Because the people calling themselves conservatives today seem to largely be irresponsible financial anarchists, crazed and paranoid Libertarians, about as risk-averse as Evil Keneval on PCP.
Shodan is .
yes. That’s the bright side to all this. Not only are the Democrats in power, but Obama seems like exactly my kind of fellow.
I don’t much care of Pelosi and Reid, though.
I agree, XT, with your entire assessment. Both left and right obsess of tiny petty things while ignoring the very important (but BORING and UNSEXY) issues are left to rot on the vine.
And one thing that the Bush years have proven beyond a pale shade of a shadow of a doubt : CHARACTER IS IMPORTANT.
You’ll get no arguments, in fact you’ll get hearty hosannas, from me on this point.
And honestly, the whole liberal vs. conservative thing has to go as well, despite the general tone of my OP.
This is a perfect example of the problem with the old political labels, then.
Because you and I, Scylla, likely have a great deal in common, yet I consider myself a moderate liberal, and you likely consider yourself a moderate conservative.
Wouldn’t it be better to come up with a new label that fits us both?
“Moderate” is a good start.
Screw that. I’m a radical liberal conservative anarcho-syndicalist.
I’m a socially liberal, fiscally conservative athiest who supports gun rights, legalizing drugs and gay marriage.
Just who the fuck am I supposed to vote for?
The non-strawman flavour of libertarian.
There is a great song by The Byrds “I wanna grow up to be a politician”
The chorus is “I wanna grow up to be a politician and take over this beautiful land”
If it were that simple, many more moderate establishment liberals would call themselves libertarians.
So, whilst it’s appealing to say the socially liberal and fiscal conservative position belongs to the big rational tent of libertarianism, the reality of the history of the libertarian intellectual journey and the actual libertarian communities - is a bit different. I don’t self identify as libertarian, not because I wouldn’t describe myself as broadly for limited government, but because I am not personally persuaded by what I take to be the best representatives of libertarian philosophy, such as Robert Nozick. Not that I don’t find many commendable aspects, but just that I find some of its critical arguments which might distinguish it from more minimal liberalism, to be flawed. But more importantly than that, for this discussion, I don’t find in the modern political movement the kind of maturity and kindred intellectual spirit I am looking for.
For instance, I believe the movement has too often shown favour for loose rhetoric about small government over actual spending restraint, and they have tended to dramatically over-balance their priorities toward outrage over economic issues than the other half of their agenda - ie. liberal social principles. There has been some shift over the Bush years, but considering the scale of that - I think it took too long and too much to produce the limited noise we saw.
Many libertarians over the last decade, have been beguiled into a convenient party alliance with Republicans due to rhetoric about the free market, which wasn’t delivered upon in reality - offering at best token criticism of the prevailing political elites and preferring the comfortable safety of smug political mockery of liberals as the greater evil. This is a pet peeve of mine, because I believe as a matter of logic they ought to have been more prepared to consider alliance with more moderate liberals, in common outrage over the Republican era, despite some non-trivial differences they may have over the extent of the minimal state and cultural anti-perfectionism. Too many get hung up on single issues, as well, like gun control, when they could have worked productively to get that off the liberal agenda.
The creators of South Park are a good exemplar of the shallowness of this position - their bet noir is almost entirely weighted towards callow mockery of Hollywood, rather than the real low hanging fruit of Republican betrayal of their small government rhetoric. I think this is entirely self-indulgent - a kind of indulgence of a sense of superiority over liberals, whilst Rome was burning so-to-speak.
In my home country, most libertarian groups have an op-eds and political speech ratio of about 200:1 when you compare their economic advocacy, compared to their support of a progressive social agenda, or conversely, their efforts against a regressive social agenda. It just seems to be way lower down on movement libertarian priorities to be concerned about things same-sex entitlements or draconian terror laws, when compared to delegitimising liberal views about political economy. To be fair, this won’t apply to everyone - and I know of important exceptions - but it does reflect my impressions of the overall balance of the movement community.
I also find the examples in libertarian communities of way too many things I consider to be crank views. Rabid conspiracy theories about global warming is probably the one that comes to mind the most - which I find alarming in a movement ostensibly rationalist and empirical. Unfortunately, that’s not the only examples of a epistemological and methodological lapse away from naturalist views centred around the scientific method. For example, the ties to Austrian economics.
Austrian economic thinkers have contributed valid insights into economics, but their paradigm is fundamentally unscientific and I can’t find myself in sympathy with it anymore than I can about Ayn Rand views about political philosophy. I think libertarianism needs to consolidate and shed such fringe views and reaffirm itself as a naturalistic empirical epistemological party.
I find your analysis of libertarianism to be quite trenchant. I too find things I like in libertarianism, yet on the whole, I can’t endorse it.
When I lived in Portland, Oregon, I has an experience which more or less defines the problem with libertarianism. On the cable access station there, they had a libertarian chat show. Everyone was libertarians. Libertarians talking to other libertarians about their philosophy. Should be calm and rational right?
No, it was a bunch of tight-wound, wild-eyed, squirrely guys with long hair and wearing lots of camo and carrying huge bulging backpacks having big shouting arguments over tiny differences of opinion re : libertarian doctrine.
it was then that I realized that you can’t consider radical individualism a political threat because these people were all the excact kind of people to whom absolutely any comprimise in order to get along with others was complete anathema, and so they could never actually form a movement.
Still, a agreat deal of knee-jerk, shallow libertarian thought and language has been absorbed into modern conservative rhetoric. The whole “government IS the problem” mindset has not, as you have noted, actually reduced government one bit. It just removed highly necessary banking regulations when they got in the way of rich, greedy crooks.
Libertarianism is a hot-house flower, an artificial product of political science. It shares that weakness with doctrinaire Marxism and Randian Objectivism, it is intellectual and abstract, based on presumptions about people that are cut from whole cloth.
Real political movements bubble up out of the fermenting stew that is the people. Progressivism and reactionary conservatism reflect the attitudes of individual citizens writ large. Few if any progressives define the movement in precisely the same way, it is a rough sense of direction, not a precisely definable agenda.
What is the end product of progressivism? I don’t know, if such a thing exists, I most likely won’t live to see it. We are concerned with process, not with results. If we can trust the process, we can reasonably trust the results.
Artificial political philosophy labors mightily to be free of internal contradictions. People have such contradictions, such is our nature. A political philosophy that ignores that fact is an abstraction, an intellectual exercise for academics. Marginally useful to keep the cerebrally overburdened occupied, like crossword puzzles and Rubik’s cubes, but little more than that.
Me too bro, to the letter (except, to quibble, I may just be for decriminalizing certain drugs instead of legalizing them). How about I vote for you and you vote for me?
Seriously though, I wish the Libertarian party could kick out the loonies and make a viable bid for folks like us. Actually, I have some time tomorrow afternoon, wanna get a new party going (maybe “The Libertarian But Not Weird Party”)?
Well, if you go for Weird, But Not Libertarian Party, I could bring some brownies.
I agree. You’ll find very few people are Libertarians in the very strictest sense of the term (even some people that call themselves “Libertarians” or “libertarians”). For example, I don’t really give a shit about every road being a toll road, I just want government to be as small as possible. Therefore, by arguing against strict Libertarianism, you aren’t really arguing against all that many people.
Given that I live in a country with a large and ever-increasing government, I’m also all about process, but the process I’m interested in is the best way to “starve the beast.”
Arguing against Libertarianism by point out the crazy bearded wackos arguing over private militaries is a like like arguing againt liberalism by point to the Worker’s World nutbars or the Radical Cheerleaders.
The fact is, when you have multiple political parties, the ones furthest out on the policial spectrum collect all the extremists. The marxist-leninists are going to ally themselves with the most left-wing party they can, and if that happens to be the Democrats, that’s where they’ll go. That’s not an indictment of the Democratic party - it’s just an observation that there’s no major party to the left of them.
Likewise with the Libertarians. The problem those of us who call themselves small-l libertarians or classical liberals have is that the major parties like the Republican party or the Canadian Conservative party are not really representative of our views at all. And the Libertarian party has attracted all the far-right kooks, who tend to dominate the party at the grassroots level. That kind of leaves us out in the cold.
Libertarians make a huge tactical error in insisting on ideological purity to abstract concepts. They would be far more effective if they threw their support towards any effort that has the effect of pushing the country more towards personal freedom, whether it’s proposed by the right or the left.
There are mainstream ‘libertarians’ who generally support moves in a direction towards less government. George Will has said that over the years he has grown increasingly libertarian as he has watched government in action. William F. Buckley was a social conservative due to his strong Catholic background, but he moved more towards libertarian positions as he got older. Barry Goldwater was definitely in the libertarian wing of the Republican party.
Speaking of which… I do believe there is a large minority of Republicans who are libertarian in outlook but who feel the Republican party is the place to be because the Libertarian party is nuts.
John Stossel, another ‘mainstream’ libertarian, made an interesting observation in a recent interview with reason. He pointed out that his positions should be half-liked by the left, and half-liked by the right. He’s in favor of gay marriage, was against the Iraq war, against torture, in favor of drug legalization, etc. So liberals should find something to like in what he’s saying, and conservatives should dislike it. On the other side, he’s against regulation and big government. So his messag has something to offer both sides.
And yet, when he has a speaking engagement with predominantly Democrat or Republican audiences, the Democrats hate him, and the Republicans love him. What’s up with that? Why are the Republicans willing to overlook his support for gay marriage and his opposition to the war and all the rest, while Democrats were totally unwilling to see past his antipathy towards big goverment and applaud him for his socially liberal views?
My guess is simply that libertarianism is still a very big part of the Republican party, but it’s overshadowed by the loud and powerful Christian Right. Whereas the core of liberalism is more about big government and central command than it really is about personal liberty.
C’est moi. I also think that most Republicans are much more similar to me in general world outlook, even if we don’t agree on the specifics. For example, I agree with a lot of conservatives in thinking certain things are immoral (like drugs and promiscuous sex, but not gay marriage), but that doesn’t mean I think they should be banned.
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris
The problem with libertarians that I’ve seen is that they more or less lack any kind of impetus. They don’t care to run for office and they don’t really organbize politically. They do love to snipe from the sidelines.
Leaving aside the quesiton of whether this is actually true, it has no bearing on you. You can become a real, dictionary-definition conservative any time you want. Whether other people who call themselves conservative actually follow the definition has no effect on you.