Clowns to the left of me! Jokers to the right!
By Logan Ferree
One of the main reasons for this blog, if not the only reason, is to justify an alliance of libertarians and liberals within the Democratic Party. This is not something that comes easy to many self proclaimed libertarians out there. But the idea that the right isn't the natural home and ally of liberty needs to be discussed:
Both leftists and rightists have their place. When one camp is in charge, the other is almost certainly going to lean more libertarian. The idea that some libertarians still hold, that the right, in spite of being in power, is less a worry than the out-of-power leftists in Hollywood, is just plain ridiculous.
A pragmatic or rational libertarian may well have voted for Reagan in the 1980s, and then cheered on the Gingrich Revolution in 1994. But today libertarians that cling to the right are blind. And if they cling to the right too long, they may miss out in helping the Democratic Party find a way back to power that also embraces liberty. Anthony Gregory continues:
If the liberals run in 2006 and 2008 on the same, tired, stupid FDR-LBJ platform of more money for this and more money for that, they’ll probably lose again. Or they’ll win, if America has finally become sick of the Elephant Party again. Either way, the Republicans will only be encouraged to continue on their path of increasing hostility to liberty.
If, on the other hand, the American left takes a good look in the mirror and realizes that America has long ago abandoned left-socialism, and is now in some sort of anti-leftist vogue, the Democrats can put the brakes on our country’s fast journey toward totalitarianism, simply by returning to their roots. Not their Rooseveltian roots, but their Jeffersonian ones.
. . .
If the Dems did this, they would succeed in the national elections, and they could do it while remaining on the left, ideologically. Or, they might once again emphasize all the great programs they could pay for with tax dollars. Whether they run on the socialist aspect of leftism or the civil-libertarian-antiwar aspect, the left will eventually, once again, rise in America. When it happens, we will either see more or less liberty as a result. If the left stresses its anti-authoritarian side, I believe it will win sooner rather than later, and America will slow down, if not reverse, on its current road to serfdom.
More below the fold on the shifting terrain of the fight for liberty.
I'm one that realizes that the libertarian movement isn't monolithic. You have some neo-libertarians, who I honestly question their love for liberty, and paleo-libertarians, who I genuinely respect. You have libertarians that disagree on intellectual property, and then geo-libertarians like myself who take a perhaps un-orthodox view of natural resources. Once upon a time the paleo-libertarians were calling for an alliance with the paleo-conservatives, a united paleoist movement within the GOP. Those days are over, and the chief prophet of the movement, Lew Rockwell, is the first to admit it:
What is the most pressing and urgent threat to freedom that we face in our time? It is not from the left. If anything, the left has been solid on civil liberties and has been crucial in drawing attention to the lies and abuses of the Bush administration. No, today, the clear and present danger to freedom comes from the right side of the ideological spectrum, those people who are pleased to preserve most of free enterprise but favor top-down management of society, culture, family, and school, and seek to use a messianic and belligerent nationalism to impose their vision of politics on the world.
It takes a lot of guts, in my mind, for Rockwell to go forth and say the above, since in the 1990s he was one of the many intellectual libertarians hostile to left-leaning libertarians like myself.
Obviously this has sparked some discussion online. Reason provides some of the discussion here and here.
Is there a growing consensus among liberty activists that the right has gone wrong?
Yes.
But is there a consensus that the left is better?
No, many of them feel that if the Democrats were to take back power, not only would things not improve, things would get worse.
But step one for a libertarian-liberal alliance is to break the one libertarian-conservative alliance. Right now libertarians are unhappy with the Republican Party, but they still aren't sold on this other party, the Democrats. Many would rather stay and work on fixing the GOP, or give up and join the LP. Not many are thinking about the DP.
Best of luck to those of us who are brave enough to join the party of Jefferson. |
