I wonder if a “third way”, if the electorate ever wises up (doubtful, but not impossible) would be a kind of back-door libertarianism, where otherwise ideologically-opposed Big Govt. types are deliberately pitted against one another so as to reduce the govt’s ability to get much of anything new accomplished. Simply insure that whatever party runs the legislature must contend with the opposing party’s executive. An extremely lightweight vsn. of this has gone on in MA for quite some time, mostly electing Rep. governors as a counterweight to the egregious graft and general corruption of the Dem. machine that’s been around at least as long as the Kennedys. The dynamic may change with the departure of bosses like Finneran, but you get the idea. MA voters don’t vote Reps into Beacon Hill on the issues, really, beyond some suburbanites getting fed up with taxes. They vote them in to cause stalemate. Smaller govt. may not follow automatically, but it at least struggles mightily to grow.
I’ve heard one of the Air America hosts, I think it was Mike Malloy, refer to them as “Republicans who smoke pot.”
But stalemate blocks any kind of change, including deregulation, tax cuts, decriminalization of anything, or abolition of any government agency.
Right, and that’s not the lib. ideal by a long shot, but it’s a start, and might be motivated by the lib. ideals, getting the “best” possible outcome with the current system.
It’s conceivable future generations of voters might regard politicians as nothing but overpaid debate-teamers, and seek to simply eliminate their subordinate agencies, reducing overhead.
The problem is that whatever vestiges of libertarianism are active in government are following the worst possible strategy; making government worse rather than smaller. Having a less effective government is not the same as having less government. Instead it’s the worst of both worlds; the burdens of maintaining a huge government apparatus without even gaining any of the potential benefits. If you’re going to pay for a FEMA you should at least get some hurricane relief out of it.
Or, even easier, you convince everyone of how intractably useless FEMA is and eliminate it entirely!..aaaaand…Profit!
It’s perhaps a long-term strategy, you see.
Alright, then haven’t you answered your own question? Economics is definitely not my strong point, but ‘protectionism’ (tarriffs) might be part of the answer in how that third way could come about. It’s certainly a major point of contention between nationalists and globalization proponents.
Only if you ignore the govts role in the military and enforcing moralilty.
I said platform, not their actual policies once elected. Also, “some kind of.” Reagan’s rhetoric was for smaller government in all but the military sphere. The resonance of that with the voters shows there was a time when moderate libertarianism, in its economic form, had political vitality.
Furthermore, what the government does or does not do is not always directly linked to its size as an institution. A government with a smaller budget and fewer employees than it has now could still effectively clamp down on abortion clinics or police the mails for porn.
Was libertarianism ever alive to begin with?
The most vocal proponent of true libertarianism, Barry Goldwater - so libertarian that he was willing to vote against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 because he truly felt it was an infringement of states’ rights - went down to defeat in the 1964 general election by one of the three largest margins ever known by a major party.
While Reagan and Gingrich campaigned on libertarian ideals, they didn’t govern by them: Reagan made desultory campaigns on eliminating government programs aand reforming welfare, but gave it up when the fight looked too tough; few of the libertarian ideals Gingrich’s 1995 freshman class came in on (Eliminate the Department of Education! Eliminate welfare! Eliminate the NEA! Cut all spending 20%!) came even close to fruition. About the only thing that happened was the elimination of welfare, but that was a collaboration with a President who wanted to look less like a scary big-government liberal come 1996.
The problem is, while many people generally like libertarian economic ideals as theories - reducing government waste, getting rid of useless programs, etc. - when it actually comes time to declare certain programs as actually wasteful or useless, you can usually count on a vocal uprising from the people suckling from that teat. As P.J. O’Rourke pointed out: when it comes to government handouts, we’re all whores, and we all want our share of the divvy in exchange for nothing. Hugely wasteful programs like farm subsidies continue on with no real reform because a small group will scream like banshees and work like demons to defeat someone who votes to eliminate a program. Retail stores swear that people who are pissed off spread the word to twice as many people as people who are happy with their service; politicians know the same rule applies. So it’s easy to talk about generally reducing waste and cutting programs. But actually doing it will get those same voters to turn around and stone you.
Is libertarianism dead? Sure, but it always has been, at least in modern memory - maybe you can say it was alive back in the 19th century, but that’s such a different ball of wax as to be nearly meaningless. The people advocating libertarianism now aren’t activists trying to maintain a current belief; they’re trying to lay the groundwork for an idea whose time doesn’t seem to have arrived yet. Maybe once the Social Security Crisis arrives people will start to realize that government needs to be something more than voting themselves their childrens’ eventual pocketbooks.
I found the article unconvincing and full of extremisms. “Libertarians want to shut down the schools and do away with social security!” Not his exact words, but that was the effect I felt he was going for.
Right now, and for the next 2 years, I would say that libertarianism is shuffled off even more than normal because of the huge bickering between the two major parties. As soon as we get a president that doesn’t create such partisanship, libertarian ideals will start to come back.
I don’t agree with some of the official Libertarian party lines, but I agree with more of them than I do the two major parties.
Many of our beliefs are echoed by one or the other parties, which is exactly why I can’t claim to support either. I honestly believe that a limited form of libertarianism is the only rational compromise between the two, and I’m confident that I could find official Big L positions that each side could agree with.
Is libertarianism dead? No, people are just too busy playing partisan politics to take a chance on something different.
Someday people will realize that there’s not a lick of difference between the two big parties except what lies they tell… And then nothing will change except that new liars will be brought in.
Don’t they?
The smaller government crowd has been making this argument for thirty years now and still hasn’t got around to actually shrinking the government in any real sense. Just how long term is this strategy? It seems that some of the people who entered the government for the purpose of dismantling it from within decided to take a brief detour for a few decades.
And the problem with that is that the kind of people who believe government service is useless are the last people who should be running it. They get into power in some bureaucracy and their attitude is “Well, I can’t accomplish anything here because my ideology tells me government can’t do anything. So I’ll just sit here behind my desk for twenty five years and do nothing.”
The Hell you will. If my tax dollars are going to pay some bureaucrat’s salary for twnety five years, I want that bureaucrat to be some neo-New Dealer idealist with starry-eyed liberal optimism who believes he has the ability to do something for me.
It’s taking longer than they expected? 
I’m in the “never really alive” camp. It never managed to establish itself as a position that people would vote for.
This has been masked by the fact that for the last 25 years the moneyed elite has appropriated the language of libertarianism to provide intellectual cover for corporatism and plutocracy. Libertarianism’s knee-jerk distrust of government has created an environment where the rich and powerful can cut programs and regulations that help average Americans and make it seem like they’re working for the Greater Good. And libertarianism’s fetish of the free market has created an environment where policies that benefit only the largest corporations and the wealthiest families can be sold as a populist revolution against Big Government.
If it wasn’t such a useful tool to help big money lie about its agenda, it would have been tossed in the dustbin of history a decade ago.
Just to be clear, though, there is nothing inherenetly Libertarian about federalism. We could have one united country (no states) with a Libertarian government. We could also have a Libertarian federal government with a bunch of states that were basically socialist.
I don’t know if I have ever known arny real Libertarians but they seemed to fall into two camps and my conversations usually went like this:
LIBERTARIAN TYPE 1:
So you’re Libertarian?
Yes, we should reduce my taxes. Forcing me to pay taxes so that poor people can eat and send their kids to school is communist. Forcing me to deal with unions or pay minimum wage is socialist. The free market solves all problems (at least for me).
LIBERTARIAN TYPE 2:
So you’re a Libertarian?
Yes, we should legalize drugs, prostitution and gambling. The government sux.
I have yet to meet a true ideological Libertarian that can have a conversation about the ideological points of Libertariansism that haven’t eventually retreated to one of these tow positions.
Well, more so than any other third-party has managed to do. According to their website 200,000 registered Libertarians, “more than all other third parties combined”, and over a million votes in each of the last three elections. Not huge numbers, but not quite dead.
Like most people, I’m not a blind puppet of the party. I think several of their positions are unlikely and a few are downright dangerous, but a libertarian in office wouldn’t do as much damage as some people I could name have caused. Imagine Brown trying to privatize all government services - it’d never happen because we have the House and the Senate to keep things in check - Dubya couldn’t privatize social security even when his party controlled both houses of congress.
I’m not an activist nor even a member of the L party, so don’t expect me to be able to defend their stand on everything.
But col_10022, what do you have in mind? I’m not sure how ideological my ideology might be, but at least I can spell “sucks” and I don’t drink colloidal silver
The Greens have to have more. And they get about 5-10x more votes in presidential elections.