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Libertarianism Had Its Moment But Is Ill-Equipped For The Task Of Saving America
The Federalist ^ | 11/15/2023 | Brian Hawkins

Posted on 11/15/2023 10:12:25 AM PST by SeekAndFind

Our cultural decadence and institutional rot can only be remedied by a movement unafraid to assert virtue throughout society.

One item stood out at last week’s Republican presidential primary debate: There was not an explicitly nor implicitly identified libertarian candidate. Ron Paul represented the libertarian faction in Republican debates in 2008 and 2012, and his son Rand Paul assumed the mantle in 2016. Prior libertarian-leaning Republican primary candidates include Barry Goldwater in 1964, Jack Kemp in 1988, and Steve Forbes in 1996 and 2000, yet no such candidate can claim the position in this year’s Republican primary. The lack of a libertarian candidate is emblematic of the right’s shift away from free-market fundamentalism and toward a more robust social conservatism.

My own ideological evolution is demonstrative of the right’s shift away from libertarianism. Eight years ago, The Federalist published my essay making the Christian case for libertarianism. At the time, libertarianism seemed ascendant in contemporary politics. The New York Times wondered aloud if America’s “libertarian moment” had arrived, and Time Magazine featured Sen. Rand Paul on its cover describing him as “The Most Interesting Man in Politics.” But libertarianism’s political triumph was short-lived.

There are many possible reasons for this shift away from libertarianism, but among the most decisive were the disruptive events of the Covid-19 pandemic. America’s response to the pandemic exposed two fundamental truths that libertarianism was ill-equipped to answer: First, our institutions have been seized by ideological activists who have weaponized them against core American values; second, the left is on an evangelizing mission to impose its values across society unless resisted.

Institutions Are Broken

Covid exposed the deep moral rot of key institutions, such as academia, journalism, science and medicine, and corporations, among many others. In a liberal society, these institutions play a vital role in tempering concentrated political power by serving as neutral actors leveraging their unique expertise and interests to better society. During the pandemic, however, these institutions revealed themselves as political activists weaponizing their unique positions of authority to enact the left’s political agenda.

This rot was evident when public health officials published a public letter during the height of the pandemic insisting that the George Floyd riots did not violate their previously asserted guidance against mass gatherings because the rioters were rioting for a supposedly virtuous cause. This letter exposed those bureaucrats as mere political activists rather than the neutral experts they claim to be.

When critical race theory (CRT) became a polarizing, mainstream issue, many libertarians claimed CRT was protected by academic freedom. But that’s not true. Public school curriculums are inherently political because public officials ultimately decide what is taught in a public school. But for decades, curricula have been developed by progressives leading to a left-wing indoctrination of students evident in declining civic knowledge and patriotism.

The activist takeover of institutions allows leftists an additional avenue to exercise political power without ever explicitly enacting legislation. Therefore, conservatives must be willing to cripple their ability to exercise power by either externally dismantling these institutions or through their own hostile takeover. Neutrality toward these corrupt institutions will only allow the left to continue to subvert conservatives’ political interests.

The Left Won’t Leave You Alone

Recent years have also made it clear that the left won’t leave you alone. Leftists have a missionary zeal to impose their mores upon society. Again, the George Floyd riots are demonstrative. In their aftermath, the left demanded that you demonstrate your solidarity with leftist social causes or else you’re complicit in systemic racism.

Lavishly funded “diversity, equity, and inclusion” consultants infiltrated corporate boardrooms to inject racial identity politics into the workplace. Then the left came for your children, secretly using public schools to compel children into experimental mutilation under the guise of gender theory. Parents who objected to this radicalism were deemed domestic terrorists or threatened by Child Protective Services. There is nowhere to hide. Leftists insist on your acquiescence.

The left’s cultural aggression is a product of the right’s refusal to assert our own cultural values. Adherence to a neutral public sphere under the guise of secularism only creates a vacuum for the left to leverage the powers of the state to promote their own values. When the state stopped promoting traditional Christian values, the left filled the void by promoting cultural Marxism.

A less libertarian conservatism must leverage tools such as public school curricula, public television, military ethics training, and other professional training in the bureaucracy, etc. to educate Americans on traditional virtues.

Liberty Requires Virtue

Institutional rot and the left’s missionary zeal thus resurface a timeless wisdom: Liberty requires virtue. Absent said virtue, institutions and culture will inevitably culminate in tyranny and social disorder. In recent years, conservatives have relearned that a culture cannot sustain degradation without catastrophic effects to individual liberty. By contrast, libertarianism is at best agnostic on the need for a state to cultivate individual virtue.

Social righteousness as a prerequisite for liberty is an insight our Founding Fathers understood. In his farewell address, George Washington implored that America must be a virtuous nation for the republic to endure. He wrote:

… And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

Of course, libertarians and the left will accuse conservatives of wanting to enact a Christian theocracy, but that’s a lazy smear. Again, George Washington is illustrative. In his first annual address to Congress, President Washington wrote that Americans must understand the difference between order and oppression, and also liberty and licentiousness. He wrote:

… by teaching the people themselves to know and to value their own rights; to discern and provide against invasions of them; to distinguish between oppression and the necessary exercise of lawful authority; between burthens proceeding from a disregard to their convenience and those resulting from the inevitable exigencies of Society; to discriminate the spirit of Liberty from that of licentiousness, cherishing the first, avoiding the last…

Libertarianism fails to heed Washington’s advice by mistaking all encroachments on personal behavior as oppression. On the contrary, the conservative appreciates that in a free society, the state must proactively promote social virtue to prevent society from descending into cultural degradation. Disorder and licentiousness inevitably result in tyranny.

A New Libertarian-Conservative Fusionism

Despite these critiques, libertarianism still offers a lot to the right. The free market remains the greatest path toward material prosperity, and the right’s ability to promote wealth creation is among our biggest political advantages that should not be ceded. But of course, conservatism’s goal is about more than material wealth. Rather, it’s about shaping the conditions for human fulfillment. Any such new fusionism between libertarians and conservatives requires finding libertarian solutions to conservative objectives.

For example, among the right’s policy priorities is to rebuild the natural family. While this can be done via the tax code through an expanded earned income tax credit, or paid family leave policies, libertarians might help deregulate childcare services to drive down the cost of childcare.

Surely there are plenty of ways libertarians and conservatives can and should find common cause, but any shared agenda between libertarians and conservatives must aim toward retaking institutions, restoring social virtue, and rebuilding the family. Absent those objectives, libertarianism offers little to the right in our current political moment. America’s current state is characterized by cultural decadence and institutional rot that can only be remedied by an aggressive conservative agenda unafraid to assert its values throughout society.


Brian Hawkins is the policy coordinator at the American Legislative Exchange Council. Brian graduated from Azusa Pacific University in 2011 with a BA in political science. Upon graduation, Brian commissioned into the U.S. Army, where he deployed to South Korea and Afghanistan. The views expressed are his own.


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; Philosophy
KEYWORDS: conservatism; libertarianism
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1 posted on 11/15/2023 10:12:25 AM PST by SeekAndFind
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To: SeekAndFind

“First, our institutions have been seized by ideological activists who have weaponized them against core American values; second, the left is on an evangelizing mission to impose its values across society unless resisted.”

It’s utter nonsense to believe the right would be any less activist if not resisted.

(l)ibertarianism is the bulwark against both the left and right’s control of the people via government power.


2 posted on 11/15/2023 10:19:20 AM PST by Mariner (War Criminal #18)
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To: SeekAndFind

Well republicanism is doing a bang up job... of losing


3 posted on 11/15/2023 10:27:45 AM PST by Pollard (The US government has US citizens as political prisoners!)
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To: SeekAndFind

Pure Libertarian ideals are not practically achievable, because it could only be done in either a fully closed society or a fully Libertarian world.

Libertarians pushing for Libertarian rules in the U.S. alone fail to recognize that leaves the U.S. economy a victim of economies that are not just not Libertarian but the furthest thing from it.


4 posted on 11/15/2023 10:37:11 AM PST by Wuli ( ,)
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To: Mariner
(l)ibertarianism is the bulwark against both the left and right’s control of the people via government power.

Agreed. I wish more so called conservatives would recognize this fact.

5 posted on 11/15/2023 10:37:26 AM PST by thegagline (Sic semper tyrannis! Goldwater in 2024)
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To: Mariner

(l)ibertarianism is the bulwark against both the left and right’s control of the people via government power.

And if implemented here alone makes U.S. people subject to foriegn economic predators that don’t give a dam about Libertarianism. You can have pure Libertrianism only in a single close society or if the whole world was Libertarian.


6 posted on 11/15/2023 10:40:00 AM PST by Wuli ( ,)
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To: SeekAndFind

The libertarian party is a waste of humanity. I consider myself mostly small L libertarian. But I vote conservative.


7 posted on 11/15/2023 10:45:53 AM PST by Vaquero (Don't pick a fight with an old guy. If he is too old to fight, he'll just kill you. )
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To: Mariner
The simple fact is that the government now functions as an instrument of leftist tyranny and has made an alliance with big business to promote corporate fascism, corporate fascism in blackface with a rainbow flag.

Big business is perfectly happy with social communism as long as it gets tax breaks and subsidies and loves how endless regulation and open borders with "free trade" promotes monopoly, stifles competition and forces American wages down.

The primary cause of this sad state of affairs is that the Federal government has far exceeded any authority granted it under the Constitution, more precisely the limited grant of authority under the Commerce Clause has been expanded to include potential as well as actual interstate commerce, i.e., all commerce. Besides being incompetent and ignorant of the unintended consequences of wielding such vast powers, this un-Constitutional authority is the source of the immense corruption we see in DC: the highest ROE for any big company is lobbying.

So the big question is, How do we get rid of this monstrosity? With a huge bought and paid for political machine based on government money, leftist dominance of media, schools and universities and newly perfected techniques of ballot stuffing, normal politics offers faint hope. Even if we win an election, they can always try the next one. The whole point of a written Constitution is that fundamental rights are not up for grabs with every election.

We already live under an authoritarian regime that far exceeds its authority, punishes and sometimes imprisons its political opponents while granting its supporters carte blanche to break the law. So I think only a counter-authoritarian regime can get rid of it by suppressing both the left and the business class and putting America first. This also means decidedly less legal tolerance for anti-social behavior by criminals, drug addicts and others. Does anyone actually believe that the 1st Amendment protects pictures of pullulating pudenda? That it also protects the lying media when they defame their opponents? That "due process" and the prohibition on "cruel and unusual punishment" requires death penalty cases to go through 20 years of appeals? That the Constitution forbids removing mindless drug addicts and the mentally ill from the streets?

8 posted on 11/15/2023 10:50:16 AM PST by pierrem15 ("Massacrez-les, car le seigneur connait les siens" )
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To: SeekAndFind

When was the last time that the size and scope of the government was substantively limited?

1776?


9 posted on 11/15/2023 10:51:03 AM PST by Freest Republican (This space for rent)
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To: SeekAndFind
Unfortunately, libertarianism comes with a minimum IQ requirement.

Most of today's Americans require clear, simple guidelines to function effectively in society. Do-it-yourself morality is a disaster when applied to people who lack critical thinking skills. Our cities and universities are a living testament to that.

10 posted on 11/15/2023 10:59:49 AM PST by Mr. Jeeves ([CTRL]-[GALT]-[DELETE])
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To: Wuli

I partially agree with what you are saying but Libertarianism CAN be overwhelmingly implemented with great success.

It seems that you are only talking about trade and defense. These are the areas where it would matter what the rest of the world does. Perhaps in those areas we would have to use a hybrid model that relied on Libertarian principals but had the flexibility to react to non-Libertarian adversaries.

What about internal matters like fiscal and social programs? How much better off would the US be if it never implemented the Federal Reserve, got off the gold standard, implemented Social Security, fought the war on poverty, etc...

Getting off the gold standard and ceding fiscal control to the Fed CREATES war. If the US had to convince it’s citizens to buy war bonds in order to launch new wars, we would only be able to engage in wars of necessity and we would finish the ones that we start. No more half assed, regime change wars of convenience.

It is about fixing the things we can fully control and using good Libertarian principals on the things we cannot fully control.


11 posted on 11/15/2023 11:09:14 AM PST by nitzy (I wonder if the telescreens in 1984 were first called "free Obamascreens")
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To: SeekAndFind

John Hospers was the Libertarian presidential candidate in 1972.


12 posted on 11/15/2023 11:10:38 AM PST by Pirate Ragnar (Be calm and act.)
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To: Mr. Jeeves

Libertarians have cost republicans a handful of senate seats, particularly in the northwest. I wouldn’t vote for one unless Nikki Haley were the nominee. Sometimes the republicans need to lose.

Bill Maher once called himself a libertarian-crapola. RFK Jr. appeals to them but make no mistake-they’ll give an inch.

Think Mancin the ‘moderate’. 88% of his votes are with Biden. In the meantime our ‘moderates’ vote 50%+ with the rats.

The safest place for one would be Rand as Trump’s VP-said its before. That would be high(er) profile while the rest of the public could learn something.


13 posted on 11/15/2023 11:10:53 AM PST by DIRTYSECRET
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To: SeekAndFind

Libertarianism has no game-plan to deal with radical, violent marxists. Libertarianism use to appeal to me... then I grew up and began living in the real world where there are boogey men and crazies who won’t leave you alone, even if you want to be.


14 posted on 11/15/2023 11:17:42 AM PST by Levy78 (Reject modernity, embrace tradition. )
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To: nitzy

Not practical, not feasible in this world.

To me pure Libertarianism is “wouldn’t it be nice if” pie in the sky Utopia. Cannot exist.


15 posted on 11/15/2023 11:32:37 AM PST by Wuli ( ,)
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To: nitzy
I am not a Libertarian politically, but I am very much a libertarian in practice.

Libertarianism is a necessity in a prosperous society even if just for purely practical reasons. I have never used drugs and rarely consume alcohol, but I consider myself a libertarian in these matters for the simple reason that it is highly impractical for a government to control what its citizens ingest into their own bodies. The political principle that says people should be allowed to get strung out on heroin is the same one that says nobody should ever be forced by the government to get a COVID “vaccine” for any reason.

And lest anyone suggest I’m perfectly fine with strung-out heroin addicts all over the streets of my town … I also believe drug abuse would be practically non-existent in a truly libertarian system of governance where people are forced to deal with the consequences of their own actions.

16 posted on 11/15/2023 11:36:56 AM PST by Alberta's Child (If something in government doesn’t make sense, you can be sure it makes dollars.)
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To: pierrem15

“So the big question is, How do we get rid of this monstrosity?”

Only Regime Change ends this “monstrosity”.

Think: The Fall of Rome

And it would be such an immense world event that the resulting “Dark Age” would make the previous Dark Age look like the Renaissance.

After Ochlocracy comes the benevolent dictator that makes the trains run on time. Caesar. The end of the Republic.


17 posted on 11/15/2023 11:51:48 AM PST by Mariner (War Criminal #18)
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To: Alberta's Child

18 posted on 11/15/2023 11:54:51 AM PST by Dick Bachert
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To: Wuli

(l)ibertarianism is separate and distinct from Libertarianism.


19 posted on 11/15/2023 11:55:40 AM PST by Mariner (War Criminal #18)
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To: thegagline; Mariner; All

The people who want to rule over others will always defeat the people who just want to be left alone.

Either you rule, or you will be ruled. There is no third option.


20 posted on 11/15/2023 11:58:58 AM PST by Reverend Wright ( Everything touched by progressives, dies !)
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