Skip to main content

For Waldo, and others who have been waiting for this: Planetary Jim on what constitutes a Libertarian

I think this is why I've finally decided to join the Boston Tea Party and work through that organization as the national vehicle for Libertarian politics.

Planetary Jim put this up at the BTP site, and because I can't figure out where I'd cut it, I'm going to steal the whole damn thing.

I don't think [and this is addressed both to Waldo and my friends in the Delaware blogosphere] that I have ever read a piece of why my particular brand of Libertarianism is not conservative or Republican lite:

I think libertarians must come out directly, staunchly, entirely, and frequently against racism, sexism, gay bashing, immigrant bashing, and all the other tawdry aspects of the so-called conservative movement. I think we have to stand up and say that if you are a racist, you are not a libertarian, if you are a sexist, you are not a libertarian, if you are against equal freedom for gays, the transgendered, the polyamorous, you are not a libertarian, if you discriminate against people because of their choice of religion, you are not a libertarian, if you think people from other countries should be rejected because of their choices in clothing, culture, religion, or behavior, you are not a libertarian.

I don't mind saying that I can work with conservatives on common causes. I don't mind saying that I have met, gotten to know, and worked with some racists. I am exceedingly uncomfortable with people who are racist, sexist, religious bigots, anti-immigrant, xenophobic, or homophobic. But I can work while uncomfortable, whether it is sawing a tree branch while forty feet in the air, eating goat eyeball stew because I was in Yemen and it was "what's for dinner," or finishing a writing project on time with a 54-hour "all nighter." I can be uncomfortable and get the job done. And if finding extremely bizarre people and working with them is the only way to obtain smaller government and more freedom, now, I'm willing to do it.

But I won't ever make the mistake of considering conservatives to be libertarians. They are not. They can talk a game about freedom for white people, they can make a pretense about constitutional government for the Christians, and they can mount a patrol against swarthy-complected persons coming across the border and claim it is all about property rights for ranchers along the border, but I don't have to choose to believe it.

Yes, sure, get their help against an income tax. Work with weird skinhead neo-Nazis against mandatory helmet laws. Make common cause against the government where it is essential, but don't pretend it is okay that they are racist, don't call them libertarians if they are former government prosecutors and former CIA agents, and don't lose sight of your principles.

I like some of the things that Pat Buchanan says and writes, but he's not a libertarian and he never will be. I don't think he would agree to the non-aggression oath if he were asked. And I don't mind. Pat can be Pat and still fight against corporate welfare.

There is a difference between working with people on some issue and claiming them as your own. Like Bob Barr's eulogy for Jesse Helms, one might choose to recognise some singular legislative achievement without, as Barr chose to do, extolling the virtue of his entire segregationist, racist career. An arm's length political deal is probably a crappy deal, and if it violates any principles it ought to be avoided. But dealing with someone in a principled way at arm's length does not make them bosom buddies.

If someone claims to be a libertarian, as Sonny Landham did, and calls for genocide against the Arab peoples of the world, he needs to be called a racist, as Todd Barnett called him, and set aside. Landham cannot be a libertarian. You can put pig on a lipstick but that doesn't make it attractive. (And the pig is going to eat the lipstick. Seriously.)

If someone is ready to sell the Wiccans down the river, as Bob Barr did in his pogrom against Wiccan chaplains, we have to stand up and say, "you aren't a libertarian, Bob Barr."

If someone sells the non-Christians, or the gays, or the immigrants, down the river and refuses to acknowledge their freedoms under the Constitution, if that's the quality of liberty under the Constitution Party, we have to say, "You are not a libertarian, Chuck."

For exactly the same reason we cannot compromise on the war on drugs, we cannot compromise on the wars overseas, we cannot compromise on the corrupt allocation of defense contracts, we cannot compromise on any of our principles. We have to stand for freedom for everyone, all the time.

We cannot be a part of loading people on the box cars to the death camps. Ever.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

A Libertarian Martin Luther King Jr. Day post

In which we travel into interesting waters . . . (for a fairly long trip, so be prepared) Dr. King's 1968 book, Where do we go from here:  chaos or community? , is profound in that it criticizes anti-poverty programs for their piecemeal approach, as John Schlosberg of the Center for a Stateless Society  [C4SS] observes: King noted that the antipoverty programs of the time “proceeded from a premise that poverty is a consequence of multiple evils,” with separate programs each dedicated to individual issues such as education and housing. Though in his view “none of these remedies in itself is unsound,” they “all have a fatal disadvantage” of being “piecemeal,” with their implementation having “fluctuated at the whims of legislative bodies” or been “entangled in bureaucratic stalling.”   The result is that “fragmentary and spasmodic reforms have failed to reach down to the profoundest needs of the poor.” Such single-issue approaches also have “another common failing — ...

More of This, Please

Or perhaps I should say, "Less of this one, please." Or how about just, "None of them. Ever again. Please....For the Love of God." Sunshine State Poll: Grayson In Trouble The latest Sunshine State/VSS poll shows controversial Democratic incumbent Alan Grayson trailing former state Senator Dan Webster by seven points, 43 percent to 36 percent. A majority of respondents -- 51 percent -- disapprove of the job that Grayson is doing. Independents have an unfavorable view of him as well, by a 36/47 margin. Grayson has ignored the conventional wisdom that a freshman should be a quiet member who carefully tends to the home fires. The latest controversy involves his " Taliban Dan " advertisement, where he explicitly compares his opponent to the Taliban, and shows a clip of Webster paraphrasing Ephesians 5:22 -- "wives, submit to your husbands." An unedited version of the clip shows that Webster was actually suggesting that husba...

A reply to Salon's R. J. Eskrow, and his 11 stupid questions about Libertarians

Posts here have been in short supply as I have been living life and trying to get a campaign off the ground. But "11 questions to see if Libertarians are hypocrites" by R. J. Eskrow, picked up at Salon , was just so freaking lame that I spent half an hour answering them. In the end (but I'll leave it to your judgment), it is not that Libertarians or Libertarian theory looks hypocritical, but that the best that can be said for Mr. Eskrow is that he doesn't have the faintest clue what he's talking about. That's ok, because even ill-informed attacks by people like this make an important point:  Libertarian ideas (as opposed to Conservative ideas, which are completely different) are making a comeback as the dynamic counterpoint to "politics as usual," and so every hack you can imagine must be dragged out to refute them. Ergo:  Mr. Eskrow's 11 questions, with answers: 1.       Are unions, political parties, elections, and ...