Am I a libertarian?
By Thoreau
So, with Rand Paul doing his best to destroy the last tiny little scrap of public respect that libertarianism may have once thought it could pretend to have, I have to join Jim in evaluating my label. We could start by asking what my vision of utopia is, since libertarianism as a philosophy certainly has a lot of ideals and moral imperatives. However, my utopia is a mix of libertarianism, marxism, the Gospels, and sci-fi. The first and last items put me firmly in the libertarian camp, and the 2 middle ones make me anathema. Moreover, utopia isn’t on the menu. So let’s move on.
In an ever-so-slightly less utopian vein, one that at least involves an examination of priorities, one could ask what I would do if I were proclaimed King in a world with real people and real resource constraints. In that world, I would legalize all drugs, drastically slash the budgets for the military, the intelligence community, and homeland security, close all US military bases on foreign soil, implement most of the ACLU’s agenda, and end all agriculture subsidies. All of these things would be consistent with libertarianism but also very consistent with the left. Where I would part from the left is that I would not allocate the savings towards any new social programs. I’d just pay off the debt. Partly out of libertarian sympathies, but also partly because I believe very strongly in arithmetic (if it doesn’t add up, it doesn’t add up), and partly because my mother and grandparents (all of them Democrats) instilled very cautious fiscal habits in me. (Perhaps too cautious. In the midst of this market slump I’m only now getting ready to buy low, having spent the past 2 years building the “in case I get fired and need to live off savings for a year” fund.)
I know, I know, lots of people have explained why a certain level of public debt is OK and even healthy, but I can’t shake the feeling that it is always better to not have debt. Here I go anti-intellectual and ignore the fancy macroeconomic arguments and just go with my gut, in true Colbert fashion. Did you know that there are more nerve endings in the gut than there are in the brain? I know this because Colbert said it once.
Also, I am a state employee (not very libertarian) but also a hypocrite (so obviously a libertarian!). 
On economics and social spending, how libertarian am I, really? Well, on regulation of small business I still consider myself very libertarian. In fact, I appreciate points made very often by left-libertarians (and even litigated by the Institute for Justice) about how regulations frequently have a smaller effect on big businesses than small upstarts. However, I have just enough lefty sympathy, combined with some libertarian spirit of distrusting the big and powerful, to suspect that very large corporations are not simply bigger versions of small businesses, but may in fact have a different qualitative character. They are institutions, and part of The Man. I’m not sure that I really trust the government to do a good job of keeping the big corporations on a leash (in fact, I suspect that the government and the biggest corporations are one and the same) but I won’t cry tears for the poor oppressed CEO either. So, I’m agnostic on most regulation of big business, OK with environmental regulation (your right to exercise your property rights ends when your pollution reaches my property line), and sympathetic to small business. Hardly left, but the purer libertarians are grinding their axes for sure.
On social issues, well, Hayek had nice things to safety nets, and I agree. However, before we assume that a problem can be made better by the government, I want to look at what the government is doing to make the problem worse. Don’t tell me that the government is going to solve social, economic, and racial problems when it’s busy using the drug war as a pretext to stop and search every young black man in line of sight of a cop. Don’t tell me that a government owned and operated by the wealthy is here to save the poor. So I have a deeply cynical view of social programs because I see them as bandaids on top of a gushing wound of oppression. It isn’t about whether I support or oppose the programs, it’s that I see far bigger issues. We can postpone the libertarian debate on the morality of taxing people to fund social programs for the poor until we have addressed the incredibly expensive and unlibertarian prison-industrial complex and lifted barriers to entrepreneurship in poor areas.
Oh, I think you should have the right to own a handgun and carry it with you most places. I could, however, get behind the notion that no honest man needs more than six bullets, provided that when this is codified into law we also require cops to behave like honest men and carry only six shooters. Also, I often say only half-jokingly that I’d be OK with gun control laws if they only applied to men; women could own and carry whatever they want. Strangely, feminists don’t seem too interested in that proposal. I tried to disarm the patriarchy and all I got was this lousy lecture on privilege. Well, I tried. Maybe a law that you can only carry a handgun in public if it’s in a purse? This could lead to men quoting Seinfeld and explaining that it isn’t really a purse, just a European carryall.
So, add it all up and I’m somewhere between libertarian and lefty, I think. I’m sure that commenters from both of those factions will have fun disavowing me, while lecturing me on how evil I am for joining with the other side.
Comment by Walt —
May 30, 2010 @ 1:42 pm
I think this is just as well, Thoreau. Certainly there a lot of good ideas that can plausibly be described as “libertarian”, but not only has the label been taken over by assholes, but that certain other parts of the libertarian philosophy attract the assholes because they are assholes.
Comment by dhex —
May 30, 2010 @ 2:56 pm
you care too much what people think of you. fer rilla.
then again, i remember the election years, and about the only thing the blueists didn’t accuse you of was the jfk assassination.
Comment by Thoreau —
May 30, 2010 @ 3:15 pm
It’s not just about what people think. It’s about whether the label is accurate. And after reviewing my various stances, both on specific issues and general philosophy, I conclude that I am a mix of libertarian and lefty, so libertarian is an accurate label for me, but not the only accurate label for me.
Comment by Neil W —
May 30, 2010 @ 3:28 pm
Well, if we must have a king*, and it appears we must, a libertarian king would at least be interesting. An autocrat who wishes to maximise liberty of the people would have to watch themself very carefully (and quite probably restrict their own freedom pretty savagely)
* Or in my case a Queen
Comment by fella —
May 30, 2010 @ 4:04 pm
Good lord, have to take a bath. My politics and Thoreau’s are entirely too similar. Right down to the observation that huge corporations are qualitatively different, and begin assuming (non-libertarian) qualities of government, even before noticing that there is no clear distinction between them and government much of the time.
The major policy difference I have is that, come the revolution, I’ll make all law enforcement officers wear clown uniforms.
Comment by dhex —
May 30, 2010 @ 6:02 pm
t’dawg, i’m referring mostly to the whole “someone will be mad at me” end of your posts. i know it’s your thing, but i’d presume that someone will eventually say ridiculous shit to you on the regular and just get on with it.
anyway, we are what we are and labels are only helpful if they communicate anything useful to anyone else. so in your case, left-libertarian (a la roderick long, etc) seems pretty ok.
the recent resurgence of the label libertarian, mostly misapplied, is certainly a bit odd.
Comment by peter john —
May 30, 2010 @ 8:29 pm
There needs to be national debt for the economy to work properly. A nation’s economy does not work the same way as a person’s economy so the same rules do not apply.
Comment by Jake Boone —
May 30, 2010 @ 8:52 pm
“There needs to be national debt for the economy to work properly.”
[Citation needed]
Comment by TGGP —
May 30, 2010 @ 9:03 pm
If you don’t trust the government, how about direct action? Sheldon Richman argues that sort of thing actually was effective before the CRA. Murray Rothbard actually favored the “homesteading” of nominally private institutions which receive substantial amounts of state support.
Comment by Jordan Cartilla —
May 30, 2010 @ 11:16 pm
The “left” is against farm subsidies? When did that happen? Plenty of leftists seem to love the idea as a means to protect some bucolic notion of the past.
Comment by Tom Jackson —
May 30, 2010 @ 11:39 pm
I have run in to the same problem Thoreau writes about here. I don’t want to be blamed for every foolish opinion expressed somewhere by a self-described libertarian. I also reserve the right to think for myself without being accused of apostasy by an ideologue who wants to establish he is more libertarian than I am. So often I describe myself as a “left libertarian” or “more of a libertarian than anything else,” even though by any reasonable standard, I’m entitled to describe myself as a libertarian.
I’m struck by the fact, though, that Thoreau lists a long series of libertarian stances that he endorses, then worries that he isn’t a real libertarian — all because he disagrees with a Rand Paul stance that many libertarians disagree with. (See http://www.aolnews.com/nation/article/rand-pauls-position-on-civil-rights-too-hot-even-for-liberatarian-stalwarts/19485872). If Thoreau and Rand Paul disagree on a particular point, well, so what?
Comment by Thoreau —
May 30, 2010 @ 11:49 pm
Although most of the things that I said are libertarian, I had some glaring omissions. Not a word on taxes and not a word in defense of the wealthy. And not a word on public education or social security. In some of those issues I have little to day and in some I have unlibertarian things to say. if libertarians must be pure then I am not. If a libertarian only has to be closer to libertarianism than anything else then I am one.
Comment by Thoreau —
May 30, 2010 @ 11:49 pm
Although most of the things that I said are libertarian, I had some glaring omissions. Not a word on taxes and not a word in defense of the wealthy. And not a word on public education or social security. In some of those issues I have little to day and in some I have unlibertarian things to say. if libertarians must be pure then I am not. If a libertarian only has to be closer to libertarianism than anything else then I am one.
Comment by Andy —
May 31, 2010 @ 1:13 am
Just keep thinking, brother.
Also, the Gulf. Thank you.
Comment by Whammer —
May 31, 2010 @ 1:28 am
I thought this was a fairly interesting test to take:
http://www.politicalcompass.org/
I got a score in the (-3,-4) range, which is left-libertarian, and puts me near Nelson Mandela and the Dali Lama, apparently.
Comment by Neil W —
May 31, 2010 @ 3:47 am
There needs to be national debt for the economy to work properly.
There needs to be a national debt for the economy to work as it currently does. Without government securities as a safe place to invest money, people* with money they cannot afford to lose would demand stronger safeguards and/or a greater return on their money, whilst the influx into other investments would drive up the costs.
(Presumably treasury bills to cover short term mistimings between spending and income would still be available)
* Meaning large institutions
Comment by chris y —
May 31, 2010 @ 6:50 am
Whammer @15: Yes, I always end up in the bottom left hand corner of tests like that (-8/-7 on that one). But I have a perfectly coherent outlook on life – I’m old enough to remember when the label ‘libertarian’ was by default applied to people on the left, before it was hijacked by the corporate feudalists. It just feels like our existence is being denied in the mainstream debate. Well, their loss.
Comment by mpowell —
May 31, 2010 @ 10:53 am
We don’t need debt to issue bonds. Just have the government create a $1T sovereign wealth fund and issue $1T in bonds at the same time. The government is better able to deal with the ups and downs of the market than individuals looking for low risk investments.
And less debt would definitely be a good thing. I am agree with cyclical spending and I also agree in theory that national debt is not a problem. The difficulty is, what happens if the market disagrees? If people refuse to buy bonds, it can create a self-fulfilling prophecy of debt load and interest rates spiraling out of control. I think the government has the means to bring such a beast under control, but the economic disruption would be enormous. It’s probably lower risk to hold significantly less total debt.
Comment by Don SinFalta —
May 31, 2010 @ 11:07 am
I am a person who after reading Ayn Rand in college have always thought of libertarians as hopelessly naive (even though right in principle about many things). I once thought I occupied the center left, but I now consider myself a Chomskyite leftist radical. I’ve learned a lot in the last decade about the essential corruption of many institutions (at least in the Anglophone countries) that I previously thought were only somewhat flawed. Speaking from that perspective, I couldn’t find much fault with the views you put forward. I’d probably lean a bit more toward social safety nets and redistributionist egalitarianism in my utopia than you do in yours (while as a serial entrepreneur I’d want to preserve the best part of US capitalism, small business and the robust startup culture we have). But of course a real government, as you point out, really is just The Man, oppressing the powerless for the benefit of the plutocracy.
Comment by Joshua Holmes —
May 31, 2010 @ 11:39 am
I didn’t see anything in this post that wasn’t plumb-line libertarianism.
Comment by Thoreau —
May 31, 2010 @ 11:40 am
Joshua-
What about all the omissions in the post?
Comment by Kolohe —
May 31, 2010 @ 12:57 pm
What about all the omissions in the post?
There *was* a distinct lack of colloidal silver. And Druids.
Comment by matthew h —
May 31, 2010 @ 4:08 pm
a mix of libertarianism, marxism, the Gospels, and sci-fi.
That’s called the Book of Revelations, my friend.
Comment by Professor Coldheart —
May 31, 2010 @ 10:25 pm
Omit louder next time!
Comment by JChief —
June 1, 2010 @ 9:50 am
T:
I think you give yourself plenty of wiggle room using the small “l” instead of the BIG “L”.
Small “l” can mean pretty much anything. You appear to be quite left of the “l”. There are nuts that are right of the “l”, like yours truly.
For example, if I were to give any credence towards the ACLU, I would demand that they defend the second Amendment with as much vigor as they do for so-called “civil rights” and “social justice”. To me, they are just socialist running-dogs very much like ACORN.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
June 1, 2010 @ 11:11 am
You did mention taxes and poor oppressed CEOs, but you didn’t argue against the right to try to become or to be wealthy.
A scientist should know that there’s purity and there’s purity.
As I’ve said before, I’ve yet to meet a libertarian on this planet who didn’t have an issue that comes up every full moon and makes them howl for government intervention.
You do realize you’re simply arguing that you’re not a paleocon, right? This is something everyone on the planet who’s not shilling for Team Blue already knows.
(However, as a Cali boy, you were obligated to mention ferrets. 10 points off.)