Libertarians fall into two distinct groups: strict libertarians like Rand Paul and classical liberals such as myself. “Classical liberal” is not a term that rolls off of the tongue. Consequently, “libertarian” is the choice term in popular discourse when discussing policies that favor limited government. Libertarians of all stripes oppose President Obama’s endless attacks on market institutions and the rich. The umbrella term comfortably embraces both strands of libertarian theory vis-à-vis a common intellectual foe.
It is important to understand the differences in views between the strong libertarian and classical liberal position. Serious hard-line libertarian thinkers include Murray Rothbard and Karl Hess. Rothbard believes nonaggression is the sole requirement of a just social order. For Hess, “libertarianism is the view that each man is the absolute owner of his life, to use and dispose of as he sees fit.” There are large kernels of truth in both propositions. It is quite impossible to see how any social order could be maintained if there were no limitations against the use, or threatened use, of force to enslave or butcher other people, which Hess’s proposition of absolute self-ownership strongly counteracts.
Yet the overarching question is how does a group of people move from the Hobbesian “war of all against all” toward a peaceful society? Hess claims that stable institutions are created by “voluntary association and cooperation.” Again, strong libertarians are on solid ground in defending (most) private contracts against government interference, which is why Lochner v. New York (1905), reviled as it is by most constitutional thinkers, was right in striking down New York’s sixty hours per week maximum labor statute. Yet the hard-line libertarian position badly misfires in assuming that any set of voluntary contracts can solve the far larger problem of social order, which, as Rothbard notes, in practice requires each and every citizen to relinquish the use force against all others. Voluntary cooperation cannot secure unanimous consent, because the one violent holdout could upset the peace and tranquility of all others.
The sad experience of history is that high transaction costs and nonstop opportunism wreck the widespread voluntary effort to create a grand social alliance to limit the use of force. Society needs a coercive mechanism strong enough to keep defectors in line, but fair enough to command the allegiance of individuals, who must share the costs of creating that larger and mutually beneficial social order. The social contract that Locke said brought individuals out of the state of nature was one such device. The want of individual consent was displaced by a consciously designed substantive program to protect both liberty and property in ways that left all members of society better off than they were in the state of nature. Only constrained coercion can overcome the holdout problems needed to implement any principle of nonaggression.
The flat tax is preferred because it reduces private incentives to game the tax system and, likewise, the ability of government officials to unfairly target their opponents. The optimal theory of taxation minimizes the distortions created by the need to fund the government activities that maintain public order and supply infrastructure. The classical liberal thus agrees with the hard-line libertarian that progressive taxation, with its endless loopholes, is unsustainable in the long run. At the same time, the classical liberal finds it incomprehensible that anyone would want to condemn all taxes as government theft from a hapless citizenry. The hard-line libertarian’s blanket condemnation of taxes as theft means that he can add nothing to the discussion of which tax should be preferred and why. The classical liberal has a lot to say on that subject against both the hard-line libertarian and the modern progressive.
It’s a fundamental error partisans on both sides make to believe that problems with abusive government arise only or primarily when the “bad guys” are in power. It’s not surprising that strong partisans tend to be more forgiving when their own side is in control. But if you are a “libertarian-minded” conservative, that means that you have an underlying ideology beyond mere partisanship, and that ideology, if nothing else, cautions against giving the government too much power, especially when that power is exercised in secret and reviewed only in secret hearings and by secret courts. So, in fact, “it is entirely understandable that libertarian-minded conservative should distrust [ANY] administration” and not only “resist endowing it with unnecessary additional powers,” but try to check the abuse and potential abuse of powers already granted.
The fact that so many Republicans were willing to vote against NSA surveillance despite the argument that they were voting against policies advocated and implemented by the Bush Adminsitration and therefore were undermining the Bush-initiated War on Terror can be seen as a rare (albeit partial) vindication of the GOP’s purported limited government ideology against partisan drivel and the sort of demagoguery recently exhibited by Governor Chris Christie,* who seems to think that saying “9/11 widows” is a persuasive policy argument. That’s not only cheap demagoguery, it makes one wonder about how secure the rights of the accused would be in a “former prosecutor” Christie administration, given that there are a lot more victims of violent crime out there than there are victims of 9/11.
My second was, haven’t the arguments for unrestrained spying gotten any better over the last 11 years? Talk to the “widows and orphans,” visualize a smoking crater, and write a blank check to the Security-Industrial Complex?
That took some chutzpah: The debate Obama allegedly welcomes is only taking place because a former NSA contractor revealed that the administration had been lying to the public about bulk data collection. During the July 24 debate, Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., one of the PATRIOT Act’s principal authors, reaffirmed that it was never intended to make every American’s call records “relevant” to terrorism investigations.That, apparently, is the kind of debate over NSA spying that Christie’s pal, President Obama, “welcomes.” Just before the vote on the Amash amendment, the White House charged that “this blunt approach is not the product of an informed, open, or deliberative process.”
Contra Christie, the implications of the administration’s sweeping legal theory aren’t particularly “esoteric.” Last Tuesday, Senator Ron Wyden, D-Ore., explained: “If you know who someone called, when they called, where they called from, and how long they talked, you lay bare the personal lives of law-abiding Americans to the scrutiny of government bureaucrats.”
Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people.
Expect to see more Democrat victories as more independents start voting for non-Republican candidates, splitting the R vote.
House Republican leaders have a new problem. They can’t count on their members to support them on procedural votes.
Sixteen Republicans defected Wednesday in a vote on the rule governing consideration of a government-funding bill meant to prevent a government shutdown. The defections could have caused the rule to fail since most Democrats voted also voted against it.
This is a declaration of war within the Republican ranks. And it should be deeply troubling to Republicans across the country, watching as the recently and controversially reminted House leadership continues to pursue the same political philosophy that led to a mini-rebellion in the House in January.
Libertarians and small-government types are not happy with the oldsters McCain and Graham talking trash about Rand Paul after his filibuster – we could see a replay of the election of 1912 in 2016.
Nothing like campaigning against a know-nothing Congress on behalf of an imperial presidency.
But using fear talk in order to give the power of life and death to the federal security forces — and their natural antipathy to individual freedom — isn’t remotely conservative.
It’s statist.
Perhaps McCain and Graham hadn’t yet digested the sumptuous peace dinner feast Democrat Obama put on for them and 10 other Republican senators at Plume, a fancy gourmet restaurant in Washington.
McCain and Graham are big government statists who happen to be Rs.
Is it just me or do McCain and his Boy Wonder sidekick Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) bear a growing resemblance to Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy from Sponge Bob Squarepants? Like the version of the GOP they represent, their best days are behind them. Which may well be good news for just about everybody else.
If GOP members of Congress have finally (and mostly reluctantly) signed on to the reality of sequester cuts, the country’s Republican governors seem a lot more bent out of shape at the idea of losing various crumbs from federal coffers.
