Has libertarianism ‘disappeared’ from our political aviary?
Daniel McCarthy has written a provocative column in the new issue of The Spectator, arguing that libertarianism has “disappeared” from our political aviary and that libertarians find themselves besieged by young socialists on the left, and, on the right, by right-wingers who invoke Theodore Roosevelt or other populists.
One need not agree or even sympathize with libertarian philosophy to find all this surprising. Free markets had triumphed by the end of the 20th century, with even Democrats such as Bill Clinton and British Labour party leaders such as Tony Blair adopting pro-market attitudes, if not policies that satisfied libertarians. What had long been radical libertarian views on gay rights, recreational drug use, pornography and vices such as gambling have now become law throughout the western world. Free trade was a bipartisan orthodoxy for decades, and for more than 30 years Americans and Europeans got to reap the benefits — as libertarians believe them to be — of mass migration.
Strangest of all, even as the public’s faith in the institutions of government has plummeted this century, the popularity of anti-government ideology hasn’t risen. Instead, populists and socialists have reaped the harvest of discontent.
I can’t speak to McCarthy’s claims about libertarian institutions running on fumes or being irrelevant, but I’ve seen a few types of responses to his piece. The first response is that libertarians still have influence, as Robby Soave at Reason argues. In his rejoinder, however, I think Soave misrepresents the content and spirit of McCarthy’s piece:
In his column, McCarthy does not even particularly disagree that this is the case, conceding over and over again that on everything from the rise of the internet to the spread of gambling to the legalization of gay marriage, the U.S. has become freer; his actual contention is merely that this is bad, rather than good.
Not exactly. McCarthy is saying that libertarian ideas have had tremendous influence and profoundly shaped our political world, and that discontent with the results is now driving people to other ideas. I think the substance of McCarthy’s argument can be found in these two paragraphs. He writes:
In a world where government is widely understood to be paralytic or incompetent at best, libertarian skepticism doesn’t stand out. And instead of amusing a public secure in its faith in big government, the way a shocking new film or rock band might entertain a public with basically middle-class morals, libertarian anti-government ideology now only demoralizes Americans who don’t feel like they need any more disillusionment. This is why it’s not such a paradox that socialism and varieties of conservatism with a more positive view of government are enjoying a resurgence. They offer hope where there’s otherwise only despair.
And:
What was most attractive about the libertarian vision of freer markets wasn’t the possibility of getting rich or enjoying material abundance, as important as those things certainly were. It was the dream that such wealth would bring out the best in us all, creating a fundamentally more agreeable society. We have the wealth, but we don’t have the joy it was supposed to lead to.
The other libertarian response, various forms of which I’ve seen online, has been the objection that government has never really shrunk. Therefore, this argument goes, far from having triumphed, libertarians have been perpetual outsiders. I don’t think that’s quite true.
The worst argument against McCarthy is that he just doesn’t understand libertarianism. When I met McCarthy, more than 20 years ago, he was a libertarian of a paleo variety who bristled at my young fogey attempts to get him to acknowledge the “moral community” we shared. McCarthy has read more deeply in the libertarian tradition than most of us, and I don’t think he would ever disclaim its influence on his thought. But he can no longer be categorized as neatly. At an NRI event earlier this year, McCarthy debated me about whether William F Buckley Jr. was a libertarian or conservative. I took the latter side. But, if I were in the audience that night, I would have probably given the debate to McCarthy’s case for Buckley’s libertarianism on points.
McCarthy talks about the costs, in moral and financial terms, that have resulted from libertarian triumphs over laws against sports betting, marijuana, etc. But there are also geopolitical costs in the global integration of markets, as well as injuries to our sovereignty and self-government in certain security arrangements.