Why Classical Liberals Should Never Give Up on Progressive Politics
The right is clearly not a good ‘home’ for us at all
Last month, former President Donald Trump made headlines by attending, and being booed, at the Libertarian Party’s convention. This, in turn, has given plenty of media attention to the civil war that has been occurring inside the Libertarian Party in the past few years, which is the context for both Trump’s attendance and unwelcome reception. As I first talked about two years ago, the right-wing Mises Caucus took over the party leadership back in 2022, and they also removed many liberal-leaning planks from the party platform, including support for abortion rights. Moreover, some of those associated with the Mises Caucus appear to have racist sympathies, authoritarian-right sympathies, or both. This has led to backlash among genuine libertarians, with a drop in membership and donations, and the revolt of some state parties, as a result. Which ultimately means that the Libertarian Party is in a very weak, confused and divided state right now.
Looking at the reasons for the Libertarian Party’s split, the biggest reason is that it is a small party supported by a small movement, and thus vulnerable to takeover by larger groups. However, the bigger context of the rise of authoritarian populism in the right shouldn’t be ignored either. Libertarian writer Robert Tracinski recently wrote that, ‘when the wider culture of “the right” goes crazy for authoritarian nationalism, it spills over into this much smaller movement and carries it along with the flood’. I agree that this, unfortunately, is an important part of what is happening here. Tracinski goes on to note that some of his own readers, who are probably getting ‘a firehose of conservative media coming at them all day long’, respond to him with all of the usual right-wing talking points, and as only one person he has a limited ability to counteract that. He then goes on to observe that the Libertarian movement seems to have done better from the Reagan era to the Tea Party era, ‘when a small-government outlook had a stronger foothold on the right’. In other words, the Libertarian movement seems to be blowing in the winds of the wider culture of the political right, and can’t stay anchored to its own values when the prevailing winds blow the opposite way. That libertarianism, a very small political movement, is situated in a much larger right-wing milieu, with its endless flood of money-driven and conformist propaganda, makes this essentially inevitable.
From the aforementioned analysis by Tracinski, we can see that there are two main root causes that have allowed the populist-right to attempt a takeover of libertarianism: that it is a small movement, and that it is situated in the right-wing milieu. The first problem can only be solved by making the movement more practical, and thus more popular. This is why I think it would be best for libertarianism to remain a philosophical position, and for us to rally around a more moderate classical liberal politics in practical reality. The difference in the way I use the terms ‘libertarian’ and ‘classical liberal’ is that I see ‘libertarian’ as an ideal, an ideal that is very necessary as an inspiration and a moral reference point for us, but also an ideal that is not practical to implement in reality, at least in the immediate present. The problem with libertarian immediatism is that it is not practical, nor does it practically lead to more freedom for most people, and this condemns it to perpetually being a small movement blowing in the winds of the political right. This is why I prefer a politics of libertarian-inspired reformism instead. I define reformism as a politics of aiming to gradually make things better, informed by both the Enlightenment belief in the ability of rationality to improve things, and the Burkean conservative belief that change should be based on practical circumstances rather than abstract ideas, and should be rooted in a given society’s traditions as much as possible. My aim is to reconcile libertarian ideals with a reformist politics, so that we gradually and practically reform society towards a more liberal state over time. This, I think, is most consistent with the original ideals of classical liberalism. Having said all this, I still believe that the maintenance of the libertarian ideal, if only as a philosophical ideal, is very important, if liberty is to survive the onslaught of illiberalism coming from all directions at the moment. Thus, the populist right’s attempt to take over the libertarian movement has been of great concern to me for some time now. Something needs to be done to counteract this, urgently.
The second problem, that the libertarian movement is helplessly pushed around by bigger forces on the political right, can only be resolved by removing libertarianism from the right-wing milieu altogether. The problem here is essentially that a commitment to freedom and the coalition of forces on the political right are simply not compatible. Historically, libertarian immediatists have aligned with the right to achieve specific goals, specifically to cut the size of government. In particular, beltway libertarians have aligned with neoconservatives while downplaying the authoritarianism of their hawkish foreign policies, while paleolibertarians have done the opposite by aligning with paleoconservatives to advance an isolationist foreign policy, while shamelessly pandering to the paleocons’ racism and bigotry. Both of these strategies have caused the libertarian movement to become enmeshed in the right-wing milieu. And let’s face it: the right is objectively not a good place for liberty, because there are powerful illiberal elements in the right-wing coalition. These elements are much more numerous and powerful than the libertarians, which is why, in the right, it is almost always the authoritarians who call the shots and the libertarians who get pushed around.
Historically, the right has been far more comfortable with things like the arbitrary use of government power, and the discrimination of citizens on religious grounds. In the 2000s, the Bush-43 administration, and like-minded governments around the Western world, placed radical limits on civil liberties in the name of stopping terrorism. Supporters of Bush’s 2003 Iraq War called those who opposed the war unpatriotic. Later on, the religious right sought to ban gay marriage almost everywhere, followed by a campaign to force schools to teach creationism in biology classes. After a brief libertarian wave in the 2010s, a more authoritarian right has reasserted itself in recent years. Some people in the NatCon movement explicitly condemn classical liberalism, blaming it for the rise of wokeness. The overturning of Roe v. Wade, whatever one might think of that from a constitutional law perspective, has led to right-wing politicians reflexively banning abortion without even the pretense of community consultation or compromise in many states, which is clearly authoritarian no matter how you look at the issue. Politicians like Ron DeSantis have been on a crusade to remove LGBT rights and implement book bans and drag bans, as well as to use state power to punish ‘woke corporations’ that oppose their agenda. The official Republican platform in Texas and some other states still clearly state an intent to work to overturn gay marriage in America, and the Texas platform even calls for unconstitutional religious instruction in public schools, as well as defining abortion as homicide, which would carry the death penalty in that state.
And let’s face it: all the extremely illiberal policies discussed above are made possible by their popular support in the Republican base, reinforced by the propaganda of the 24/7 right-wing news media that Tracinski described as a ‘firehose’ ‘coming at them all day long’. For example, in a 2023 survey, a whopping 40% of Republicans were uncomfortable with finding out that their friend was gay, and the figure rises to 59% for trans (compared to only 14% and 19% for Democrats respectively). Remember, we’re not talking about disagreement with certain LGBT activists’ agenda. We’re talking about having a gay or trans friend here, and roughly half of all Republicans had a problem with that in 2023! The intense anti-LGBT propaganda in right-wing news media appears to have had a powerful effect here. Again, it’s just not something a small and powerless libertarian movement could address effectively by any means.
Finally, and this is my main response to the anti-war focused paleolibertarian crowd, the Republican Party is still the more hawkish party overall, and Trump has not really changed this fact. The fact that most neocon hawks continue to support Trump rather than quit the party after Trump’s takeover is testament to this. After all, you have to remember that Trump only opposed regime change wars on vague ‘America First’ grounds. Therefore, those paleolibertarians who think Trump is the answer to their prayers have essentially been taken for a ride. With ‘America First’ being nothing more than a vague slogan, it could be used to mean anything, including, yes, War on Terror type policies, which were actually justified by Bush as necessary to keep America safe! Even the Iraq War could have been sold as ‘America First’ if they wanted to! In fact, let’s not forget they used to call those who opposed that war unpatriotic. In the wrong hands, America First could easily be the slogan used to resurrect Bush-Cheney style regime change wars policy, and even stifle dissent.
All this is why I have never believed in classical liberals or libertarians aligning ourselves with the right, and the brief common ground of woke skepticism and anti-cancel culture activism during the 2010s didn’t quite sway me either. Instead, I have long been trying to return classical liberalism to a dominant position on the progressive side of politics, where classical liberalism actually originated. As I’ve long suspected, the right was always a bad fit for libertarians, although it arguably only came to a head very suddenly in 2022, when the Mises Caucus took over the Libertarian leadership, Roe v. Wade was overturned, the War on Disney began, Don’t Say Gay became law, and any hope for an IDW revival vanished with Jordan Peterson’s hard-right turn, all happening at almost the same time. Although it might not have been apparent earlier on, the seeds for these developments were always there, and much more powerful than most libertarians would have admitted too. On the other hand, wokeness has been clearly on the decline since 2021. Joe Biden’s landslide victory in the 2020 Democratic primaries showed that the far-left was a much smaller and less powerful force than previously thought, and since that event the old center-left establishment has become gradually bolder in staring down the cultural far-left. It started with the Harper’s free speech letter during the BLM movement, and this reset has hit the entertainment industry, college campuses and newsrooms alike. It’s why everything from Netflix to New York Times feels much less ‘woke’ than four years ago. This profound shift has also meant that many moderate progressives now have the space they need to reassess the far-left’s ideas and politics.
With the far-left clearly on the defensive, and the center-left increasingly questioning their politics, there is a very real opportunity for classical liberals to reclaim lost ground with moderate, reasonable progressives. When they find both the far-left and the old Democratic establishment unsatisfactory, they have a decent chance of embracing classical liberalism. Perhaps, one day, there might even be something like a classical liberal caucus in the Democratic Party and other center-left parties around the Western world, as well as in progressive institutions, newsrooms and think tanks, as a strong bulwark to the very vocal but actually small far-left, as I first envisioned back in 2017, when I called for a new movement to ‘Make Liberalism Great Again’ in response to the rise of MAGA. While we were aggressively drowned out by the far-left back then, the tide has now turned against them, and we might have our best chance yet.
Originally published at https://taraella2.substack.com.
TaraElla is a singer-songwriter and author, who is the author of the Moral Libertarian Manifesto and the Moral Libertarian book series, which argue that liberalism is still the most moral and effective value system for the West.
She is also the author of The Trans Case Against Queer Theory and The TaraElla Story (her autobiography).
