Libertarians need to get their acts together
We need to stop bickering among ourselves and learn to find common cause with other people across the political spectrum on important libertarian issues
Robert Higgs is a great libertarian economist whose seminal book 'Crisis and Leviathan' shows and explains how the government grows and accrues more powers with each crisis -- war or depression of pandemic -- and never shrinks back to its smaller, freer condition when the crisis is over.
Robert Higgs recently posted this on Facebook:
If libertarians despised the state half as much as they despise other factions of their own movement, they might stand a better chance of getting somewhere.
Keep your eyes on the prize, amigos. The supreme goal is to restrain and ultimately eliminate government as we know it, which is the most destructive institutional apparatus human beings have ever devised.
Other libertarians' opinions on social, cultural, political, and epistemological questions are of decidedly secondary importance. Don't allow them to act as red herrings in your quest for a genuinely free society.
My response, based on my long-time annoyance with libertarians and their infighting:
As usual, Professor Higgs is 1,000 percent right. I'm just an under-educated history major and an ex-newspaper journalist who had to survive in a field over-populated and over-bossed by partisan liberal Democrats.
In the interest of ideological diversity I tried my best to sneak libertarian people (local and national) and ideas into the papers I worked for whenever I could.
Over more than 30 years I was modestly successful at the LA Times and later at two Pittsburgh dailies. (My several hundred weekly interview victims in the 2000s included Ron Paul, Milton Friedman, Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, Donald Boudreaux).
Believe me, I was a rare journalist. I'm a Frederic Bastiat-formed, Frederick Hayek/Ludvig von Mises-following, Cato Institute-rooted, Reason magazine-supporting, Albert J. Nock-loving, Milton Friedman-appreciating, Ayn Rand-liking mutt.
In my feature writing and columns I consciously looked for chances to promote or push for more individual freedom and less government, whether the issue was eminent domain abuse, puritanical state liquor laws or the federal government's wars on drugs, poverty and Middle Eastern despots.
In practicing my subversive journalism, I didn't care if Milton Friedman wasn't a real or perfect libertarian according to the high priests who decide such things. He was a powerful voice for individual liberty, free markets and for a smaller, weaker state and he needed to be heard by the public as often as possible.
Too many libertarians are in the business of ex-communicating their 80-percent or even 95-percent soulmates for some philosophically esoteric heresy not two people give a shit about and that means nothing in the greater quest for a freer world.
Libertarians will be doomed to be a cranky fringe unless they learn to accept that there are only about four 'pure' libertarians on the planet.
If we ever hope to restrain or eliminate the Big State, we need to stop bickering among ourselves and learn to find common cause with other people across the political spectrum on specific libertarian issues -- large and small, local and national.
Libertarians shouldn't just stop their internal nitpickings. They need to applaud conservatives like Tucker Carlson and lefties like Glenn Greenwald when they rail against the surveillance state or take other libertarian positions and libertarians should even support 'competitive' organizations like Heritage when they are on the libertarian page.
Here’s a column I wrote about Higgs in 2006.