The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Libertarian

How far can traditional libertarianism go in modern America?

Brian Doherty | April 24, 2007

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Positing the benefits of a more libertarian world, as I’ve learned on talk radio across the land, runs you smack into failures of imagination as vast as the federal deficit: anything the government has ever had a hand in, from making cities well-designed and livable to regulating commerce or the money supply to running schools, is thought to be impossible without it.

And when it comes to things like getting out of Iraq—one of Paul’s main selling points, and a great one—you run into another of libertarianism’s rhetorical difficulties: it is often difficult for a libertarian solution, coming at the end of decades or even centuries of state solutions, to seem to “solve the problem.” After all, merely pulling out of Iraq is going to leave a pretty ugly situation in Iraq, and how is your libertarian non-interventionism going to solve that one, pal? One thing government programs are unfailingly good at: creating seemingly legitimate excuses for more government programs.

But if government programs or efforts are unsustainable, they have to stop sometime. Libertarian luminaries as diverse as Milton Friedman and Murray Rothbard both recognized that libertarian policy victories are apt to arise from crises, not from a full-on philosophical embrace the moral and practical benefits of liberty. As Friedman wrote, libertarians “do not influence the course of events by persuading people that we are right when we make what they regard as radical proposals. Rather, we exert influence by keeping options available when something has to be done at a time of crisis.”

The partial victories and shifts we’ve seen from his own fertile mind on such matters as the volunteer army and inflation, and general libertarian influence on such reforms or proposed reforms as the 90s welfare reform and Social Security privatization efforts this decade, indicate Friedman was right about the importance of crises. If so, then Ron Paul’s problem, and libertarianism’s writ large, is that he foresees problems on the immediate horizon that the majority of Americans don’t see.

Ron Paul, and many libertarians, see everything from overseas intervention to currency intervention to drug war interventions leading to untenable crisis points. Most Americans don’t. If stuck with purely pragmatic arguments, divorced from libertarian moral principle, for radical change, America is rich enough, and for most us feels free enough, that greater moves in the direction of liberty are still something for a future time.

But not an impossible dream. Some changes in mores—as we’ve seen with gay marriage in the past decade—come surprisingly quickly, and a similar change could be nearer than we think when it comes to the Drug War in particular.

As for the rest of the libertarian package, it may be, as Tyler Cowen has argued, that we are going to buy all the government a rich society can afford. It may also be that a rich society will eventually want the luxuries of social peace, a healthier and more varied economic future, and a dropping of imperial burdens that only more liberty can bring. But until a politician who says what Ron Paul says no longer seems like an impossible eccentric, there’s still a long way to go.

Brian Doherty is a senior editor for reason and author of Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement .

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Reason Magazine : The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Libertarian | Long Distance Inc links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:

…go in modern America? Brian Doherty | April 24, 2007. Libertarians have been delighted by some recent analysis via the Cato Institute’s David Boaz … Read more:  Reason Magazine : The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Libertarian No comments [Comments are now closed for this post] Posted by admin    Date: Tuesday, April 24, 2007 Categories: long-distance Tags: all-familiar, brian-doherty,…

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Reason Magazine : The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Libertarian | Long Distance Dia links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:

…of the Long-Distance Libertarian April 24th, 2007 jedwan Leave a comment Go to comments The Loneliness of the Long – Distance Libertarian. Here is the original:  Reason Magazine : The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Libertarian Reason Magazine : The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Libertarian Categories: Long Distance Tags: america, candidacy, constitution, government, libertarian, maher, modern,…