I’ve got another thread going in the GD forum right now – “Do socialist politics have a future in the United States?” – which begins with the recognition of the curious fact that the U.S. is the only modern industrial state where no socialist party has ever become a major force in national politics.
But it has occurred to me there is another thing that distinguishes our political culture from every other country’s: The Libertarian Party, while not exactly a major force here, at least exists as a viable third-party movement in the United States. It does not exist anywhere else. Perhaps somebody can correct me on this point. But so far as I know, there is no international libertarian movement, and no other country has a political party analogous to our Libertarian Party. The British Conservative Party has a business-libertarian wing, a legacy from the “classical liberalism” of 19th century Britain, but it does not support socially libertarian policies. (The Liberal Party, which carried the torch for free-market classical liberalism in 19th-century Britain, has lately merged with the Social Democrats to become the Liberal Democrats and is, I believe, not very libertarian at all any more.) Pym Fortuyn’s movement in the Netherlands might qualify as libertarian, but its policy on immigrants, I believe, places it beyond the pale of pure libertarianism. Most of the world’s democracies now use “proportional representation” systems that allow small third parties to form and get their foot in the parliamentary door; despite this accommodating circumstance, none of the small parties that have emerged in the past ten years in such countries are libertarian in the ideological sense.
Why is that? By the Libertarians’ own analysis of the political map – the “world’s shortest political quiz” and accompanying graph – they represent one of the four fundamental positions in human politics, being consistently in support of freedom in both the social and economic spheres. Why should a position that pure and basic go politically unrepresented save in one country? What is it about the United States that makes it so friendly to libertarianism?
Hi. Just read your post and thought I’d be qualified to answer since I’m from Denmark.
First off, you’re used to the bipartisan system, having only two parties that really matter. I’m sure you’re aware that many places, Europe in particular, this is not the case. Currently, eleven parties are represented in the Danish parliament, including three with only one member each (from Greenland and the Faroe Islands).
I had to search a bit to get some information on the Libertarian Party in the US. Some propaganda (and some downright horrible typography) later I have to ask: Where, precisely does this ideology come from? Are any specific writers/philosophers significant?
My best bet would be retsforbundet(link in English), a party that currently isn’t represented in parliament and doesn’t have enough support to even run. Have a look at their logo - it somehow resembles the chart from the ‘shortest political quiz’ that you mentioned. Left is socialism, right is capitalism, up is social liberalism and down is what they call justice-liberalism and where they place themselves. According to them, we’re currently in the social liberal area, which they of course think is the wrong place to be.
Danish politics is, in my view, mostly a lot of bickering and polemics without much effect. The government seldom has a large majority and this, along with the alliances between parties that are necessary to gain majority in parliament makes for mostly central politics whoever is in charge. It could be argued that our current PM once held quite radical liberal views but nowadays he has had to shift towards the centre - that’s the only way to power over here (and of course, his decision to ‘help’ GWB police iraq with a rusty warship and a miniature submarine rules it out comletely).
Here’s the link for the Libertarian Party of Canada/Parti libertarien du Canada. As far as I know they’ve never elected a member at the federal level, but I can remember seeing a Libertarian candidate on the ballot occasionally.
I don’t think the US is very Libertarian-friendly. For one thing, the US is not friendly to any of the minor parties. For another, the Libertarians are widely regarded as some kind of lunatic fringe.
There is a libertarian party in the Netherlands, but it is very much a fringe party.
Hazel: while I know that the U.S. Libertarian party is not a major player, I was under the impression that the Libertarian viewpoint was in fact taken seriously. Am I wrong?
My personal explanation is that European countries (especially on the continent) are much more etatist than the U.S. is. The U.S. started by a revolt against an oppressive sovereign (at least that is how it is perceived), at a time when political philosophy (Locke) allowed for the idea that all men are born free and equal. Because of that, the constitutional philosophy of the U.S. appears to be that government should be mistrusted, people should have the maximum liberty compatible with the same liberty of others, and people do not ‘owe’ the government anything. That in essence is a libertarian philosophy.
In Continental Europe it is rather different. As a legal principle, the state must have obtained prior legal authority to act in specific ways, but once the legislator has passed the proper law, the state can act accordingly. The only limits are constitutional, and those of the Rome Treaty on Human Rights. That is an improvement on the previous state of affairs, where there was no democracy, and a sovereign completely unchecked by any limits.
Hence Europeans as a whole are much more comfortable with the thought that the state can within bounds do whatever is agreed on democratically, while U.S. citizens tend to think the state can only do what it specifically has business to do. At least that is my impression. Here on the SDMB I’ve read many times arguments like: ‘the State has no business to tell me to wear a safety-belt’. Over here there is hardly a debate on whether the state *can[/] legislate things like that, the only discussion is on whether it is effective or desirable to legislate such subjects.
For me this explains why libertarianism as a political philosophy can be taken seriously in the U.S., while it sounds rather far-fetched for most Europeans.
I dont think that most people want to be free. All people everywhere have the governement they deserve, and want.
“NO government can stay in power without the consent of its people” (this is an old quote but I cant remember who said it and made it famous)
Every day, we have every government body and every legislature in the country thinking up new laws, new restricrions, new regulations, (less freedom).
Our representatives are measured by how many new laws/restrictions they can pass.
If people wanted freedom, then most of our new laws would not be additional restrictions, but rather removal of existing restrictions.
The Libertarian party is very close to the political thoughts of america’s founding fathers, and few people in america today, and even less so elsewhere in the world, want the average citizen to be as free as our founding fathers wanted us to be.
Since the Libertarian party believes in letting anybody do whatever they want to do, as long as they dont harm others, then how many people are in the libertarian party, is a measure of how many people do not mind their own business.
In a libertarian government, no “physical object” would be outlawed, we could own anything(just as it was for the first 150 years of america). Anybody could own a gun, a drug, a drink, or any other inanimate object that he wanted, the only thing that was illegal, was to misuse a physical thing and hurt someone. (Seemed to make a lot of sense at the time) .
The libertarian party was very widespread in america and it was the major political thought in america for well over a hundred years.
There were “very few”(some but very few) laws in the Uniited States which the libertarian party would not have approved, right up until prohibition, drug laws, and gun laws in the early 1900’s.
No other country has ever desired a libertarian government or had its citizens think in a libertarian manner.
There are no such things as victimless crimes in a libertarian governement, gambling, drinking, prostitution, etc are legal, the police spend their time going after violent criminals who hurt people instead.
Thus, those societies who want to control the personal non-violent behavior of others, would be less likely to be libertarian.
You don’t acutaly come out and say it, but the feeling one gets from reading your posts is that you consider yourself to pretty much agree with the Libertarian philosophy. If that is true, now do you reconcile that with your very strong stance on putting restrictions on businesses operating in other countries (and potentially “exporting” jobs)?
Maybe libertarian-minded people take seriously their “that government is best which governs least” and can’t ever really get their heart into wanting to be part of the machinery of government (sort of like why the anarchist party never seems to do so well) – thus explaining their comparative lack of success as a party in the U.S., and their relative non-representation elsewhere.
There’s probably something to be made of the distinction between common law and civil law societies, and the influence of Locke on the form that common law took in America – one of the foundational concepts of the U.S. was that individuals had all natural rights, and surrendered those to government only on a provisional, voluntary, and perhaps temporary, basis, to achieve the limited purposes for which the state was brought into being. That said, I’m not sure the U.S. founding fathers would be deemed Libertarian a la the current party – they were probably somewhat more conservative socially.
The Libertarian Party in the U.S. (like Reform and maybe the Greens) can be viewed as a protest party, protesting the incontestable fact that the two-party system is particularly effective at potentially rendering the views of significant chunks of population irrelevant. Other countries aren’t so tied into the two-party system, thus don’t need a protest party.
4. The circumstances of the U.S.'s founding and development still have consequences. For instance, the frontier mentality definitely persists (the U.S. is also among the only countries with a signifcant anti-gun-control lobby and broad support for capital punishment (not to invoke debate on either of those subjects here)). The U.S. also has a large rural/exurban population still, and country people are stereotypically distrustful of gummint revenoors. The federal system has in the past really mattered in the U.S. as a legal and philosophical stop on big government growth (it matters much less now with centralized govt.). Are the Swiss, who I guess also took federalism seriously, libertarian-minded (I know they like their guns)?
Or (in the spirit of Euro-American friendship inaugurated by the current U.S. Administration) . . .
5. Some variant on the inflammatory "Effete Europeans just like to be coddled at the teat of the nanny state" theory?
It might also have a lot to do with the influence Ayn Rand has had on many Americans. Although she detested the Libertarian party herself, many of her devotees are attracted to it. I’m not sure if Rand is anywhere near as popular outside the US as she is here.
I’d also like to point out (as an aside) that the socialist party in the United States was actually quite successful during the 1890s through the 1920s or so.
The rise of trade unions and their resistence to the robber baron capitalist system at the end of the 19th century gave the socialist the push they needed (with union support) to begin placing party members in elected positions including almost a million votes in the 1916 and 1920 presidential elections
But the OP is dead game right that America is where 3rd parties go to die. The last one that made it big was the Republican Party. And it took a long-term crisis like slavery to make it happen.
“It might also have a lot to do with the influence Ayn Rand has had on many Americans. Although she detested the Libertarian party herself, many of her devotees are attracted to it. I’m not sure if Rand is anywhere near as popular outside the US as she is here.”
My understanding is that she is not well thought of in Europe…or even well read there. She is mainly an American personality. Thats a good point though about its link to the libertarian party…I can see how people that read and enjoy her books, and also agree with the philosopy behind them, would be attracted to the libertarian party as there is a lot in common there. I never thought of that before.
I can also see why many Europeans don’t like her works…she doesn’t exactly protray Europe or Europeans in a good light, especially in Atlas Shrugged.
Maybe I’m being simplistic, but perhaps Libertarianism is not as popular elsewhere in the world because other countries are smarter than us and they feel a greater sense of responsibility for the poor, the marginalized, the environment, education, etc.
It’s important to note that Libertarians are not necessarily unsympathetic to the poor. Most simply don’t believe that one person should force another person to give aid to “the poor.” They believe that it should be voluntary effort, seperate and apart from the coercive aspects of gov’t. Essentially, one can go to jail for failing to give part of his or her income to “the poor.”
There is some truth to that. (Though some of the founding fathers – Hamilton for example-- wanted a strong central government).
On the other hand, it was easy to be (proto-) libertarian in the largely agrarian society that was the US in the 18th century. Our politics since then are informed by the industrial revolution (a thing with consequences not anticipated by the founders).
Why do we have anti-trust laws? Why do we have pollution controls? Why do we have child labor laws? Why do we have food and drug safety laws? Why do we have zoning laws? (Etc.) Because the allternatives proved to be unpalatable to the great majority of Americans.
Libertarians who want to turn back the clock on these and other laws ignore the lessons of history.
It is dangerous to be so worshipful of the Founding Fathers that we forget the limitations under which they operated. We have the benefit of 200+ years of hindsight not available to them.
No, you are not wrong. The Cato Institute http://www.cato.org/ is probably best described as a “soft-Libertarian” think tank, and it is a well-respected Washington player.
In the US, there is a tendency for libertarian thought to be expressed through the Republican Party, instead of the Libertarian Party.
Based on that, I’d guess that many of the libertarians in Europe would belong to the European conservative parties (Britain’s Conservative Party, France’s UMP (formerly RPR), and Germany’s CDU, CSU, and FDP, for example).
One reason the Libertarian party is not taken too seriously is that it tends to focus on its most controversial views. I can remember an interview with (Ron?) Brown when he was the pres candidate for that party and when he was asked to define the Libertarian party he launced on this long tirade about legalalizing drugs. As if this were in the forefront of all American’s minds every day. Additionally, the Libertarian party seems to attrack more than its share of sci-fi nuts, anarchists, and general contrarians.
The Cato Institute takes a much saner approach by focussing on the issues, like tax policy, that hit every American on a daily basis.
I consider myself to have strong libertarian tendancies, but have been too often turned off by the Libertarian party for the above reasons.