedman said that you cannot have open immigration and a welfare state at the same time. (Ironically, it's Murray Rothbard's insistence of no order of operations that bolsters today's Cosmopolitan call for effectively extending the US welfare state to the entire frikken planet. Obama was more libertarian than that.
The idea of being able to choose your own government (or society) is a cool one. But open borders is like open Wal Mart without paying. Setting up a good government is *expensive.* Something about pledging lives, fortunes, and sacred honor.
Bernietopia and Libertopia cannot coexist unless there is a price for changing citizenship. Arbitrage happens. Rich Bernietopians will establish residence in Libertopia to dodge taxes. Poor Libertopians will cross into Bernietopia if they need expensive medical procedures.
Open borders inevitably lead to world government. Notice how power has moved up to the federal government as cheap transport has made it possible to change states easily.
Given what world government would be like, today's Cosmopolitan libertarians are less libertarian than FDR in actual consequences.
It’s not accurate to say “around the world, “liberal” retained its more classical connotation”. In New Zealand where I live, calling myself “liberal” would still cause confusion about what I believe in and whether I’m a socialist. “Libertarian” is still the easiest and clearest way to describe my political views and people generally know what it means, and I sense the same applies in Australia and Britain, regardless of the shenanigans and corruptions of the US Libertarian party.
It is odd to be lectured by Andy Craig about libertarianism, when he has never shown much interest in key tenets of libertarianism, such as fiscal conservativism or deregulation. There is no mention of fiscal conservatism anywhere in his essay, even though libertarians are supposed to be fiscally conservative, not merely socially liberal. Similarly, Craig's Bluesky and Twitter accounts consist heavily of woke grievance and peddling progressive talking points (although they also include interesting and knowledgeable takes on election law). Craig has exhibited much less interest in free markets than many more socially conservative figures, such as Ronald Reagan, the National Review, or the Wall Street Journal. They are not libertarians, either, but at least, they do not pretend to be. Many socially moderate Republicans are much closer to being libertarians than Craig is, such as New Hampshire's Chris Sununu and Vermont's Phil Scott. They have much more interest in free markets than Craig does, especially Sununu. If Milton Friedman -- who supported the death penalty, opposed affirmative action, and thought Africa benefited from colonization -- were still alive, Craig would probably call him a racist.
I too haven't seen much work on libertarian economics from Craig. Nor have I seen much on libertarian foreign policy, immigration, education, etc., from him.
Yet, respectfully, I'd say a more charitable take would be to grant that Craig focuses his energies on what he calls here "issue-based coalitions" in areas in which he is most knowledgeable -- especially electoral rules and politics. This is not to mention the positive nods he gives to "deregulation" and libertarian "tax policy" in this very piece. And even if Craig is not a "libertarian" in some significant sense, it's clear here that he is knowledgeable enough about the movement, its intellectual roots, and its history to offer a worthwhile opinion.
It has probably been on borrowed time since the fall of the Soviet Union. After that the choice was to play up the milquetoast liberalism of the Democrats as some sort of overbearing proto dictatorship (the maga path) or switch to being a gadfly in the broader left coalition as they had been on the right for so long. The intellectuals could handle the abstraction necessary for the latter, but the majority was always gonna end up in the former camp.
But why not learn the subject of politics, understand the ideas of thinkers such as Locke and America's Founders, learn fundamental concepts like individual rights and rights-protecting government and put forward a politically literate and coherent ideology of liberal governance and free market capitalism?
Libertarianism boils down to this: I don't need a driver's license, but THAT guy over there does! It has no place in reality and it's just a bunch of hot air. The first comment is such a good example of the self absorbed puffery. It's useless. Absolutely useless for real people other than the elbow-patch genteel haters who revel in their snobbery whilst SOLVING NO PROBLEMS IN REALITY. Nobody has time for navel gazing and reach-arounds.
Libertarianism bugs the shit out of me and I was delighted to see the orange blob doing his word salad at their shindig since this sheds light on what I hate the most about libertarianism: the delusion!!!!! Short fingered vulgarian can take a crap on their sideshow and I'm here for it.
Good column. In my view, here’s why libertarianism is neither Left nor Right but a consistent and principled advocacy of liberty: In terms of political philosophy and intellectual history, libertarianism, broadly defined, is the true resurgent liberalism of the 21st century.
Of course, different types of liberalism have arisen over the centuries, with legitimate differences to explore. Compare, say, John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty and Herbert Spencer’s The Man Versus the State to George H. Smith’s The System of Liberty: Themes in the History of Classical Liberalism and transgender economist/historian Deirdre McCloskey’s Why Liberalism Works.
Yet, in tension with 20th century brands of interventionist, paternalistic or State-expansionist liberalism, the Latin root of the word ‘liberal’ most deeply relates to liberty.
True liberalism, rightly understood, champions Liberty by limiting Power, especially the brute force institutionalized by the State – as detailed in Roy Childs, Jr.’s essays in Liberty Against Power ..
Also worth reading: Szasz, Rand, Hayek, Rothbard, Tibor Machan, Robert Nozick, Henry Hazlitt, Rose Wilder Lane (The Discovery of Freedom), H.L. Mencken>
But definitions matter. Clarity in concept is the foundation of accuracy and insight.
For example: Government, most accurately defined by the great sociologist Max Weber, is the only human institution that claims a legitimized monopoly on the (final) use of force within a given geographical territory.
In short, behind the velvet gloves of even the more limited and democratic governments are always fists.
I agree definitions matter and that's the problem. Do you honestly think libertarians could even define the concept of liberty (it's rights-protecting government btw, not libertarian anarchy), let alone be consistent and principled advocates for it?
The American liberty movement is in a shambles because many alleged libertarians bought into the scamdemic narrative that was pr omoted by Donald Trump in early 2020. It was an obvious psy-op whose purpose was to get stupid and pathetic Americans to give up their liberty and destroy the social fabric that makes civilized society possible.
More and more libertarians view non-libertarians as hysterical, irrational, and dangerous. They are working on ways to separate themselves from the violent majority.
An interesting historical perspective on the roots and evolution of the Trumpian milieu, something not often done. Seems somewhat odd the emphasis on Rothbard, considering he died almost 30 years ago, and was more of a strategist and polemics than a strong theoretician. Also it might be noted another strategic alliance arose at least informally in the Trumpian world, that with the Russian far "right" such as with Sputnik et.al. and thinkers like Alexander Dugin.
Well, this article didn't age well. The actual outcome of the Libertarian convention - Trump is booed by the audience throughout his speech, and the whole thing ends with a mutual "fuck you". LP nominates cosmopolitan Chase Oliver as its candidate, and the Mises Caucus ends up losing big.
I found it interesting that the Libertarian Party convention was pretty cool to vocally hostile to Trump's attempt to woo them to get his endorsement. His speech was booed by the majority although there were some MAGA fanboys trying to cheer him on. Above everything Trump displayed his two most obvious traits ignorance and arrogance. He only got cheers for promising to commute the sentence of the founder of Silk Road--- a conduit for the distribution of illicit drugs. Which is weird because he has also promised the death penalty for selling drugs.
He was also heckled for being a liar--- who knows where that idea came from--- and a war criminal.
He has as much kinship with libertarianism as he has with actual conservatism. None.
When the crowd gave him no love he took to his default position of mocking the audience.
Libertarian impulses run deep in America. The government needs to stay out of our bedrooms, our pharmacies, our uteri, marriage management, gender identity choices, markets, end of life decisions, etc. Wherever the individual can choose without harming another or others the local, state and federal government should not interfere.
There is a wall of separation between religion and state and there should be a wall of separation between business and state. The law of torts should become the main occupation of the courts instead of criminal law. Contract law should replace the nonsense of the social contract.
Now few would support all of these but among all of these almost all Americans from right to left on the philosophical spectrum would support some of these.
In a sense we are all libertarians.
Many official libertarians want total freedom but without principle of equality or equal treatment. This leads to behaviours "I am a libertarian but the government can prevent Muslims from migrating and can punish woke left-wingers"
Being a Hans Herman-Hoppe libertarian means being a brutalist and anti-democracy.
I think this gets the cause and effect backwards. Trump didn't kill anything. Libertarians, just like Conservatives, had this coming for a long time. They have no real grasp of political theory and no ideology. They were ripe for being overrun by populist lunacy sooner or later.
The saddest part of all is that no lesson has been learned at all. All the NeverTrumpers, et al, can see the dangers of where things are going but are still continuing with their hodgepodge of very superficial and contradictory political ideas without facing up to their own intellectual bankruptcy as being the cause of all this.
In the mid-Sixties my wife and I began a brief association with a group of libertarians. We soon found that the individuals had no understanding of what beset people without resources. My wife was poor and Black and one reason we were attracted to Libertarianism was what is called here their cosmopolitanism (not the drug issue - we never were interested though many friends liked legalization) and their rejection of religious doctrine as a basis for policy. Over the years the self-identified Libertarians I've encountered - and I've associated with quite a few here in Arizona - have veered more and more to crazy-villle a la Rand Paul. So thanks for clarifying their trajectory.
The libertarian movement ceased to be a viable force the moment that the courts mandated that all states recognize gay marriage. The gay conservative faction was a rather important part of the coalition and it lost its reason to continue. And within weaks, gay rights became gay privileges followed by gay social engineering of elementary school students. Compared to that, Trump is more libertarian than many who linger in the libertarian movement.
The other big issue is the Consmopolitan school's belief in open borders. This is insanity when combined with birthright citizenship and a welfare state. Even Milton Friedman said that you cannot have open immigration and a welfare state at the same time. (Ironically, it's Murray Rothbard's insistence of no order of operations that bolsters today's Cosmopolitan call for effectively extending the US welfare state to the entire frikken planet. Obama was more libertarian than that.
The idea of being able to choose your own government (or society) is a cool one. But open borders is like open Wal Mart without paying. Setting up a good government is *expensive.* Something about pledging lives, fortunes, and sacred honor.
Bernietopia and Libertopia cannot coexist unless there is a price for changing citizenship. Arbitrage happens. Rich Bernietopians will establish residence in Libertopia to dodge taxes. Poor Libertopians will cross into Bernietopia if they need expensive medical procedures.
Open borders inevitably lead to world government. Notice how power has moved up to the federal government as cheap transport has made it possible to change states easily.
Given what world government would be like, today's Cosmopolitan libertarians are less libertarian than FDR in actual consequences.
https://rulesforreactionaries.substack.com/p/a-kinder-gentler-nationalism
No one took anything from libertarianism. The good things came from progressives.
It’s not accurate to say “around the world, “liberal” retained its more classical connotation”. In New Zealand where I live, calling myself “liberal” would still cause confusion about what I believe in and whether I’m a socialist. “Libertarian” is still the easiest and clearest way to describe my political views and people generally know what it means, and I sense the same applies in Australia and Britain, regardless of the shenanigans and corruptions of the US Libertarian party.
It is odd to be lectured by Andy Craig about libertarianism, when he has never shown much interest in key tenets of libertarianism, such as fiscal conservativism or deregulation. There is no mention of fiscal conservatism anywhere in his essay, even though libertarians are supposed to be fiscally conservative, not merely socially liberal. Similarly, Craig's Bluesky and Twitter accounts consist heavily of woke grievance and peddling progressive talking points (although they also include interesting and knowledgeable takes on election law). Craig has exhibited much less interest in free markets than many more socially conservative figures, such as Ronald Reagan, the National Review, or the Wall Street Journal. They are not libertarians, either, but at least, they do not pretend to be. Many socially moderate Republicans are much closer to being libertarians than Craig is, such as New Hampshire's Chris Sununu and Vermont's Phil Scott. They have much more interest in free markets than Craig does, especially Sununu. If Milton Friedman -- who supported the death penalty, opposed affirmative action, and thought Africa benefited from colonization -- were still alive, Craig would probably call him a racist.
I too haven't seen much work on libertarian economics from Craig. Nor have I seen much on libertarian foreign policy, immigration, education, etc., from him.
Yet, respectfully, I'd say a more charitable take would be to grant that Craig focuses his energies on what he calls here "issue-based coalitions" in areas in which he is most knowledgeable -- especially electoral rules and politics. This is not to mention the positive nods he gives to "deregulation" and libertarian "tax policy" in this very piece. And even if Craig is not a "libertarian" in some significant sense, it's clear here that he is knowledgeable enough about the movement, its intellectual roots, and its history to offer a worthwhile opinion.
It has probably been on borrowed time since the fall of the Soviet Union. After that the choice was to play up the milquetoast liberalism of the Democrats as some sort of overbearing proto dictatorship (the maga path) or switch to being a gadfly in the broader left coalition as they had been on the right for so long. The intellectuals could handle the abstraction necessary for the latter, but the majority was always gonna end up in the former camp.
But why not learn the subject of politics, understand the ideas of thinkers such as Locke and America's Founders, learn fundamental concepts like individual rights and rights-protecting government and put forward a politically literate and coherent ideology of liberal governance and free market capitalism?
Why wasn't that considered?
Libertarianism boils down to this: I don't need a driver's license, but THAT guy over there does! It has no place in reality and it's just a bunch of hot air. The first comment is such a good example of the self absorbed puffery. It's useless. Absolutely useless for real people other than the elbow-patch genteel haters who revel in their snobbery whilst SOLVING NO PROBLEMS IN REALITY. Nobody has time for navel gazing and reach-arounds.
Libertarianism bugs the shit out of me and I was delighted to see the orange blob doing his word salad at their shindig since this sheds light on what I hate the most about libertarianism: the delusion!!!!! Short fingered vulgarian can take a crap on their sideshow and I'm here for it.
Good column. In my view, here’s why libertarianism is neither Left nor Right but a consistent and principled advocacy of liberty: In terms of political philosophy and intellectual history, libertarianism, broadly defined, is the true resurgent liberalism of the 21st century.
Of course, different types of liberalism have arisen over the centuries, with legitimate differences to explore. Compare, say, John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty and Herbert Spencer’s The Man Versus the State to George H. Smith’s The System of Liberty: Themes in the History of Classical Liberalism and transgender economist/historian Deirdre McCloskey’s Why Liberalism Works.
Yet, in tension with 20th century brands of interventionist, paternalistic or State-expansionist liberalism, the Latin root of the word ‘liberal’ most deeply relates to liberty.
True liberalism, rightly understood, champions Liberty by limiting Power, especially the brute force institutionalized by the State – as detailed in Roy Childs, Jr.’s essays in Liberty Against Power ..
Also worth reading: Szasz, Rand, Hayek, Rothbard, Tibor Machan, Robert Nozick, Henry Hazlitt, Rose Wilder Lane (The Discovery of Freedom), H.L. Mencken>
But definitions matter. Clarity in concept is the foundation of accuracy and insight.
For example: Government, most accurately defined by the great sociologist Max Weber, is the only human institution that claims a legitimized monopoly on the (final) use of force within a given geographical territory.
In short, behind the velvet gloves of even the more limited and democratic governments are always fists.
https://www.lfs.org/blog/interview-lfs-founder-michael-grossberg-on-how-he-became-a-writer-critic-sf-fan-helped-save-the-prometheus-awards/
I agree definitions matter and that's the problem. Do you honestly think libertarians could even define the concept of liberty (it's rights-protecting government btw, not libertarian anarchy), let alone be consistent and principled advocates for it?