‘A libertarian walks into a bear’

How a New Hampshire libertarian utopia was foiled by bears by Sean Illing for Vox.  “Seriously, this happened.  You should read about it.”  (Hat tip to Steve from Texas)

Liberals who fear the libertarian temptation

Every now and then I come across some liberal commentator who is mildly critical of abuses of power under the Obama administration, but warns against making too much of them, because you thereby create distrust of government and play into the hands of libertarians.

The reasoning is that if you make too much of an issue of preventive detention, undeclared wars, assassination lists and warrant-less surveillance, you’ll lead cause people to focus on abuses of power by government and forget about abuses of power by big corporations.  Never mind that corporate power is so closely linked to government power these days that this is a distinction without a difference.

As an example of this kind of thinking, click on Would You Feel Differently About Snowden, Greenwald and Assange If You Knew What They Really Think? by Sean Wilentz for The New Republic.   He does not rebut anything that Edward Snowden, Glenn Greenwald or Julian Assange have actually asserted.  Rather he speculates on their underlying philosophy based on thin evidence, and warns against playing into the hands of corporations and libertarians.

For a good response to Wilentz, click on The Liberal Surveillance State by Henry Farrell on the Crooked Timber web log.  For some more examples of strained reasoning,  scroll down through the comments section.

I am not a libertarian.   But I am a civil libertarian, and it is a fact that right now, many self-described libertarians are better defenders of basic civil liberties than pro-Obama liberals.

A recent study shows the pitfalls of thinking that you have to either be on Team Blue or Team Red.  Click The Depressing Psychological Theory That Explains Washington for a report on the study by Ezra Klein for the Washington Post’s Wonkblog.  It tells how people were for (or against) a set of proposals when told it was a liberal program, and against (or for) the same set of proposals when told it was a conservative program.

If what somebody says is factually correct and morally right, you shouldn’t worry about whose hands it will “play into.”

Libertarians nominate a plausible candidate

The Libertarian Party has nominated Gary Johnson, former governor of New Mexico, as its candidate for President in the 2012 election.  Johnson filed for the Republican nomination for President in 2011, but was frozen out of press coverage while the clownish Donald Trump was treated as a serious candidate.  There was no good reason why this should have been.  Somebody pointed out that polls showed that Johnson had a positive favorability rating in his home state, unlike Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum.   But he goes against Washington’s bi-partisan consensus, as in advocating decriminalization of marijuana.

Gary Johnson

Barring the unforeseen, I will vote for him in November.  I probably would vote for him even if I lived in a battleground state instead of New York.  Philosophically, I am not a libertarian, but extremism in defense of liberty is preferable to the creeping totalitarianism represented by Barack Obama, Mitt Romney and the other Democratic and Republican leaders.

Click on Gary Johnson 2012 for Johnson’s home page.

Click on Gary Johnson wiki for his Wikipedia biography.

Click on Libertarian Gary Johnson: Spoiler Alert? for thoughts of Gene Healy, a vice president of the libertarian Cato Institute.  Healy said ex-Gov. Johnson is the most plausible and qualified Presidential candidate that the Libertarians have nominated in many years.   He denied that Johnson will not play the role of a spoiler by pulling votes from Mitt Romney and thereby helping Barack Obama.  He saidbeca the election race is “a battle between a President who’s violated most of his campaign promises on civil liberties and a candidate who’s already promised to do worse” and therefore is “pre-spoiled.”

Click on Why I am not a libertarian for my thoughts about libertarian ideology.

Can liberals and libertarians join forces?

This video shows a conversation between Paul Jay, CEO and editor-in-chief of the left-liberal Real News Network, and Matt Welch, editor-in-chief of Reason, a libertarian magazine whose motto is “free minds and free markets,” on what liberals and libertarians have in common.

Liberals and libertarians both oppose the United States drift toward militarism and a police state.  They agree in upholding basic human rights under the Constitution.  They both are appalled by the idea that a President can issue death warrants, order someone locked up without a criminal charge or trial, or make it a crime to reveal the government’s crimes.  They both want to scale back the open-ended so-called “war on terror” and bring the Defense and Homeland Security budgets under control.

So why don’t liberals support the libertarian Republican Ron Paul?   The problem for liberals is Ron Paul is opposed to civil rights laws, to health, safety and environmental laws, to the social safety net and to laws to protect labor’s rights to organize – virtually all the accomplishments of the Progressive era and the New Deal.

Matt Welch argues that if your first loyalty is to the Constitution, this should be an acceptable tradeoff, and that a Democrat should vote for Ron Paul rather than Barack Obama.  One might ask Matt Welch whether he would vote for the liberal Democrat Dennis Kucinich if hypothetically Kucinich were to run against Rick Perry or Mitt Romney.   Kucinich is just as strong an opponent of militarism and the emerging U.S. police state as Ron Paul.

Why I am not a libertarian

The libertarian philosophy has a strong appeal, especially to intelligent young people, and has had a powerful impact on American life through such public figures as Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan and Alan Greenspan.

There is a lot to be said in favor of philosophy whose supreme value is the right of individual human beings to make choices and live as they wish, provided they do not infringe on the freedom of others.  If you have to have one supreme principle that outweighs all the others, that is not a bad one.

I was much interested in libertarian philosophy during the Reagan era, and I still think that deregulation and cuts in marginal tax rates were a good idea up to a point.

I don’t agree with Libertarians that governmental activity is by definition an infringement on freedom, and private business activity never is.  And I don’t agree that governmental activity is by definition unproductive, and that private business activity never is.  These things are sometimes true, but not always true.