Illiberal Libertarians
I wasn’t a fan of Ron Paul to begin with. And Ron Paul’s crowd didn’t think much of me, either.
I hadn’t known about his old newsletters and their cesspool of racism and homophobia. But I didn’t need to know about them to know that I wanted nothing to do with Ron Paul’s brand of libertarianism.
Here’s why. I’m a libertarian because I’m a liberal. In other words, I support small-government, free-market policies because I believe they provide the institutional framework best suited to advancing the liberal values of individual autonomy, tolerance, and open-mindedness. Liberalism is my bottom line; libertarianism is a means to promoting that end.
Ron Paul, by contrast, is no liberal. Just look at his xenophobia, his sovereignty-obsessed nationalism, his fondness for conspiracy theories, his religious fundamentalism — here is someone with a crudely authoritarian worldview. The snarling bigotry of his newsletters is just the underside of this rotten log.
In the twentieth century, alas, American liberalism was heavily influenced by the socialist dream of supplanting markets with central planning and top-down control. That confusion begat confusion in response — namely, an antistatist movement heavily influenced by authoritarian resentment of liberal cultural values. Paul’s illiberal libertarianism is a particularly unattractive variant of this kind of “fusionism.”
With the collapse of socialism, however, American liberals have begun rediscovering the value of market competition. By my lights, many of them still have a long, long way to go. But encouraging that process – making the case that economic liberalization is of a piece with overall social liberalization — is the only way forward for those of us concerned about overweening state power. In this project, people whose values and habits of mind are deeply hostile to liberal modernity are not our allies.
January 15th, 2008 at 11:25 pm
And Ron Paul’s crowd didn’t think much of me, either.
The single most important issue of our time was the Iraq war, and you came out in favor of it. War implies violence and an increase in the power of the state. Come out in support of a non-defensive one and many libertarians are going to have a low opinion of you.
here is someone with a crudely authoritarian worldview
Sounds like that “authoritarian personality” Frankfurt School Marxist line (see this on the old version and this on the new). Ron Paul has stood against one of the largest and most violent authorities of our time, the US government.
With the collapse of socialism, however, American liberals have begun rediscovering the value of market competition.
Really? I haven’t noticed that occurring and the state keeps expanding.
In this project, people whose values and habits of mind are deeply hostile to liberal modernity are not our allies.
I’ll take an anti-war bigot over a pro-war cosmopolitan. To riff on Blackstone, I’d rather a trillion foreigners be vilely insulted than one bombed.
January 16th, 2008 at 3:08 am
I might give the wrong impression in my comment, I don’t really don’t dislike you and the “beltway” or “Kochtopus” that much, and I’ve spoken up against the charges of the angrier LvMI types. The war just seems the most important political issue (I recall you saying on Bloggingheads that was your reason for supporting the Democrats this year, though their most anti-war candidate in Gravel is gone) and I expect better from libertarians.
January 16th, 2008 at 3:58 pm
A final question: were the “classical liberals” of the era of the Founding not “liberals”? They seem far worse than Paul in the areas he deviates. They were fearful of the smallest infringments on the sovereignty of the colonies by it’s mother-country, they believed in a mighty wacky conspiracy about Catholic despotism arising from toleration of the church in Canada, they thought it great that they were blessed with an ethnically homogenous nation (in which blacks didn’t count because they were slaves) but fretted about the “Palatine boors” and at the state-level they had established religions and laws against blasphemy.
February 3rd, 2008 at 6:22 am
Hi.
I believe you don’t know Dr. Paul very well. He is very liberal. He is far from xenophobic, and he believes religion should play no part in the federal government. He is indeed obsessed with sovereignty and a non-interventionist foreign policy, but at the same time he believes in free international trade and communications. He complains when other candidates point out Romney’s Mormonism. He criticizes others who do that, saying that that should not be part of the discussion. The “religious fundamentalism” you accuse him of is hardly that. He disbelieves in evolution, yes, but a) he is old and religious — give him a break; and b) under his presidency it simply wouldn’t matter — he believes religion should have no part in the fed government, and he believes the fed should only do the very few things expressly given it by the constitution, and shouldn’t be involved in education, science, or anything where even more significant religious fundamentalism would matter (his is mild — “fundamentalist” is completely unfitting). If the “conspiracy theories” you link to may be called such, they are very mild ones. Finally, after hearing Dr. Paul speak time and time again, it becomes clear he is anything but racist. He is guilty only of not keeping a closer eye on what was being published under his name. He is a true libertarian, and a liberal one at that.
I encourage you to research Dr. Paul more thoroughly and acquire a better understanding of the presidential candidate. I think the thing you will like least about him is that he believes firmly in states’ rights. If he had his way the federal government would have only the very few powers expressly invested in it by the constitution, while the states could do pretty much anything. One would expect libertarianism (and liberalism) to suffer in many states. This is a point on which I am not necessarily with him. But it is not clear how much alibertarianism he would endure in the states. He does believe in amending the constitution so perhaps he would address this problem through that channel.
Just go to YouTube and search “Ron Paul” and watch a bunch of his videos. Then try “ron paul racist” “ron paul racism” “ron paul religion” “ron paul rosa parks” etc. to see him speak on specific things. Your dim view of him will fade quickly. He isn’t perfect. But that he is on the whole illiberal is objectively, decidedly false.
I saw you on Book TV discussing Age of Abundance and was very impressed by you and the discussion.
Sincerely,
Eric
February 7th, 2008 at 1:12 pm
Yeah. I’m an “authoritarian,” meanwhile you try to build “alliances” with TNR, whose editor-in-chief’s bigoted view of Arabs leaves something to be desired.
http://www.wackedecon.com/index.php/2008/02/07/brink-lindsey-liberaltarian/
February 23rd, 2008 at 12:34 am
History will be a lot kinder to the War in Iraq than it’s contemporary critics, chiefly because we are going to win it. The eighteen month political walk-up, the international debate, the super-majority vote for war in Congress, the historically astonishingly small number of casualties, not to mention the freeing of 25 million people from an unimaginably cruel and pathological regime, all of these things will add up to a verdict of prudence in the future. Every war we’ve ever fought as a nation has had it’s detractors, and there’s certainly no reason to believe that Iraq and Afghanistan should be any different, but history will increasing consider them cranks, just as they now consider Charles Lindbergh and his ilk misguided at best in their opposition to war against fascism in WWII.
yours/
peter.
February 23rd, 2008 at 12:40 am
By the way Brink, if you’d lived in the 18th century you would have been a liberal; in today’s world you are a liberal capitalist, just like most of the rest of us.
yours/
peter.
March 11th, 2008 at 6:13 pm
While I am in the middle of reading AoA and loving every paragraph of it, I think you are dead wrong about Dr. Ron Paul. While we may not all agree with him on every single point, he was the closest thing that we have had to a successful libertarian in decades.
Even if you don’t agree with his brand or flavor (the fact the he is a right-leaning libertarian) doesn’t mean you should trash him, make false statements (he is not a xenophobe), or label him a racist (the oldest Marx trick in the book).
Fact is that having Dr. Ron Paul in office would’ve been better for the country than ANY of the other candidates in the race and hopefully you understand that. If not, then you have a serious mental problem which I seriously doubt because of your very well written well researched book.
March 19th, 2008 at 10:11 am
In 2006, you wanted to make an alliance with the Democrats. You claimed that divided government would reduce gov. spending and earmarks.
Nothing could be further from the truth. There is more federal and pork barrel spending then ever. Democrats are talking about renegotiating NAFTA and single payer health care.
What have you got out of the alliance? Will you concede that you were wrong?
From “moderate” Dem. Rahm Emanuel in today’s Wall Street Journal:
“In an era in which you earn what you learn, Americans should no longer be allowed to drop out of school at age 16. We should require all students to receive one year of training and education after high school.”
Does not get more libertarian than that.
December 16th, 2008 at 4:56 pm
[...] concurs with Brink Lindsey ; he’s a liberal libertarian. He says, “I’ve always been uncomfortable with the [...]
February 12th, 2009 at 7:19 pm
I’m not sure why you have such a hard on for the WTO. Never has someone got so much good press for stifling innovation and enforcing poverty around the world.
February 16th, 2009 at 12:17 pm
Have too say your article is spot on
I was a Ron Paul supporter being as I’m libertarian minded his message seemed refreshing & at first I tried to excuse his association with conspiracy kooks & Christian fundamentalists but then the story about the newsletter broke & the revelation that on his staff were former members of the KKK & other notorious far right groups.
I’ve also come to realise that Ron Paul’s message has not helped the cause of liberty but in fact has fed reactionary libertarians.
May 20th, 2009 at 11:58 pm
I don’t put a lot of stock in the claims that Paul is racist, and I honestly think he is a great guy. I have seen him speak in person, and actually got my photo taken with him. I was sympathetic to his campaign, and in many ways, I still am. But what I find disturbing is that, as Ziggy observed, his campaign fed into this reactionary brand of libertarianism obsessed with promoting negative liberty at the expense of almost everything else.
While I am not a big fan of positive liberty, I think there is a lot of truth in Jeremy Bentham’s observation that all liberty is in some sense positive: the only reason I can claim my house as my private property is because I can bar you from entering it. Without that positive right, there is no such negative right as the right to private property. Some degree of positive liberty is essential for a truly free society, and the original classical liberals fully grasped this (Bastiat and Mill in particular). That is what Paul and his supporters do not seem to get, if their campaign against almost any domestic policy is good basis on which to judge them.
I believe that Paul gets much more right than he does wrong — but what he gets wrong, he gets horribly wrong. For now at least, anarchism and minarchism are not feasible ways of running society. Liberaltarianism is the next-best alternative.
July 23rd, 2009 at 3:09 pm
But Obama is your guy, because he apparently best represents your limited government views, right?
In your capacity as vice president for research, did you not come across this article?
http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/09/barack_obama_and_the_strategy.html
I’d love to see you explain how these people represent the values of the CATO Institute.
July 23rd, 2009 at 3:20 pm
Mr. Lindsey,
I have listened/read to many of your comments and have often been quite pleased with the clarity and cohesiveness of your oppinions.
This post, however, is the height of disingenuity. Ron Paul is illiberal??? Of all the people in mainstream politics, you call out the one guy who has actually stood for individual autonomy in every vote he has ever cast in the Congress. There is a reason they call him “Dr. No.”
I am afraid you are on the defensive and this post is really embarassing. Maybe he is xenophobic, or homophobic, or astraphobic (and I doubt that he is any of these.) So what? As a liberal, are you not supposed to be tolerant of intolerance? And please point me to one law he has helped write, or one piece of legislation that he championed, that espouses “illberal” values.
Give me one…and I’ll give you 100 votes against illiberal policies your homies in the Democratic party put front and center.
July 23rd, 2009 at 3:25 pm
Oh and one more thing – he’s a freaking “religious fundamentalist” because he said that evolution is a theory? Last time I checked, it was precisely that.
This post is a joke.
December 9th, 2009 at 10:21 pm
Keep up the interesting posts. I love to see keen bloggers!