[Alex]
Michael Gerson, George W Bush’s former speechwriter, has what I believe is known as a "clarifying" article at another weekly news magazine. If you believe in limited-government you are, apparently, a "fundamentalist".
Gerson, like many big-government and left-wing types seems to believe that all small government conservatives are libertarians and all libertarians are swivel-eyed loons. Sign me up for that then. But a belief in the ineffable goodness and efficiency of government is every bit as ideological an attitude as thinking markets can provide a better way. It’s not just a belief in free markets per se that persuades libertarians, it’s that markets can also lead to better outcomes. In other words, there’s a happy marriage between principle and pragmatism.
Gerson warns the Republican party that giving in to the limited-government types will lead to electoral disaster for the party. It can choose between "purity" and "power" but it can’t have both. In this he may be right: it’s a sad truth that any quasi-libertarian approach to politics has a very limited appeal (and that’s in the US – the outlook for libertarianism in Britain is woefully bleak).
The oft-cited Cato Institute study that reported that 13% of the electorate might be termed "libertarian-minded" struck me as being simultaneously a depressingly small and a vastly over-stated figure: the former becuase I wish there were more people who could properly be considered libertarians, the latter becuase I don’t believe anything like 13% of the electorate actually are libertarian-minded.
It’s unfortunate that people like big government. There is only limited demand for limited government. Which is why, I’m afraid, Brink Lindsey’s semi-famous "Liberaltarian" essay proposing a grand alliance between liberals and libertarians is unlikely to prove more than an interesting intellectual exercise.
Yes, as Gerson makes clear, the Republican party is a cold house for libertarians right now. But Democrats aren’t likely to offer any greater comfort. Sure, they may be on the good guys’ side vis a vis certain social issues and, say, farm subsidies but then there’s stuff like trade where Democrats are even keener than Republicans to make companies pay bribes for the privilege of selling their goods. A protection racket is a protection racket whether it’s run by the mob or by government.
Temperamentally, of course, this suits many libertarians fine. As the old saw puts it, corralling libertarians is akin to herding armed cats. They wouldn’t be happy being part of any mass movement.
In this week’s New Republic Jon Chait offers a few brutal home truths:
[Some libertarians like to] stress that President Bush’s share of the libertarian vote dropped precipitously between 2000 and 2004. But, during that time, Bush’s total share of the vote rose by almost 3 percent. So, however many voters were turned off by the prescription-drug bill or the Patriot Act, many more were turned on. This demonstrates the obvious (to nonlibertarians, anyway) point that wooing a small bloc with unpopular views is not a sound political strategy. Likewise, if Democrats were to denounce psychiatry and quote endlessly from the works of L. Ron Hubbard, they could jack up their share of the Scientologist vote, but it probably wouldn’t help their overall popularity.
It would be lovely to think Chait is wrong here, but I don’t think he is. The entire drift of contemporary politics – on both the right and the left – is away from classical liberal values.
So it’s yet another case of "O tempora, o mores" and all the rest of it.
The Dish 