Earlier this month the New York Times wondered
aloud if the “libertarian moment” had arrived. A good question, to be sure.
To answer it, though, Times reporter Robert
Draper sought out not quite the top libertarian thinkers in the world, but
instead those people most easily reached within a ten-minute walk from the
Capitol.
Draper begins with an ex-MTV personality and proceeds
from there. None of the people whose work and writing have shaped the
libertarian movement, and who have converted so many people to our point of
view, make an appearance. Ask the hordes of young kids who are devouring
libertarian classics how many of them were introduced to libertarianism, or
even slightly influenced, by the figures on whom the Times chooses
to rely. You already know the answer.
The movement’s major thinkers have rather more intellectual
heft behind them, which I suspect is why the Times would prefer to
keep them from you. Far better for libertarianism to seem like an
ill-focused, adolescent rebellion against authority per se, instead of a
serious, intellectually exciting school of thought that challenges every last
platitude about the State we were taught in its ubiquitous schools.
Economist and historian Bob Higgs shared my impression of
the Times article:
Of course, it’s easy to ridicule libertarians if you
focus exclusively on the lifestyle camp. Easy, too, to accuse them of
inconsistency, because in truth these particular libertarians are
inconsistent. Easy, too, to minimize their impact by concentrating heavily on
conventional electoral politics, as if no other form of societal change were
conceivable. Easy, too, to ignore completely the only ones – the anarchists –
who cannot be accused of inconsistency or ridiculed for their impotence as
players in the conventional political game, a game for which they have only
contempt. Finally, it’s easy, too – and a great deal more interesting for
general, clueless readers – to focus on the hip libertarians.
As Bob points out, the Times reporter says he
finds inconsistency among libertarians, because some want to cut only this
much, or abolish only those things. But this is what he gets for focusing on
the political class and the Beltway brand of libertarianism. Libertarianism
is about as consistent a philosophy as a Times reader is likely to
encounter. We oppose aggression, period. That means we oppose the State,
which amounts to institutionalized aggression.
We have zero interest in “public policy,” a term that
begs every important moral question. To ask what kind of “public policy”
ought to exist in such-and-such area implicitly assumes (1) that private
property is subject to majority vote; (2) that people can be expropriated by
the State to whatever degree the State considers necessary in order to carry
out the “public policy” in question; (3) that there exists an institution
with moral legitimacy that may direct our physical resources and even our
lives in particular ways against our wills, even when we are causing no
particular harm to anyone.
Still, I note in passing, political consultants are doing
their best to make a quick buck on the rising tide of libertarianism. A
fundraising email I receive from time to time urges people to get involved in
the political process, since simply “educating people” (contemptuous,
condescending quotation marks in original) isn’t enough. Instead, they need
to learn how to support people who pose as allies of theirs who mislead them,
lie to them, and deny their principles on a routine basis, in the spurious
hope that once in office, these candidates will throw off their conventional
exteriors and announce themselves as libertarians.
The Times, too, thinks primarily about politics,
of all things, when assessing whether the libertarian moment has arrived. The
article is fixated on the political class, from Barack Obama and Hillary
Clinton to Ted Cruz and Rick Perry. But why conceive of the question so
narrowly? Why should we assess the growth and significance of libertarianism
on the basis of political metrics alone?
The left understands this point. Recall Antonio Gramsci’s strategy for
bringing about lasting leftist victory. He did not advocate immediate and
exclusive emphasis on political activity. If the people’s minds had not been
changed in the direction that a leftist government would want to take them,
all their political conniving would be in vain anyway.
Vastly more important, Gramsci taught, was for their
ideas to work their way through the universities, the arts, and all the other
institutions of civil society. At that point, it wouldn’t matter who won the
elections. The people would already be in their hands – and in all
likelihood, the two competing candidates would themselves have adopted
leftist language and ideas, whether they realized it or not, to boot.
Now in this sense, the libertarian moment has not arrived
any more than it has in politics. These institutions are firmly in the hands
of those who hold libertarian ideas in contempt, even if an exception might
be found here and there.
But if we define the term “libertarian moment” more
modestly, a different conclusion emerges. No, we have not reached a point at
which anything like a majority of Americans have embraced our ideas. But we
have reached a point at which even mainstream sources, which in the
pre-Internet age could get away with ignoring us altogether, are forced to
acknowledge us, if only for purposes of dismissal and ridicule.
Economic commentary can no longer pretend that our
choices are either fiscal expansion or monetary expansion. A new school of
thought has spoiled the party, letting Americans know that these phony
choices by no means exhaust the real alternatives.
Thanks to Ron Paul, a new generation understands it’s all
right to favor the free market and to oppose war. Libertarians have
done more than anyone else to expose the Democrats as just another wing of
the war party, and to show there’s no real debate in America over foreign
policy. This is considered extremely uncouth by those who wish to maintain
the pretense that open discussion of important issues takes place in the land
of the free. Who else with any national audience has denounced Hillary
Clinton for bellicosity? The number is not zero, but it’s not in the double
digits, either.
After decades of virtually no progress at all in the war
on drugs, the prohibitionist regime is beginning to crack all around us. The
standard bromides in its favor elicit only cynical chuckles from a rising
generation that knows better.
Ordinarily, federal bailouts would be bipartisan and all
but unanimous, with self-described supporters of the market economy solemnly
informing us that just this once, it had to be done. Progressives
have not distinguished themselves here as they might have; Rachel Maddow once
said we wouldn’t have had an economy without the bailouts. It’s the
libertarians who have stood against the establishment tide, as usual.
In other words, we are having discussions that we did
not have in the past. Libertarians have staked out positions that a lot
of ordinary people share, but which they never saw articulated in public,
thereby strengthening the voice of dissent. Ten years ago, these dissident
views would have been drowned out by the establishment consensus, which
closes ranks whenever an issue of real importance arises.
Is it too much to call this the libertarian moment?
Whatever we want to call it, it’s the beginning of something never seen
before in American history, and that alone is reason to celebrate.
