Libertarianism sure sounds great in principle, and as a purely philosophical position, the idea that in all situations, personal liberty should be the first priority, there is a lot to praise about it. As a political governing principle, however, I found it lacking in the power to address real-world problems.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s be clear; when I say libertarian, I don\u2019t mean \u201clibertarian only when it’s convenient,\u201d like you get with Rand Paul. And I don\u2019t mean \u201cRepublicans who have an unread copy of Atlas Shrugged on their bookshelves and call themselves libertarian because it makes them sound cooler on college campuses,\u201d like soon-to-be-former House Speaker Paul Ryan.<\/p>\n
I also don’t mean libertarianism as simply the polar opposite of authoritarianism on the political spectrum. American libertarianism, in this case, is a specific point of view born in a very specific reading of the United States Constitution.<\/p>\n
Our libertarians are in many ways direct descendants of the Anti-Federalists of the early American Republic, sharing a reflexive distrust of centralized government. This view seems to reflect an eighteenth-century concept of centralized government influenced by the excesses of European monarchies.<\/p>\n
When you can pin libertarians down on policy specifics, they often sound very much in tune with the progressive left. They oppose the drug war, support cannabis legalization, and support a non-interventionist foreign policy (which does make Rand Paul\u2019s vote to confirm war hawk Mike Pompeo as Secretary of State especially troubling for those who want to label him as a libertarian).<\/p>\n
Sincere libertarians would also, like left-wing progressives, be horrified by the surveillance-state abuses of the NSA exposed by Edward Snowden. Libertarians, and I mean real ones and not Republicans wolves in the clothes of libertarian sheep, are generally against subsidies and other forms of corporate welfare, another issue aligning them more with Bernie-crat progressives than Republicans.<\/p>\n
When you stray too far from these real-world specifics, however, I find that libertarians seem to fall back on the vague claim that \u201cless government equals more freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now, back when Albert Einstein told us that energy equaled mass times the speed of light squared, we insisted that he show his work, and present a proof of his equation. Without similar documentation, \u201cless government equals more freedom\u201d seems more like a faith-based assertion than an empirically-based calculation.<\/p>\n
First, even if freedom were a resource that could be reliably quantified, the unavoidable fact is that government is not the only limiting factor on personal freedom. There is another, completely natural check on our liberties: other people. The number of noses in the room has an inversely proportional effect on our fist-swinging freedoms. And, equally importantly, the size of the population affects the complexity of the relationships between all the people. All those moving parts suggest that government acts as a necessary lubricant to all of those moving parts, keeping them from grinding together too violently.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not unreasonable to suggest that a post-industrial nation of more than 300 million people would require substantially more \u201clubricant\u201d than an agrarian nation of around 12 million. Trying to restrain our twenty-first-century government to an eighteenth-century framework is not a viable approach, in my opinion.<\/p>\n
On the question of government power, libertarianism seems to adopt an eighteenth-century view that lumps all forms of government into one bundle of necessary evil. But not all forms of government power are created equal.<\/p>\n
Certainly, the powers to spy on its people without warrants, to wage war without restraint or oversight, to detain without trial, to torture, are all bad in any quantity. The power to regulate the dumping of chemicals or the safety of the workplace can be overdone, just like any power, but when applied judiciously, it only takes away the freedom to be reckless with the well-being of other people. Experience, not theory, has shown that the freedom to work without unnecessary danger and the freedom to simply have clean drinking water are freedoms that exist because of and not in spite of the government\u2019s active role.<\/p>\n
I find that most, if not all, of the more specific \u201cless government equals more freedom\u201d positions are wanting for logic when examined at more than a superficial level.<\/p>\n
Libertarians, for example, frequently advocate for the abolition of public schools, believing that private schools will be better than government schools because they\u2019re not run by the government, which makes their position more of a faith-based tautology than a practical policy. I\u2019ve never heard a libertarian explain how the United States would transition to a place where a private school education was available for every child and how every family could afford to send their children to one, at least not without a government subsidy of some kind. They’re just certain it would be better. Somehow.<\/p>\n
On this issue, libertarians try to pretend the rest of the world doesn\u2019t exist and that other western democracies aren\u2019t doing just fine with government-run school systems. The Finnish school system is generally regarded to be one the best of the world, and rather than starve their schools for funds, the Finns spend generously on education, paying their teachers far better than we do, and they have the results to show for it.<\/p>\n