It seems likely. We’re going to have to join forces against the fascists who are taking over Washington. Lots of good discussion in comments.
16 thoughts on “A New Libertarian-Conservative Coalition?”
Comments are closed.
It seems likely. We’re going to have to join forces against the fascists who are taking over Washington. Lots of good discussion in comments.
Comments are closed.
Rand,
A libertarian-conservative rapprochement would be more likely if conservatives didn’t spend so much time belittling or outright villifying libertarians. Sure, we agree with conservative rhetoric on some fiscal matters. But after spending the past 8 years trying to justify an interventionist foreign policy, abuses of power, concentration of power in the executive, torture, warrantless wiretapping, and other civil liberties abuses, expanded entitlement expenditures, nationalization of banks, out of control spending, etc…calling the other side fascists comes off as a little hypocritical (not wholly inaccurate, but definitely rich coming from some so-called conservatives).
While I wouldn’t rule out a reuniting of libertarians and conservatives at some point, don’t expect a lot of us to come running back before we’ve seen lots of honest and heartfelt changes on the part of conservatives.
~Jon
A libertarian-conservative rapprochement would be more likely if conservatives didn’t spend so much time belittling or outright villifying libertarians
I agree.
…after spending the past 8 years trying to justify an interventionist foreign policy, abuses of power, concentration of power in the executive, torture, warrantless wiretapping, and other civil liberties abuses, expanded entitlement expenditures, nationalization of banks, out of control spending, etc…calling the other side fascists comes off as a little hypocritical (not wholly inaccurate, but definitely rich coming from some so-called conservatives).
I don’t know whether or not I agree with that. I haven’t heard anyone call people who object to those things fascists specifically. Can you provide a cite?
I certainly haven’t, or if I have, it’s not because of those positions. But then, I’m not a conservative…
Rand,
Sorry I wasn’t clear on that part. What I meant was that conservatives spent the past 8 years supporting and defending actions (such as I listed) that myself and many other libertarians considered to be borderline-fascist. To see them now trying to get libertarians to come back by calling liberals fascists seems a bit rich, even if it is partially true.
~Jon
. To see them now trying to get libertarians to come back by calling liberals fascists seems a bit rich, even if it is partially true.
Jon, would it help if the person who has led the movement to call “liberals” by their true name (fascists) has also said that in the process of researching and writing his book said that he had thereby become more libertarian?
Because he did.
Votes cast for Bob Barr cost the Republicans North Carolina and Indiana. They almost cost him Montana too. Further, I bet the libertarian, small-government & fiscal conservative voters who just stayed home cost them the election. Heck, when libertarians are voting for Obama because heck, at least they get some civil rights and they see no difference in the growth of government between him & the Republicans, you know something is wrong.
Republicans are sure to know all that. I am hopeful.
My friend Ari Armstrong has written a terrific blog post on this precisely topic:
“How the Republican Party Can Create a New Winning Coalition”
http://www.freecolorado.com/2008/11/election-blues-and-reviews-iv-toward.html
His points include:
1) Religious freedom (i.e., separation of church and state)
2) Free speech
3) Free trade and economic freedom
4) Immigration sanity (i.e., dropping the anti-immigrant stance)
5) A foreign policy for America
He predicts that if the Republican Party doesn’t change in this direction (and quickly), it will results in their “stagnation or eventual death”.
I doubt it will happen. The Libertarian position is that the Republicans must become social libertines and throw under a bus all those ghastly religious people, who make up the core of the GOP’s voting strength. Then we are going to tell the people who voted for Obama because he promised them that he’d steal money from Whitey and give it to them that we’re going to take away their candy. Yeah, that’ll work. Alienate the majority of people who will agree to your economic ideas by telling them that they are a bunch of Neanderthals then look for support among those who sell their votes for a handout. The only thing that most minority people now have in common with the right is an attitude of social conservatism. Otherwise, they vote left because they hope to get handouts. Before you can convince them of the virtues of economic liberty you are going to have to reach them through their socilly conservative attitudes. In California 70 of blacks voted for Proposition 8. Then they all pulled the lever for Obama. Chew that one over for a while.
As we see in the posts above the Libertarians also demand that Rrepublicans stop with this silly defense of the USA stuff, and believe that we can act as if the world of Grover Cleveland still exists. We have a new totalitarianism on the march and Libertarians, like Democrats, want to preemptively surrender because, dontcherknow, it’s just too much trouble to actually fight to defend civilization against the barbarians. Then they bitch that the adults defending them are acting soooo mean. I’m a bit surprised not to see any complaints about those horrid Neo-cons. You know, the people who still believe that “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, and that among those rights are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” The Neo-cons are about the only people today who do believe that. What evil morons, eh? Feh.
I have always thought that most Libertarians would, in the end, join with the socialists against the conservatives. Those conservatives are just too blue collar and middle class and religious for the fine souls to associate with. Most Libertarians will be more concerned to protect sexual libertinism and baby killing and drug taking (self-induced psychosis) than support liberty and property and law, if the latter means that they have to get together with the likes of the social conservatives, and actually compromise with such people. So I’m thinking it’s more likely that there will be a Libertarian Democrat entente, like the Liberaltarian speculation during the campaign.
As someone who would like to consider myself both conservative and libertarian, my impression observing the post-election recriminations being thrown about is that libertarians are the ones more likely to fracture any coming alliance, not conservatives. The comment thread in the Volokh post is a case in point. If libertarians are so contemptuous of religious conservatives that they see Sarah Palin as anti-intellectual and unacceptable (when, to my mind, her views and governance were more libertarian than what you would find among just about any politician these days), then how can the two possible reconcile?
Wow, and here I thought that if you were for a 3rd party you were nothing but a tool of the Demodevils? Go figure.
I will add another point to this topic. We need to get under control the 80 hour/week crowd — whether they work in the private or public sectors, whether they are Republican or Democratic or Libertarian or Green.
I’m willing to let these people work 80 hours/week. I’m just not willing to have them in positions of power where they make the rest of us obey them and their nutty ideas.
80 hours/week is not dedication. It’s a way of wearing yourself out and primes you to think poorly if at all.
Check out, for example, Peopleware by DeMarco and Lister.
Michael Leonie seems rather far removed from reality.
Here in Maryland I’ve seen the bumper sticker “Prochild, Profamily, Prochoice.” Leonie seems to think that to prevent abortion we must embrace a regime where people like him dictate our sexual behavior. This is not true. Consider, for example, the real history of prohibition, whether it be alcohol, drugs or sex. These prohibitions fail — all too often spectacularly.
There are other approaches. Help people build strong family lives, for instance. Normal people want some sort of sexual involvement in their lives. They want time for themselves. Give them that and you will see “prolife” behavior.
Let me give an example from my own family’s history that might help illustrate these points. My maternal grandparents were born into ordinary English working class families in the 19th century. As was normal for the time, they didn’t even attend high school. I vaguely remember them attending an Episcopal church when I was growing up. Our church was not one of these shouting fundamentalist places. Getting along with others was viewed quite positively.
My grandparents married in their mid 20s and moved to the United States shortly thereafter. After some time in this country, they had a baby boy. When this infant was only a few months old, one of the diseases that were so common among children a century ago went around and killed this baby. This profoundly affected the young couple. My grandmother returned briefly to England to recover among family and friends. When she felt better, she returned to her husband. They had three more children. My mother, who turned 93 Wednesday, is still around. When she was still able to think and communicate clearly, she told me about this. I do remember my grandparents as warm, loving people.
What is more likely to reduce abortion? Letting puritanical ranters get their way? Or producing solid citizens like my grandparents who value and love children?
Chuck, I’m going to make an attempt to reach you here, since you sound like there’s a crack open.
What you’ve done here is a bit shameful: you’ve demonized your debating opponents (let’s call them religious “prolife” or antiabortion conservatives) into some evil Cotton Mathers whose joy comes in tying you to a rack to suffer. Do you know any people like that? Or are you just assuming, inferring, guessing — using prejudice and what you see on the television — to think they’re like that?
Secondly, you’ve turned a thoughtful position — and it must be, since it appeals to so many ordinary reasonable people — into a silly cartoon. As if antiabortion conservatives only care about punishing abortion, a simple childlike rule, instead of the adult, nuanced “strengthen the family” that you care about.
Try backing off the prejudice, the caricaturization, the oversimplification and cartooning, and you might be able to talk to the other side, find common ground, realize you may very well share similar goals and only have minor differences on methods.
You’d find that religious conservatives believe, just like you, that the family should be strengthened. Just like you, they believe this means for the post part giving people support and help. They donate like crazy to charity, and volunteer themselves. They adopt unwanted children. They set up charities for unwed teen mothers, shelters for abused women. They coach Litte League, go to PTA meetings, hold bake sales to get the high school new computers. Just like you (assuming your dediction to family isn’t strictly theoretical).
They also believe that people need bucking up sometimes, that the route to a strong and moral life doesn’t just consist of being rewarded when you do good. You need discouragement from taking the easy route, when it’s a bad route. Children should not be allowed to touch the hot stove. Teens should be supervised when they first drive, and grounded when they’re found to have not worn the seatbelt. And they should be taught that abortion is such a grave and ethically compromised act that it does not substitute for contraception, that hard as it is you must use your head to govern your loins.
Now how that plays out in actual laws — whether you restrict abortion, how much, for whom, and who decides the inevitable exceptions — are exactly those complex points of method on which you and they disagree. And you’re going to disagree, that’s just human nature. There’s nothing wrong with it, and you’ll just need to find a compromise with which you can both live, but about which neither of you are fully happy. That’s life in a republic. If you don’t like negotiating the conditions of living with your neighbors, you need to find a totalitarian dictatorship, where there’s no need to negotiate with anybody. Quite nice. Provided, of course, you agree on every point with the Supreme Dictator.
But you might keep in mind, as you negotiate — and negotiate you must — that they have the same basic decent framework in mind for human life that you do.
Carl,
You can find my personal website by simply clicking on my name. It will tell you more about myself. I don’t put truly personal things on the website. My close friends know more about me than appears there. I will leave it at that. Still, though, I think you will recognize me as quite active in the community.
I have met some religious fanatic types — at Goddard Space Flight Center, believe it or not. The ones I met there I came to not like or respect. They aligned themselves with abusive bullies who waged war on people — men and women who wanted normal lives. When a woman manager tells a recently married 40 year old man to “Forget about the marriage. Concentrate on work” that to me is beyond the pale.
At St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, I know a number of gays and lesbians. Most are in committed relationships. The others would like to be. I don’t doubt that there are some in those categories who are constantly on the prowl, seeking new conquests. That’s not the kind of people I know and I truly dislike my friends being tarred by that kind of accusation.
I don’t much care for authoritarian demands on the populace — whatever the demand. Authoritarian measures are severely oversold at present. Yes, we need to keep a few people under tight control — think murderers, rapists, etc. For the rest of us those kinds of measures are harmful to us as individuals and to society as a whole.
Michael Yonie’s last paragraph provides an example of too much of what some of us see. I’d be more impressed if social conservatives trumpeted positions that were first and foremost prolife.
So, Chuck, you’re telling me in the same post:
* You know one or two social conservatives who are real shits, so it’s pretty reasonable to extrapolate that the whole movement is rotten.
* You imagine there are some gay marriage advocates who aren’t very nice, but you think it’s irrational and unreasonable to overgeneralize from that to all of them.
See the difficulty yet?
I don’t much care for authoritarian demands on the populace
You mean like “don’t murder” or “don’t steal” or “pay your taxes every April 15?”
Once again, your argument consists largely of labeling those with differing views with some drastic label with unpleasant connotation. Fact is, you, along with every other sane person who isn’t a flat-out anarchist, believe in some “authoritarian” demands on the populace. That’s a good working definition of government, after all. You just differ on which demands are reasonable, and which are not.
Well, fair enough. But you make it impossible to even talk to people with different opinions if you begin by labeling their ideas of what government should be up to “authoritarian demands” and calling your ideas of what government should do…oh, I dunno, “responsible regulation” or what not.
I’d be more impressed if social conservatives trumpeted positions that were first and foremost prolife.
They do. But you don’t hear them, because you’re only paying attention to where they disagree with you. In the same way, they think that you are a degenerate, because they only pay attention when you say something they find very disagreeable. I don’t doubt they need to listen up more. But so do you.
Carl,
I will observe that you can find out quite a bit about me just by clicking on my name. You provide no such courtesy. Googling “Carl Pham” isn’t all that helpful. The first item on the list is a fairly new account on the PopSci website. The second is an account on NewsTrust that you haven’t done anything with since last December.
I’ve done a fair amount of reading about the people you defend. I don’t like what I read. I still look at the National Review occasionally. There are some things I agree with, some I disagree with.
Carl Pham, very well said. You make very good points about Chuck and his closed mindedness.