I know we’ve been punching hippies a lot lately, but I do have something positive to say about the FDL crowd: compared to the libertarians, they are steely-eyed practitioners of realpolitik.
Since this weekend’s drug-related killings in Mexico, I’ve been watching the Reason blog for any hint that they’ll tie those killings to the unnecessary war on drugs, and try to make a little political hay on a core, and winning, libertarian issue. Today, they finally posted on the topic. In the meantime, they put up at least nine posts addressing the many facets of evil in the HCR bill.
Did John Boehner and Mitch McConnell replace Matt Welch and Nick Gillespie while I wasn’t looking? Didn’t libertarians used to have at least a few decent ideas, like legalizing prostitution, staying out of interventionist wars, and defending the First Amendment?
I don’t think that a large number of Americans will ever become goldbugs, or idolize Dagny Taggart, but I’d expect a few more would call themselves libertarians if Reason presented an actual alternative, McMegan could keep her petty little hatreds in check, and Ron Paul would STFU about the gold standard.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
The smell of GOP cash was just too strong.
drillfork
Gold was like $300/oz 10 years ago.
How’s your 401K doing?
Kryptik
Libertarianism has rarely been anything but gilded anarchism. It’s just much more painfully transparent these days.
Violet
Reasonable people don’t get pundit jobs on Fox News. No incentive to be reasonable.
MikeJ
They just like Ayn Rand because she thinks strong male characters are all rapists.
John Cole
You are kidding, right? Look into who funds the 150k and 115k salaries over there for the top guys at Reason.
MikeJ
@drillfork: In 1980 it was over $800 an ounce, over $2100/oz in constant dollars. And as you point out, it was $300/oz 10 years ago.
Lee
One of the things that glibertarians hate is when you ask them for data to back up some of their ideas.
For instance, asking if they have ANY examples of how a completely unregulated health care market could provide better than a well regulated one.
How a smaller to non-existent government would be a better place to live. I love to ask if they are posting from Somalia where there is no functioning government and if not, why not.
Now the drug war is starting to have lots and lots of data demonstrating that it is failed. Yet they continue to whine about HCR and post occasionally about the failed drug war.
Tim F.
I think that libertarians made the principled decision that libertarianism is passe and whatever the GOP sends over the blastfax this week is the way to go. Why can’t anyone respect that?
mistermix
@John Cole: Who does? Honest question – I hadn’t looked at Reason for years until I started wondering if they’d have something to say about the drug war.
Rick Taylor
I was involved in the Libertarian party decades ago, when I was young and naive. I remember then there was a bit of a split in the party; on the one side you had the intellectual purists like Murray Rothbard, who were as anti-Republican as they were anti-Democrat, who tended to oppose foreign wars and definitely opposed forcing taxpayers to fund them. On the other side you had the conservatives. I’m not sure, but it looks like the latter took over the party since then.
The Main Gauche of Mild Reason
John wins the internets for the new blog subheaders, btw.
demo woman
Yesterday I did not know who this Bret Baier person that was going to interview the President. I read the transcript and now I’m watching and all I can say if I ever had the opportunity I would love to kick him in the balls. What an ass.
I’m not a fan of heels but I might even try stillettos on for the occasion.
Corner Stone
No.
SATSQ
CalD
Libertarians relinquished all bragging rights to being any sort of independent voice in the 80s, when they made common cause with the Republican party over their hair-brained economic theories. They’ve long since ceased to be anything more than enablers for the authoritarian, social conservative spendthrift agenda of dimwits running the party that absorbed them. It baffles me why anyone still takes anything they say seriously.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
OT
And another one bites the dust.
mistermix
@Corner Stone: They have some bad ones, too, but legalizing drugs and prostitution, and staying out of wars of occupation are three decent ideas.
John Cole
@mistermix: The usual suspects.
merrinc
I remember when the Libertarians were crazy people who seemed sane for the first 5-10 minutes of a conversation. And then they’d segue from the War on Drugs to babbling excitedly about turning the national parks over to private enterprise.
But I am also old enough to remember when Republicans were mostly just snotty rich people who didn’t want to pay so much in taxes and spent most of their time looking down their noses at the rest of us. I miss those guys.
calling all toasters
@John Cole: Nice link. George Soros is more of a libertarian than any of those jackasses. Or would be, if the word ‘libertarian’ actually had any meaning.
jl
My personal opinion is that radical and Reason-type libertarians never had a coherent set of ideas.
Frinstance: how do we know that a consistent endowment, or entitlement of rights over, what, everything(?), even exists to be defended by a neutral referee? When it comes to economics, how many libertarians have stuck to their guns about an entitlement based system, regardless of how seemingly awful the observable outcome in terms of common sense utilitarianism? And how many have turned economics into a complicated word game, defending any unregulatred free market outcome, no matter how seemingly bad, as the best possible, if you take into account an undefined set of (usually unobservable) ‘pre-existing conditions’ that they think up in their head, on the spot, as needed?
Anyone know an authoritative source for the answers? If so, lemme know. In the mean time, my default assumption is that extreme libertarians are very confused and vague minded people.
I got no problem wtih the FDL crowd pressing their case on issues, even when I strongly disagree. And example is the current mess of a health care reform bill, which I think should be passed even though it stinks. I think the more strong advocacy from lefties who usually can make good arguments is for the good.
What is up with the alliance of convenience with Norquist, I do not know and have not had the stomach to follow it, though I probably need to pull up my socks, suck in my ample gut, and read about what they are doing.
Corner Stone
@mistermix: I tend to agree with you on the nature of the “ideas”.
The issue I have is that none of these good ideas fit into a framework that actually makes sense.
And not in the way that Democrats dreamed of single payer but couldn’t achieve it, but more in the way that they want what they want and have no idea how to offset the resultant effects.
IOW, they are children.
demo woman
No CBO score tonight…
demo woman
My rep does not believe in regulation of any kind. He believes in lower tax rates and wants to privatize social security. This would sound like a libertarian except that he is anti-gay marriage, against legalization of drugs and wants to know how I spend time in my own home. My rep is Tom Price.
Like merrinc @ 19 I miss the old repubs also.
Napoleon
@merrinc:
I understand why you say that, but since the late 70s when I was a teenager I would run into hard core Republicans who if you engaged them long enough and really did not reveal what you thought would revel everything you see in the teabaggers and the King/Ryan/Etc wing. It has always been their dream to kneecap the New Deal.
PS with the edit – those same people would always tell you SS was a ponsi scheme and stole from people.
mistermix
@Corner Stone: I’ll be the first to agree that Libertarianism can’t be a fully-formed political theory — it’s really bush league in that regard. But, hell, Democrats and Republicans also believe a pretty mixed-up hodge-podge of ideas.
My point is simply that they aren’t even leading with their decent ideas. Obvious to many, but new to me. I was genuinely surprised by my visit to Reason.
@John Cole: Figures. Thanks for the link.
Corner Stone
@merrinc:
They never existed. They are a myth.
Please stop fellating the myth that sensible Republicans have existed in the modern era.
cs
I don’t know what got into Reason. They used to be a pretty reliable independent voice even if they sometimes dipped into knee-jerk contrarianism every now and then. Back when I would read the blog daily (and had a subscription) they were pretty reliable about pissing off both Republicans and Democrats, though the former would get the lion’s share of the abuse. You should see their posts from November 2006 and the intense gloating over the Republicans going down in flames. The Santorum thread was pretty epic.
So you can’t really accuse them of enabling the Republicans during the years when they were doing the most damage. The blog / magazine was even honest enough to skewer Ron Paul over his racism, even though Ron Paul was the sacred cow most sacred to the bulk of their subscribers.
Not sure why they changed. The donor list seems about the same as it was back then but maybe the amounts of money from the wingnuts has increased. Maybe it was just because they lost the left-libertarian voices of Weigel and Sanchez, thus causing the right-libs to dominate.
Corner Stone
@mistermix:
Well, hell. Take off your crankypants and hang around a while.
After Cole is spent punching hippies his second most favorite activity is punching Reason. But Reason deserves it cuz they are always wrong.
demo woman
@Corner Stone: I voted for Ed Brooke and he was a pretty good senator. Granted it has been a few decades but there were some decent repubs in the olden days.
Joey Giraud
Every libertarian I’ve known is, at heart, pissed off at the complexity of the real world and wants everything to be simple enough for their lazy asses to understand.
merrinc
@Corner Stone:
Fellating as a verb choice isn’t exactly conducive to a discussion.
Carol
I remember those Republicans. While they hated the New Deal, the Northern kind at least believed in efficiency, frugality and moderation and government run well. Nixon didn’t thump the Bible and actually believed in making the government run some things correctly, Eisenhower even interceded on behalf of civil rights.
I miss them-at least at the top you thought there was sane governance most of the time. Nixon would have scoffed at the birther stuff, and while he entertained the ministers, would have mocked theocratic notions at least privately. The woo-woo stuff really started in earnest under Reagan, who hardly read anything at all and had little intellectual ballast unlike the previous two who had to at least study to make general and lawyer.
Think of it this way. Howard Dean’s family was Republican-and without moving very far to the left, are now practically hippies to the modern chickenfired version of the Republican Party.
justinslot
That last sentence is pretty much my conclusion. Jesse and Radley are the only ones left there with a not-necessarily-right-wing perspective.
Corner Stone
@merrinc:
I’m not interested in “discussing” with anyone that actual reasonable Republicans have controlled their party in the modern era.
I’d rather discuss angels, heads of pins, dancing.
MikeJ
@merrinc:
You’re talking to the wrong people.
Corner Stone
@demo woman:
I’ll grant that individuals have been reasonable. Even though this example left office in 1979.
But the dominant strain in the Republican Party in our modern era has been nutjobbish.
They were not good people. They did not want what was best for other people.
jl
@Corner Stone: I think the round square is also a better topic. As is the existence of blissful gardens full of rainbows and unicorns, where we live on cotton candy, flower nectar, and angel food cake, forever is also a good choice, and more pleasant.
Carol
Libertarians want an unfettered, unregulated capitalism-but a financial system can only run efficiently and profitably under agreed upon rules-and a government strong enough to enforce them. Without a strong central government, the economy would be feudalism at best and piracy at the worst.
And looking back over the history of mercantilism and capitalism, the early capitalists were strong supporters of central governments. They knew that central governments and centralized tax collecting was cheaper than paying every little principality tribute, could provide efficient security for trade, and would make sure that the cheaters would be punished. In the Constitution, the Federal Government was strengthened-not weakened and given the power to regulate commerce. If libertarianism was so profitable, why didn’t the Founding Fathers simply retain the Articles of Confederation with their separate state governments and all the rest?
Corner Stone
@jl: That’s just silly. Everyone knows the cake is a lie.
RareSanity
I remember a few years ago when I was a regular visitor to Reason and Lew Rockwell, and yes they did have ideas that a lot of people would get on-board for.
But, that was the problem. Once they started to see the page views increase, the new found popularity, was like a drug. They started uppin’ the crazy and they were rewarded for it. It’s just cover, just like Bill O’Reilly is an independent. Just like Neal Boortz and Bill Maher are libertarians. Boortz is a bomb the brown people, trickle down economics wingnut and Maher is just a hippie that wants his weed to be legal
I still consider myself an actual libertarian, which is basically a live and let live philosophy. The people that are actually calling themselves libertarians obviously like the taste of wingnut welfare far more than any principle they used to support.
Sly
@Corner Stone:
There are still sensible Republicans. They just all live in the NE and generally don’t reach higher office than state assembly/senate because the inmates won’t let them.
Ash Can
@Joey Giraud: And/or they’re just desperate for permission to consider themselves the center of the universe.
ericblair
@RareSanity: I still consider myself an actual libertarian, which is basically a live and let live philosophy.
I consider myself a classical liberal (and conservative, because they’re not opposites at all). I believe in freedom, which means let people marry who the hell they want, don’t tell them who the hell to worship, and have everyone chip in a bit for a decent safety net so people have the opportunity to explore and take a few risks in this life without worrying about ending up on the street.
I don’t want to live in a place where I can’t trust the food, can’t keep my money anywhere except a coffee can because of fraud, and can’t go out of my house because the roads are crap, the lights don’t work, and the market’s a bunch of beggars, bandit taxis, conmen, and car thieves.
jcricket
Individual Libertarians (Radley Balko) have a few good ideas, but the Libertarian movement is just a glossy veneer on “fuck you I got mine” politics.
With a healthy dash of “the poor won’t actually revolt and call my bluff, no will they”?
I welcome the day when Libertarianism is discussed in the same vein as Communism, because it’s an ideology with the same basic problems – can sound reasonable in theory, fails massively when put to the test, and is only defended by dishonest folks or people who insist that the failure was “real hasn’t been tried”.
OTOH – I’ve got a dozen examples of a “social democracy” functioning quite well – good income mobility, public safety net, good infrastructure, and a reasonable business climate. I actually had someone say to me “move to France or Sweden if you want – the business climate is awful.” Like it’s a magical paradise here and there are no businesses in France or Sweden and everyone in those countries wants to move out.
Recall
There used to be actual social libertarians.
Peter McWilliams for one.
Martin
@drillfork: I bought a pile of AAPL at a split adjusted $3.25 12 years ago. Yeah, I’m doing okay. Y’all can keep your gold.
Joey Maloney
@jcricket:
I prefer to think of it as a venereal gloss, but reasonable people can disagree on this point.
ETA: LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOVE the new blog motto!
ProudCynic
As idiotic as a lot of libertarians can be, there are some independent ones still out there. For example, Ed Brayton. Note that he’s mostly a social/legal libertarian, from what I’ve read he’s not much on the economic ‘I got mine’ side that many of us are familiar with.
TomG
There are other libertarians out there worth reading as well.
One I like especially is “cls”, and his blog is Classically Liberal.
There are a few other left-leaning libertarians but in general, the main LP is as you all say…co-opted by the Bob Barrs of the world.
mds
Yeah, I still have to give him props for his aggressive approach to the Cory Maye affair, when no one else was paying attention. But he pretty much burned through that goodwill during the MA special election. He kept shrieking about what an out-of-control prosecutor Coakley had been, with nary a peep about her opponent asserting that terrorism suspects shouldn’t have rights (in contrast to Coakley’s support for civilian trials). Guess which one of those is more relevant for a US senator? But when in doubt, bash the slightly more left-wing target.
Ed Brayton is still solid, though. And Jacob Sullum always seemed sensible, even when I didn’t agree with him.
Evinfuilt
@calling all toasters:
Markos had an essay a couple years ago on that theory. I believe a lot of people like Kos are in fact much more Libertarian than anyone who reads Reason.