Uncompromising Position

Is "Libertarian politics" an oxymoron?

Nick Gillespie from the July 1996 issue

(Page 3 of 3)

If the belief in a one-man wrecking crew doesn't provide a strong cornerstone for a campaign effort, Browne's ritual invocation of the "people" offers little more foundation. "I have posed a simple question to hundreds of people I've met," he writes. "If you had your choice, would you want more government than we have now, less government than we have now, or about the same amount as now? I've asked this question of taxi drivers, store clerks, bellmen, and waiters; I've asked people who are black and white, men and women, old and young. Almost invariably, the answer comes back right at me: 'Oh, I'd like a lot less government. Taxes are too high, government is too big.'...Most people recognize [that government doesn't work]. That doesn't mean that politicians recognize [the fact]. I think, in essence, we have won the educational war, not just with drugs, but the whole question of government. What has not been won is the political war. People want less government." Browne backs up his "informal survey" with polls showing widespread disgust with and distrust of government.

But none of the anti-government mutterings that were so audible before and after the 1994 elections (and considerably less so now) mean that people understand that government doesn't work or that they want less of it--at least not in any concrete, specific way. Browne is right that the political war has yet to be won--in many ways, it has not even yet been engaged. But he is mistaking a rhetorical victory for an educational one. Consider, for instance, his take on the drug war. "Today," he says, "nobody even asks about the War on Drugs. And if I bring it up, nobody challenges me [on legalization]." In fact, exceedingly few people have lost faith in current policies or the government that enacts them. Most people have embraced the drug war as every bit a part of the American landscape as the Statue of Liberty or the Grand Canyon. Last fall, a Gallup poll found 85 percent of over 1,000 adults surveyed opposed legalization, 83 percent favored more anti-drug education in public schools, and 87 percent favored increased funding for drug police. While legalization is an increasingly popular idea among some political and intellectual elites, there is simply no indication that the "people" are rejecting the drug war. Indeed, there seems to be genuine enthusiasm for opening new fronts such as the current legal and political campaigns against tobacco.

The same goes, more or less, for the general anti-government mood. It is one of the tragicomic aspects of the American political system that we get the government we vote for (or, as H.L. Mencken would have it, we get the government we deserve). By and large, politicians do not rule the country against the majority's wishes. If libertarians have indeed won the educational war, how did Congress enact V-Chip and Internet censorship legislation, two provisions wildly popular with the general public?

This isn't to say that "creeping libertarianism" doesn't exist. Confidence in government is at record lows and people are willing to hear out new ideas. Opportunities abound for inserting libertarian ideas into practice not because they are libertarian but because they may prove more workable than the status quo. To non-believers, the promise of such ideas may well hinge on the perception that they are beyond ideology. For instance, the public debate over Social Security reform--which may well culminate in a semi- voluntary, more market-oriented policy--is not driven by outrage at the government forcing people to save for retirement. It's driven by the inescapable realization that the system is rapidly going broke. The same goes for the seeming enthusiasm for budget cutting and reduction in certain types of regulation.

While the lack of enthusiasm for libertarianism qua libertarianism helps explain the tepid reception of the Browne campaign (and by extension, the L.P.), it doesn't necessarily bode ill for libertarian ideas. When libertarian-oriented policies are implemented, it will happen on a piecemeal basis, not as the result of some sea change in political philosophy. This is, after all, how Big Government beefed up--and how it eventually remade individuals to see the government as the answer to any and all problems. As Hayek noted in the 1956 preface to The Road to Serfdom, "The most important change which extensive government control produces is a psychological change, an alteration in the character of the people. This is necessarily a slow affair, a process which extends not over a few years but perhaps over one or two generations....[T]he political ideals of a people and its attitude toward authority are as much the effect as the cause of the political institutions under which it lives." Statist policies were in place long before the majority of Americans were statists. The process, one hopes, works in reverse, too: It may well be that we will be living in a libertarian society long before a majority of people consider themselves libertarians.

A couple of years ago, I had a conversation with a fellow passenger on an airplane flight. We started talking about how successful airline deregulation had been: better fares, better safety, better service, better everything. When I made the pitch that such efficiencies were the result of relatively unfettered market forces and could be realized in other areas, he stopped me cold. No way, he said. You're going to have to convince me on that one. This is similar to the point at which the libertarian movement finds itself. It is engaged in conversation with the mainstream--at long last!--and, if it is to become a dominant force in American political life, it will have to be persuasive every step of the way. To the extent that Browne and the L.P. add to that conversation, it's all to the good. But their fate is not the fate of libertarianism. Many libertarians, I'd wager, can find comfort in the irony that we may never have a Libertarian president until long after Big Government has passed from the scene.