I like Mr. Anger’s question about what a libertarian to do in light of the Republican Party’s purge of its Goldwater elements. It seems to me in retrospect that the notion of libertarians being part of the conservative coalition is a massive accident. “Fusionism,” as promulgated in In Defense of Freedom, for example, seems to be built on a major misunderstanding of libertarianism, if not of conservatism. As I argued just the other day, libertarianism is a variety of liberalism. Its primary concern is with the liberation of the individual. Conservatism, properly understood—I mean, real, honest to god conservatism of the Russell Kirk, Richard Weaver, Robert Nisbet variety—is nothing like this. It is about the stability of society. Ken Masugi’s comment today that the Raich case represents a “clash of conservatisms” is typical of this misunderstanding. Social conservatives—who, again, I think are real conservatives—believe in the Drug War because their primary political concern is the health of “Society” (which they abstract into a sort of God, with rights valid against individuals). But libertarians are opposed to the Drug War because their primary political concern is the freedom of individuals. The surface issue of drug policy is just a cover for a profound difference over essential elements of political philosophy.
Libertarianism began dating the Republican Party because of Barry Goldwater. His opposition to government programs, and defense individual freedom upset the genuine conservatives within the Republican Party (whom we loosely call Rockefeller Republicans). And as long as the Goldwater element was ascendant in the Republican Party, as with Ronald Reagan, we felt more or less at home, although we were irked by the inclusion of the Kirkian platitudes in the speeches.
Now that Dole and the Bushes have almost perfected the elimination of the Goldwater faction of the GOP—to such a degree that party members ridicule Goldwater’s latter-day defense of gay rights as though it was evidence of senility—there is an ever-diminishing role for us in that party. Some large libertarian segments, most notably Reason magazine, have simply given up on the right wing, and are overtly courting the left, hoping that social issues will draw the left into greater embrace of economic freedom. I’m really not sure whether that strategy will work—I think the left is as resolutely hostile to individualism as the conservatives are—but do we really have anything to lose? “Libertarian” has become an epithet within the controlling faction of the Republican Party. I for one am sick of it, and were it not for the war, as I’ve said, I would have voted Democrat this year. And I suspect at least some leftists will be drawn to our side if we tell our story right: if we show that the liberation of previously oppressed people must include economic liberty.
But in the end, I can’t say. As Washington said, “If to please the people, we offer what we ourselves disapprove, how can we afterward defend our work? Let us raise a standard to which the wise and the honest can repair; the event is in the hand of God!”
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