Will Willinson, head of the Niskanen Center, put forward a glorious argument for an effective libertarianism in the 21st century. It starts with an unsettling fact: that the richer a country is, the more it’s government tends to spend. This is true regardless of the different sorts of countries you look at across time. Whether big government is a luxury or a parasite (any good libertarian will be inclined towards the latter), there is that constant trend.
Wilkinson puts forwards two goals:
1. libertarians should be the champions of waste reduction and growth.
2.We can distinguish between the welfare state (which can be improved rather than abolished) and the more insidious enemy that is the regulatory apparatus. We can push for a transformation of the welfare state from the current sprawling money pit to a lean poverty reducer of the sort Hayek, Friedman, Mill, or Paine would support.
Libertarians can also channel the spirit of the counterculture and social justice into a force to be reckoned with. We should emphasize how the free enterprise system has done more to emancipate the masses from poverty than anything else in the history of mankind. We can talk about how it is government action (like the drug war, regulation, and a faulty welfare state) that perpetuates poverty, inequality, and class privilege.
Classical liberalism was the first great ideology of political and social revolution, abolishing old privileges of nobility, government monopoly, and guilds in favor of a freer and more equal society. In a world where we have government officials with aristocratic titles like Czar, government backed cartelization of industry, and government holding down large swathes of the masses, libertarianism should reclaim the old revolutionary spirit, and win voters accordingly.
I’d argue that there are four core groups that should be targeted by Libertarians:
There are also those last holdouts of socially liberal, to moderate, Republicanism. Bill Weld is the archetypical example of this, and his record in Massachusetts showed that a message of good government, fiscal responsibility, and social acceptance can sweep even the bluest of states. These sorts of republicans have tolerated the increasing cultural aggression of the GOP for many years, but this election a great many sucked it up, held their noses, and voted for Hillary Clinton. This is evident in places like Bergen County, NJ; Orange County, CA; Salt Lake County, Utah; and Gwinnett County, Georgia; which backed Mitt Romney in 2012 but voted for Clinton in 2016. They have no love for the Democratic Party, but the party of Trump increasingly comes off as a foreign entity to them, particularly in the age of Trump. It’s no wonder that one of these sorts of Republicans served as the Libertarian Vice Presidential nominee and another, Lisa Murkowski, attempted to run as a Libertarian in 2010.
There is one group of voters that I call “True Liberals” who would be valuable recruits to a broader liberty movement. Free Speech advocacy, anti-war activism, and fighting the man may sound like a throwback to the 60s New Left, but they’re exactly the sort of values libertarians should fight for.
In 2008, Vietnam-era throwback, Senator Mike Gravel, netted the support of Ralph Nader based on an antiwar campaign during the Democratic Primary: when that failed he saw it as completely natural to try for the Libertarian nomination.
Occupy Wall Street might seem like a progressive nightmare, but in 2012 there were only two politicians – both Republicans – to go down there: Gary Johnson (who would go on to be the 2012 and 2016 Libertarian nominee) and Buddy Roemer (who would endorse Johnson and also become a darling of the media and liberal left). This liberal spirit in Libertarianism further manifested itself in 2016, when it was Gary Johnson who took in the second biggest chunk of the liberal vote – after Hillary Clinton.
Constitutional conservatives are another very natural part of the Libertarian coalition. Ted Cruz was not a true libertarian, but he was the only candidate to explicitly include libertarians in his desired coalition. One of the most libertarian moments from the Republican debates was when Ted Cruz ripped into Marco Rubio for e-verify, on the grounds of it being a big government intrusion. Predictably, when Ted Cruz dropped out, online searches for Gary Johnson and the Libertarian Party spiked. Though Cruz ultimately caved and endorsed Trump, fellow Constitutional Conservative Mike Lee always held his ground and refused to endorse Trump. Cruz’s support was disproportionately in the Great Plains and mountain-west, which just so happened to also be the areas Gary Johnson tended to fare the best in, showing that these voters already have a very strong libertarian streak.
Parties win, in the United States, by bringing together different sorts of people for different reasons under one party banner. When Libertarian candidates bring in non-libertarians or more moderate thinkers to the party, we should celebrate – not moan! In an era when overall identification with political parties is at an all-time low and more than half of Americans are clamoring for an alternative, it is not just an opportunity, but a moral duty for the Libertarian Party to reform itself and become a competitive entity.
By looking to the history of the Democratic renewal we can see a model of how changing to the electorate can yield tremendous political results for a party. I hope these lessons can be applied by Libertarians, to help us become the force that the nation desperately needs and desires.
Wilkinson puts forwards two goals:
1. libertarians should be the champions of waste reduction and growth.
2.We can distinguish between the welfare state (which can be improved rather than abolished) and the more insidious enemy that is the regulatory apparatus. We can push for a transformation of the welfare state from the current sprawling money pit to a lean poverty reducer of the sort Hayek, Friedman, Mill, or Paine would support.
Libertarians can also channel the spirit of the counterculture and social justice into a force to be reckoned with. We should emphasize how the free enterprise system has done more to emancipate the masses from poverty than anything else in the history of mankind. We can talk about how it is government action (like the drug war, regulation, and a faulty welfare state) that perpetuates poverty, inequality, and class privilege.
Classical liberalism was the first great ideology of political and social revolution, abolishing old privileges of nobility, government monopoly, and guilds in favor of a freer and more equal society. In a world where we have government officials with aristocratic titles like Czar, government backed cartelization of industry, and government holding down large swathes of the masses, libertarianism should reclaim the old revolutionary spirit, and win voters accordingly.
I’d argue that there are four core groups that should be targeted by Libertarians:
- Moderate Republicans
- Fiscally Centrist Democrats
- True Liberals
- Constitutional Conservatives.
There are also those last holdouts of socially liberal, to moderate, Republicanism. Bill Weld is the archetypical example of this, and his record in Massachusetts showed that a message of good government, fiscal responsibility, and social acceptance can sweep even the bluest of states. These sorts of republicans have tolerated the increasing cultural aggression of the GOP for many years, but this election a great many sucked it up, held their noses, and voted for Hillary Clinton. This is evident in places like Bergen County, NJ; Orange County, CA; Salt Lake County, Utah; and Gwinnett County, Georgia; which backed Mitt Romney in 2012 but voted for Clinton in 2016. They have no love for the Democratic Party, but the party of Trump increasingly comes off as a foreign entity to them, particularly in the age of Trump. It’s no wonder that one of these sorts of Republicans served as the Libertarian Vice Presidential nominee and another, Lisa Murkowski, attempted to run as a Libertarian in 2010.
There is one group of voters that I call “True Liberals” who would be valuable recruits to a broader liberty movement. Free Speech advocacy, anti-war activism, and fighting the man may sound like a throwback to the 60s New Left, but they’re exactly the sort of values libertarians should fight for.
In 2008, Vietnam-era throwback, Senator Mike Gravel, netted the support of Ralph Nader based on an antiwar campaign during the Democratic Primary: when that failed he saw it as completely natural to try for the Libertarian nomination.
Occupy Wall Street might seem like a progressive nightmare, but in 2012 there were only two politicians – both Republicans – to go down there: Gary Johnson (who would go on to be the 2012 and 2016 Libertarian nominee) and Buddy Roemer (who would endorse Johnson and also become a darling of the media and liberal left). This liberal spirit in Libertarianism further manifested itself in 2016, when it was Gary Johnson who took in the second biggest chunk of the liberal vote – after Hillary Clinton.
Constitutional conservatives are another very natural part of the Libertarian coalition. Ted Cruz was not a true libertarian, but he was the only candidate to explicitly include libertarians in his desired coalition. One of the most libertarian moments from the Republican debates was when Ted Cruz ripped into Marco Rubio for e-verify, on the grounds of it being a big government intrusion. Predictably, when Ted Cruz dropped out, online searches for Gary Johnson and the Libertarian Party spiked. Though Cruz ultimately caved and endorsed Trump, fellow Constitutional Conservative Mike Lee always held his ground and refused to endorse Trump. Cruz’s support was disproportionately in the Great Plains and mountain-west, which just so happened to also be the areas Gary Johnson tended to fare the best in, showing that these voters already have a very strong libertarian streak.
Parties win, in the United States, by bringing together different sorts of people for different reasons under one party banner. When Libertarian candidates bring in non-libertarians or more moderate thinkers to the party, we should celebrate – not moan! In an era when overall identification with political parties is at an all-time low and more than half of Americans are clamoring for an alternative, it is not just an opportunity, but a moral duty for the Libertarian Party to reform itself and become a competitive entity.
By looking to the history of the Democratic renewal we can see a model of how changing to the electorate can yield tremendous political results for a party. I hope these lessons can be applied by Libertarians, to help us become the force that the nation desperately needs and desires.
