I Was One Too

Via Glenn, Stephen Green with I Was a Card-Carrying Libertarian: Confessions of a Black Sheep Republican is a great piece on being mostly libertarian at heart, but disappointed with the party… and the two main parties.  I’ve mentioned this kind of thing before.  Since I commented at such length, I thought I’d turn it into a post.

I went through similar, but ten years or so before you, with Ron Paul being the last time I took serious interest in an LP candidate.

I first heard of “libertarian” as a more logical alternative to conservative and liberal in 1976 somewhere between 9th and 10th grades leading up to Ford’s election.  Er… I mean Carter’s election… ugh.  The description of socially liberal and fiscally conservative clicked like it was the most logical thing I had ever heard.

I followed Ed Clark’s candidacy in 1980, but I think I voted for Reagan because, hello, I had to vote against Carter, and Reagan smartly sounded libertarian in some of the most important ways, nullifying that threat when it was at its worst.

I discovered and subscribed to Reason in the early eighties.  Well, it would have been the end of 81 or beginning of 82.  It was around the same time I read 1984 and ended up with nightmares, to which I was not prone.  Then I read Atlas Shrugged, which made them go away.  After that, I joined the Massachusetts and national Libertarian Parties, attending about three annual state conventions.

My very first impression of Libertarians in person was the attractive young lady who manned the registration table bitching whinily because I, being a little late to arrive, was making her miss part of a film being shown.  It was, as I recall, Anarchism in America.

My lasting impressions of Libertarians in person, apart from the overall conclusion that at least the state party was too much of a clique, were twofold:

One was when I was shopping for books at the obligatory book dealer table at the convention.  I was looking eagerly at a book about a legal theory of strict liability, because it was a concept I had come up with entirely on my own and was intrigued to see in the title of a book.  An overbearing LP guy, aware I was a newbie, insisted almost to the point of forcing me that I would NOT buy that book, but would stick to more basic books instead.  I still can’t believe the gall.

Another was Rebecca Shipman, whose candidacy for governor fell during my membership, laughing at me for not knowing that men could belong to the League of Women Voters.  She was one of those overtly friendly yet obnoxiously smarmy and superior people.  The same thing made me uncomfortable with my marketing professor and helped ensure I didn’t choose that as a major.

So, yeah, there were cool people, and it would have helped were I less shy and more assertive, and more actively interested in hands-on political participation, but it was very much a clique.

I’ve never stopped being a libertarian, but the Libertarians are unrealistic (a more verbose and polite way of saying “crazy") and serve best as a fount of libertarian nudging.  This Presidency went completely off the rails when the scope or even the presence of the libertarian leaning elements among the voters was dsmissed.

The one thing Libertarians used to point out that was true is that most people are at least 51% libertarian.  Right now a Ron Paul, as much as 100% so, can’t win, but a 70% or so libertarian Republican could.

A shame there’s not one handy.

It strikes me how far ahead of him I was.  To me, Virginia Postrel will always be the new girl wonder who came along as editor of Reason, with a far away look in her eyes that I’ve otherwise seen on an enculted religious girl.  As I mentioned, Ron Paul was the last candidate I followed with any seriousness, in 1988, though I did keep up some of what was going on in the party.

9/11 Was a big demarcation point for what I call war libertarians versus pure, traditional libertarians.  I was always the least comfortable with the absolutism about defense stopping at our borders, at least in the world as it really is.  A case can be made for a more expansive view of that being still purely libertarian in philosophy, but you get increasingly grey as you get into levels of preemption or making the world safer, rather than protection or retaliation.

I could write at length about what it means to be libertarian or lean that way, just how the Republicans went astray as the predominant home of libertarian leaners, or how many people call themselves libertarians but aren’t.  However, I have things to do, even besides potty bootcamp.  Plus my mother just took the liberty of dropping in…

Update after a quick skim of the beginning of this:

I mentioned libertarian versus liberal versus conservative, and that is a distinction and a problem for the Libertarian party.  There is not a philosophy called “republican” that Republicans are expected to adhere to, but since Libertarian the party is named for and based on libertarian the philosophy, it’s expected to adhere to it, and at the same time, a change of platform at the party level might be taken as a change to the philosophy.  All Republicans and Democrats need to do is be a more logical home to people of strongly conservative or liberal bents (though frankly, each is dangerously authoritarian and, well, crazy, taken fully, just as most people consider libertarian to be crazy if taken whole, except without the autoritarian problem) respectively (and no saying that’s forever), but have platforms that widen their appeal.

Posted by on 10/25 at 10:39 AM

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