We elect a Libertarian President, and both houses of Congress have a Libertarian majority. How does the US change?
My first thought is that the country without an effective Federal government becomes a Balkanized confederation of states or counties or townships, in which the basic laws of the land change willy-nilly, depending on the latest local election and the whims of local judges. Americans get apprehensive about driving a few towns away, which now becomes a risky enterprise, and get all sorts of jingoistic about smaller and smaller plots of land.
The scope of this question is very broad, but your particular theory of what would happen is misguided.
First, most laws are already state and local laws, and can vary “willy-nilly” as you say. You can commit one crime in Alabama and the same crime in Connecticut and have very different results.
Second, to the extent there is homogeneity, it is not really a consequence of a strong federal government. You can trace most laws that have become popular in many states as starting in one state and gradually being adopted by others, rather than by anything the federal government did.
Third, to the extent the federal government does homogenize laws across states by operation of federal legislation and constitutional decisionmaking, much of US history provides ample case study for what its like to live in a United States without such a strong federal government. Before the 20th Century, the federal government had very little influence on the day-to-day operation of law in the states. While the difference between states may have been greater, it wasn’t really balkanized anarchy either.
But aren’t localities severely restrained now in enacting local laws that are unconstitutional? Under a Libertarian government, even if a Supreme Court would be slow in changing its interepretation of local laws’ constitutionality, it wouldn’t matter much if the Congress and the President didn’t care about enforcing the SC’s rulings.
Big picture, though: Okay, I’m all wet on what would happen under a Libertarian Government. What do YOU think would be a big change?
Would you cut out the reasoned analysis already! This is a thread about libertarianism. You’re supposed to register your disgust!
I’ll just add that libertarianism and federalism are two different things. One needn’t be a federalist to be a libertarian. It would be an odd situation where the Libertarian party controlled the national government, but none of the local governments.
Assume away about what the control is locally–I’m just starting with giving the Libertarians their biggest wish-list item–total control of the federal government.
It may well that the first enormous result wouldn’t be domestic anyway, but some sort of foreign crisis, in which the Taliban, the North Koreans, the Iraqis, the Colombian drug cartel, the Libyans, the Rastafarians and the Somali pirates would say “Hmmm, looks like the US doesn’t want to interfere if we start messing with their international interests–let’s see if that’s true.”
The US ceases to be a country in about 15 minutes. The crazed Canuck hordes come pouring down from the frozen North, and by 4pm Wednesday we’re all eating poutine and shopping at Canadian Tire.
Not a bad thing at all, I’d say.
I would hope that SC appointments would be reflective of a respect for the tenth amendment, and an abandonment of the notion that the interstate commerce clause is infinitely elastic (to borrow George Will’s phrase). There are countless (and enormous) examples of Federal programs that those of us with any libertarian inclinations would argue the Federal government does not have the legitimate power to install. I don’t have a lot of hope for this, however. The government and its power gets larger, never smaller, words of the Constitution be damned.
What does any of this have to do with libertarianism? Libertarians believe in a strong federal government but one that is constrained in scope and most certainly believe in the Constitution and enforcing it. I think people are starting to make the very common mistake of confusing libertarianism with anarchism. They aren’t the same thing at all, in fact they are almost direct philosophical opposites that only share some very superficial features.
The main effect you would see if the federal government was truly libertarian is a smaller federal government overall, fewer entitlement programs, and a more pure and less regulated capitalist economy. You would still have a strong military, protection of individual and property rights, and a strong Constitution.
If you were black, there was certainly a major difference among states prior to the Civil Rights act and you would certainly be concerned about driving there. Of course they don’t count as “people”, so no I guess there weren’t any major differences. For the purposes of this discussion let’s acknowledged that homosexuals aren’t people either, so we’ll ignore the sodomy laws. Oh, and women aren’t people either, so we’ll ignore how they used to have a male relative sign off on contracts.
Now for good old white, male businessmen, there may be some actual valid concerns. Imagine crossing state lines with books that are considered obscene in Alabama, like Catcher In The Rye, and being arrested for trafficking pornography. Having condoms in your wallet might be illegal as well. Google might have a tough time for providing links to immoral sites. It’d probably be easier to just filter everyones searches rather than risk being arrested for not being able to tell where a query is coming from.
You may have to set up inspection centers for cars crossing state borders to make sure they are safe. Probably just for casual travelers, as businessmen may be protected by the Interstate Commerce Clause until that is ruled invalid by the folks the Libertarians put on the Supreme Court.
I’d love to see the reaction of people being transferred by their companies to another state. Congratulations Mr Greenberg you are being promoted to VP in charge of the South Carolina office. Don’t worry, Baptist Studies only make up 2 hours a day of the curriculum in the public schools (which you have to attend because the private schools don’t allow Jews).
On the positive side, we’ll get more exercise carrying around gold instead of paper money.
I think we can safely say that libertarians universally agree that one legitimate and necessary function of a national government is to defend the country from its enemies. We would certainly have a debate about what our “international interests” are, but I think the result would be something that many self-described liberals and progressives on this MB would agree with. There certainly would not have been an Iraq War under a Libertarian government.
As for your OP in general, we’ve done this multiple times already on this MB. Do a little searching, and you’ll see. My experience is that we end up wasting our time having to explain, ad nauseam, that libertarianism ≠ anarchy. ETA: I can see it already started while I was typing this post…
Except, of course, you’d be paying for the poutine with loonies and toonies - no singles. The seams of silenus’ pockets would split from all that extra weight, muggers would be alerted to a lively target by the jingle-jingle-jingle, and the strippers would starve.
That’s your answer to “What would happen if we had a Libertarian government?”
“Asked and answered”?
What’s so scary about providing a few brief actual responses?
That is what Rand Paul was trying to do on the Maddow show the other night, you know? She would ask him a direct question, and he would try to explain that she was asking the wrong questions, mainly because his direct responses would highlight the flaws in his philosophy, as they did whenever he actually provided an answer.
If the Libertarians were in power and they eliminated SS, wouldn’t that make the national debt worse? Since Bush, the SS trust fund has been included with the rest of the budget to hide how badly the conservatives have fucked up the country.
Much as I hate to say this, I don’t think that was Bush’s doing. As a matter of fact, I seem to remember Daniel Patrick Moynihan warning about this in the nineties. It’s been a flaw of SS for as long as I can remember, and goes specifically against the original idea of the SS fund, which was supposed to be maintained apart from the rest of the budget, as I understand it.
I assumed you were unaware of earlier threads on the exact same subject, since you didn’t link to any to tell us what is different about this one. If you are aware of them, and just want to do it all over again, I explained to you why I, and I believe a few others like me, tend to give up on these threads. I also pointed you to someone who might still want to do this one more time, should you care to invite him to participate.
