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08/30/2003 Archived Entry: "libertarians, left and right"

LIBERTARIANS, THE RIGHT AND THE LEFT: I've written a lot lately about the growing rift between conservatives and libertarians. Many libertarians seek to secede from the right, by either forming a libertarian political "third way" or by entering into an alliance with the left. Some of the latter are even considering voting for a Democratic presidential candidate in 2004. At least one major liberal magazine has an article in the works on this very subject.

Jim Henley sums up the problem this way: "Two factors are at work here: the issues on which conservatives and libertarians have never agreed have become more salient, and on the issues where conservatives and libertarians traditionally have agreed - taxes, trade, federalism - conservatives increasingly suck. Having abandoned the substance of limited government since early in the Gingrich 'revolution,' conservatives increasingly eschew even the rhetoric of limited government." I for the most part agree with his analysis.

Yet Colby Cosh argues that the left is more viscerally totalitarian than the right. Although Nick Weininger over at The Agitator raises some good examples of statist impulses on the right, I think Cosh nails it. Yes, the value that conservatives - myself included - attach to law and order, a strong national defense and traditional morality at times lead the right to take coercive, big-government positions. But the modern left has adopted an inherently coercive view of practicing politics and often aims it at fairly normal activities (such as making and selling Big Macs, for example).

For better or for worse, most people on the right have more libertarian tendencies than do most people today on the left. The left is viscerally attracted to government solutions to all problems and to nanny statism to a degree that conservatives just aren’t. Most grassroots conservatives – to distinguish them from the Beltway establishment right – enter politics not to change the world but because the government is screwing with them in some respect – by taking away their guns, over-regulating their businesses, overtaxing their families or mocking their religious faith – or because the government is failing in its basic constitutional functions. Grover Norquist has described the right’s base of taxpayers, small businesspeople, gun owners and home-schoolers as the “Leave us Alone Coalition.” Not only would it be impossible to imagine a similar coalition among the left, but I even remember highbrow liberal pundits tut-tutting the very idea of being governed by a coalition so motivated. The right is far less presumptively pro-government than the left and, as Cosh notes, tends to go through all kinds of philosophical gymnastics to justify why their particular exception on issues like drugs and pornography are different.

By contrast, the left believes that the government should be utilized to stamp out such normal activities as smoking and the making and selling of Big Macs. They are presumptively in favor of bigger government and only support limiting government in the rare cases where it would undermine traditional social institutions outside of the state like the family. I’m not saying the right is perfect, or that libertarians are either. But I do think libertarians who hope the left will turn out to be better in the long term than the right are setting themselves up for some disappointment.