Beware the “Friends” of Liberty
If you think libertarians have scary enemies you should get a gander at some of our “friends.”
Just as the cause of “justice” is often perverted by individuals who use it as a slogan, but mean something very different, not every advocate of “liberty” actually wants it. Yes, some only care about liberty for straight, white, men and don’t give a damn about the liberty and rights of anyone else. But there are also some odious, vicious people who plaster their pick-up trucks with slogans about liberty who are championing walls on the border, internment camps for refugees and immigrants, censorship, white supremacy, etc.
The enemies of liberty can’t do the cause as much harm as their faux friends inflict on a regular basis.
Consider the cause of Christianity over the last half-century as an example. Over time the fundamentalists and evangelicals came to dominate the Christian “brand name.” They saw it as a victory for their narrow-minded, highly bigoted and often hateful variety of the faith. They even took over a political party in the process and were ready to impose their totalitarian view of Christian theocracy, if they could.
Then something happened. The entire brand of Christianity was hurt by them and everywhere church attendance started to fall. Those who claimed to be unaffiliated with any religion took off in numbers. While the number of “nones” was relatively steady it started to jump dramatically.
They were openly welcomed to the Republican Party in the 80s and by the 90s the number of religiously unaffiliated started rising. Over the next twenty years the numbers saying they were of no religion increased five fold. Just as evangelicalism peaked in membership the number of people abandoning the church started growing. While evangelicalism was mostly holding on to older members, younger members of the congregation started to flee the sects as quickly as possible.
R. Laurence Moore and Isaac Kramnick noted:
“The moral corruption apparent in the largest segment of American Protestantism began in the ’80s when Jerry Falwell Sr.’s Moral Majority and Ralph Reed’s Christian Coalition started to cozy up to politicians with a conservative social and economic agenda. It’s precisely at that moment when pollsters began to record a retreat from religion by an important segment of the population. Religion disguised as partisan politics may energize evangelical voters, but with respect to faith it has backfired.”
When religion got associated with evangelicalism, because it was the dominant strain of Christianity, it suffered a severe backlash. People assumed it was all as corrupt, authoritarian and power hungry as the born again brigade and the entire brand of Christianity suffered as a result.
Brand contamination is deadly but wasn’t atheists who brought it about for Christianity, it was specific kinds of Christians. Once the whole faith got associated with fundamentalists it suffered.
Libertarianism is no different. To the degree that Trump authoritarianism and theocratic fascists embrace the labels of liberty they will destroy libertarianism. One reason socialism — a destructive, deadly engine of poverty — is seeing a revival is because Trumpian authoritarians are claiming to be standing for capitalism.
To the degree the Republican theocrats have associated themselves with free markets, liberty and limited government the popularity of all three concepts have gone into decline. These people are not just destroying the reputation of Christianity but destroying every concept they pretend to embrace along the way. They keep calling everything they dislike “socialism” or “cultural Marxism” and that includes actual policies that promote private property, individual rights and freedom.
Is it any wonder many ignorant young people think socialism must be a good thing given the horrible enemies it seems to have? These right-wing authoritarians no more know what socialism is than they know what individuals rights are. Sadly by attacking socialism they give it a good name and by embracing “liberty” they give it a bad one.
The GOP is no party of free enterprise. They are led by a corrupt advocate of cronyism, worse than any stereotype the Bernie Sanders of the world could invent. The GOP may vote for protectionism, for big government, and for the regulatory state — provided it redistributes wealth to their favored groups — but in the minds of many voters, especially young people with limited experience, they think Republicans are the standard bearers of liberty.
One result of this confusion is the young are rushing to embrace an ideology just as onerous and destructive as the one they are fleeing. It’s no accident the one demographic that is embracing socialism most is the one that didn’t live to see the horrors of it in practice. Thank the Republicans for stampeding the young toward authoritarian socialism and for destroying the brand name of free markets.
Similarily Libertarianism has a problem of incredibly disgusting people embracing the label and pushing anti-individualist, anti-market ideas. Back in the 90s the Paul/Rothbard/Rockwell trinity decided to reach out and appeal to Nazis, white supremacists and the like. All three harbored long associations with racists and bigots of various kinds. The net result was a flood of bigoted collectivists labeling themselves as libertarians and libertarianism is suffering because of it.
Consider an ideology once thought respectable — eugenics. The Progressive intellectuals largely embraced it and it was widely supported. I’m not an advocate of the ideas, but an opponent, but it was once widely accepted in academia and in what would be called “liberal” circles today. As it gained power it became more vicious in its implementation. Nazis and Klanners openly embraced it. The Nazis came to power in Europe and what followed was so horrific it discredited the eugenics movement in its entirety. What killed it wasn’t so much the countervailing science proving it wrong. What killed it was it was associated with something as horrific and inhumane as Nazism.
Libertarians either must drive the racists out of the movement or abandon the movement. If they remain with these ideological extremists using the same labels they will merely associate themselves with these people and destroy their own reputation as well as undermine libertarian concepts as well. Sadly the Libertarian Party seems impotent to do anything about the fleas infesting their ranks. Bigots and advocates of extremism continue to plague the movement.
Sadly the worst of the lot besmirch the name of Ludwig Mises along the way — associating with him ideas and beliefs he openly opposed.
The people who do the most harm to libertarianism are not the people who openly attack liberty. The danger to libertarianism comes from people who label themselves libertarians while embracing ideologies in open conflict with free markets, individualism, and human freedom. To they degree they embrace racism, closed borders, protectionism and bigotry they are, to the same degree, sworn enemies of actual libertarianism.
They are not promoting libertarianism; they are undermining it and destroying it. Frédéric Bastiat said, “The worst that can happen to a good cause is, not to be skillfully attacked, but to be ineptly defended.”
I fear there is actually something worse. Many of the individuals inflicting deadly wounds on libertarianism as a brand are not inept at defending libertarianism. They are openly working to corrupt it and convert it into something very different. They are creating an Orwellian “libertarianism” where slavery is freedom, white domination is equality, and the physical removal of gays allegedly furthers freedom. When people openly invite Nazis to their conferences in Turkey, when they host white supremacists on their web site or urge people to embrace the “blood and soil” sloganeering, they have moved from being inept to actually waging war on libertarianism, in order to covert all libertarianism into a pale version of their own hateful ideology.
They are doing to libertarianism what evangelicals have done to Christianity.
Please consider supporting these essays by making a one time donation or a monthly donation to help sustain them.
Your support to fund these columns is important, visit our page at Patreon.
