I understand the marketing impulse behind kos' idea of the
Libertarian Democrat; it's a desire to find a new term to take the place of that battered and maligned word, Liberal.
But the facts, as they say, have a well known liberal bias. Have some facts:
LIBERTARIANISM AND LIBERALISM
Libertarianism is the red-headed stepchild of this thing called Liberalism. Though the current definition seems to be under ideological attack on Wikipedia by someone who wants to muddy the history, here's what it used to say:
Liberalism is a political current embracing several historical and present-day ideologies that claim defense of individual liberty as the purpose of government. It typically favors the right to dissent from orthodox tenets or established authorities in political or religious matters. In this respect, it is sometimes held in contrast to conservatism. Since liberalism also focuses on the ability of individuals to structure their own society, it is almost always opposed to totalitarianism, and often to collectivist ideologies, particularly communism.
The word "liberal" derives from the Latin "liber" ("free") and liberals of all stripes tend to view themselves as friends of freedom, particularly freedom from the shackles of tradition. The origins of liberalism in the Enlightenment era contrasted this philosophy to feudalism and mercantilism. Later, as more radical philosophies articulated their thoughts in the course of the French Revolution and through the nineteenth century, liberalism equally defined itself in contrast to socialism and communism, although some adherents of liberalism sympathize with some of the aims and methods of social democracy.
Libertarianism properly understood is a remnant of the pre-Industrial Age Liberalism of the 19th century. The split occurred because:
With the beginning of the 20th century, the conflict between dignity and property became even more acute. Industrialization produced vast fortunes, and a great increase in the potential standard of living. It also produced vast misery and poverty, as well as powerful engines of war. While in the late 19th century industrial nations had been able to seize land and materials from less technologically advanced and politically organized nations (during the age of imperialism), by the early 20th century the globe had been already carved up, and, in order to expand, industrial nations would have to turn on each other. World War I soon began.
In 1911, L.T. Hobhouse published Liberalism [1], which, while it summarized the liberalism of the 19th century, also included qualified acceptance of both government intervention in the economy, and the collective right to equality in dealings, what he called "just consent", which included trade unions.
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The Great Depression of the 1930s shook public faith in laissez-faire capitalism and "the profit motive", as well as the ability of unregulated markets to produce prosperity. Liberalism was to make a third dramatic transformation: the creation of a more elaborate state apparatus was argued for as the bulwark of individual liberty and the continuation of capitalism without resorting to dictatorship.
WHITHER LIBERTARIANISM?
This is where modern libertarianism differs from liberalism. In a tangentally related post over at
Mark Kleiman's bog, Jonathon Zasloff explains it in simple terms:
There is such a thing as adult libertarianism -- a philosophy that candidly acknowledges the severe deprivation that will occur in the severe diminution of government, and advocates it nevertheless.
Libertarianism has the fundamental problem of providing no answer to other power bases beyond government, especially multinational corporations. In an astonishingly naive manner -- and in the face of all contrary evidence --libertarianism counts far too much on the magic hand of the marketplace to solve the problem of runaway capitalism. Well, better thinkers have thought that approach through:
Key thinkers in this transition were John Dewey, John Maynard Keynes and in the political realm Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt. But unlike previous transformations, this one did not subsume all other strains of liberalism. Many "liberals" held to the 19th century version of liberalism, and believed that the Depression and Second World War were individual events, which, once passed, did not justify continuing intervention by the state. An example of this line of thinking is Hayek whose work The Road to Serfdom remains influential.
In Italy and Germany, nationalist governments arose that linked corporate capitalism to the state, rather than to individual liberty, and promoted the idea that conquest and national superiority would give these nations a rightful "place in the sun". The totalitarian states argued that democracy was weak and incapable of decisive action, and that only a strong leader could impose the kind of discipline that was necessary.
The rise of totalitarianism became a lens for liberal thought. The majority of liberals began analyzing their own beliefs and principles to find out where they had gone wrong. Eventually, they came to the conclusion that totalitarianism rose because people in a degraded condition turn towards dictatorships for solutions. From this, it was argued that the state had a duty to protect the economic well being of its citizens. As Isaiah Berlin put it, "Freedom for the wolves means death for the sheep."
They also argued that rationality of governance required the government acting as a balancing force in economics, as shown by the recently developed theory of Keynesianism. It became necessary to "save capitalism from itself", and for free nations to accept the burdens of defending democracy and liberty with force if need be.
LIBERTARIANISM AND CONSERVATISM
We also can't talk about libertarianism today without talking about Conservatism, which has usurped many of libertarian's tenets. But surprise surprise -- conservatism does not mean what conservatives say it means. It does not mean the libertarian goals of smaller government and more freedom. And just because they say it doesn't make it so.
Here's the wikipedia's
definition:
Conservatism is a philosophy defined by Edmund Burke as "a disposition to preserve, and an ability to improve".[1] The term derives from conserve; from Latin conservare, to keep, guard, observe. Classical conservatism does not readily avail itself to the ideology of objectives. It is a philosophy primarily concerned with means over ends. To a conservative, the goal of change is less important than the insistence that change be effected with a respect for the rule of law and traditions of society.
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To Burke, the proper formulation of government came not from abstractions such as "Reason," but from time-honoured development of the state and of other important societal institutions such as the family and the Church.
Less charitable, but to my mind more accurate, is this definition by
Philip Agre:
Liberals in the United States have been losing political debates to conservatives for a quarter century. In order to start winning again, liberals must answer two simple questions: what is conservatism, and what is wrong with it? As it happens, the answers to these questions are also simple:
Q: What is conservatism?
A: Conservatism is the domination of society by an aristocracy.
Q: What is wrong with conservatism?
A: Conservatism is incompatible with democracy, prosperity, and civilization in general. It is a destructive system of inequality and prejudice that is founded on deception and has no place in the modern world.
These ideas are not new. Indeed they were common sense until recently. Nowadays, though, most of the people who call themselves "conservatives" have little notion of what conservatism even is. They have been deceived by one of the great public relations campaigns of human history. Only by analyzing this deception will it become possible to revive democracy in the United States."
In other words, conservatism is a philosophy that will use whatever ends are required to achieve its means, not the other way around. The smaller government and more freedom of libertarianism is merely an end that conservatives use to convince the broader society to give them the means to control society in the first place. Sounds crazy I know, but you can believe me or your lying eyes -- are the conservatives in power today seeking smaller government and more freedom? Or more control over the government and your freedom? 'Nuff said.
We need to understand that the current state of affairs under conservatism is a feature, not a bug. Because no matter what movement conservatives say they believe, the core of conservatism is an authoritarianism based upon conserving power into the hands of those that already have it, namely the government, the church, corporations and the rich. Again, the proof is hiding in plain sight -- the Bush administration is the first honestly conservative government we've had here since the other George ran the place, before the American Revolution.
In modern times, at least Reagan and Bush I had the good sense to hide this truth about conservatism behind libertarian window dressing. But our Wizard of Oz moment is here -- it's time to pull the curtain back and expose conservativism for what it truly is. Unfortunately we can't do that until we have gotten our own act together, and know who we are and what we stand for.
LIBERTARIANISM AND LIBERALS
My mom used to call agnostics "chicken atheists." Don't mean to offend, but I think all this talk about libertarianism this and that is "chicken liberalism." We're doing it because the right has spent a lot of time and money making the word liberal so onerous that we avoid it. At yk06, not one panelist I heard would call themselves a liberal. Why? IMHO it's because we have all internalized the rightwing framing of the word, with the result that we are now too chicken to call ourselves it anymore.
But at the risk of
repeating myself, we will always be called liberal by the opposition and so it is time to reclaim the word. Running from it just makes us look chickenshit about what we truly believe in.
I suspect we're in a phase similar to what the Wikipedia highlights (or used to), namely that the majority of liberals are analyzing their own beliefs and principles to find out where we have gone wrong. This is a healthy impulse, and will make us stronger once we arrive at a conclusion we can all buy into.
But denial gets us nowhere, and we'll continue to go astray if we keep running from our history as LIBERALS, with a philosophy grounded in LIBERALISM, that same philosophy that our Founding Fathers asserted as the basis for American LIBERAL DEMOCRACY.