Why I Am No Longer Libertarian
A Brief Personal Political History
Some, after reading this, will dispute the claim in the headline; this will entirely depend on how broadly they define libertarian. Indeed, if one is merely using it as a synonym for liberalism in the broad sense, then I am libertarian. But I used to be libertarian in the strictest, most Rothbardian sense of the term.
For most of my teen/adult life, I’ve been some form of libertarian, grounding all political conclusions in the non-aggression principle. It began around age 13 with Ayn Rand and Objectivism, transitioning to anarcho-capitalism in my mid-20s.
(Briefly, for those that do not know; the non-aggression principle asserts that the use of coercion, defined as physical force, is only justified in self-defense. The initiation of force is verboten, but retaliatory force, when proportional to the aggression occurring, is justified, and this is true for all individuals, including ones representing the government. Libertarians believe that this is the fundamental moral principle that all politics should follow from.)
Around age 30, I more or less lost interest in politics. I continued to be interested in philosophy and science, expanding my knowledge sometimes based on whim, but often with the intent of better understanding the world and my appropriate role in it. In particular, I started diving into Taoism, Buddhism, and Stoicism, all of which attempt to address this fundamental question in their own way.
Around the time of the 2016 election, I could tell something was changing in my political worldview. Being the diehard ancap that I was, I would never sully myself with voting in previous elections. Voting is aggression. It’s NAP-violation writ large. It’s supporting a system I believed at its core to be evil and antithetical to human well-being.
Something about the energy surrounding the Gary Johnson campaign captured me though. It really felt like a libertarian moment was happening. This was the first crack at my ancap pessimism; maybe the system could work, if the people wanted it to and voted accordingly. Maybe not all is lost with this republican experiment we call America.
I didn’t get officially involved in the Libertarian Party or his campaign, but I did encourage my friends to vote for him, and voted for him in the first election I ever voted in.
Soon after that, I moved to Texas. I had already decided I wanted to be more involved in the Libertarian Party before I moved but figured it would make sense to wait until I was in my new state. I looked up local libertarian events and found a meeting for the Libertarian Party of Bexar County.
Things escalated from there fairly quickly, with me going from “guy who showed up to a meeting”, to a regular, to a regular volunteer, to county secretary, and eventually to county chair and being a member of the state-level executive committee. For most of this time, I would say the experiences I had were enriching and I really felt like I was working with good people to achieve good for the world.
This is where the story takes a turn. A group called the Mises Caucus had formed and was heavily recruiting. Led more or less by Dave Smith, they wanted to take back the Libertarian Party from the likes of the current leadership and were disgusted at candidates they saw as milquetoast Republican rejects. They wanted a radical Libertarian Party.
Initially, I was intrigued. I had my issues with Bill Weld, particularly with his vouching for Hillary Clinton when he was running against her and his past ties with defense contractors. I also hadn’t yet let go of my ancap radicalism; when asked whether I thought we needed a government at all, I would tell people “Let’s worry about that when we get to that point”. Admittedly a bit of a dodge to the question grounded in my own uncertainty about what I thought on the matter.
As their influence and numbers grew, I sensed something off about them. Over time, they made it harder and harder to ignore their far-right inclinations and their comfort with people in the (actual) alt-right, even borrowing vocabulary from neoreactionaries and having such people as regular podcast guests. Many of them seemed very attracted to Hoppe, someone I initially had heard of but didn’t know much about other than he didn’t like democracy.
This situation finally put me in a position where I had to resolve something. I was living something of a political split-life. One side of me was the diehard ancap who hated the government, hated the military, and thought voting was a waste of time. The Mises Caucus was giving me a direct window into exactly where that leads, and I did not like what I was seeing. Over a long enough period of time, my conscience will always win over my principles.
The other side of me, the one that had been growing over time, did not hate the government or the military as such, even if he hated many of the things they do. He was growing increasingly educated on the subject of liberal institutions and started to admire them and see them as important and necessary. In particular, he was open to democracy as a tool for achieving compromise and dialogue because he believed his own point of view was just his opinion, one among many, and that he can’t be absolutely sure he has the right opinion on every issue or problem.
That side of me is just me now. The only political label I wear now is liberal. So consider this piece the final nail in the coffin for “Libertarian Shawn”. He has been defeated by optimism, liberalism, and a genuine love for the foundational institutions and values of the United States of America.
For those curious about what this means about my political views from a policy standpoint, I’m honestly still kind of figuring that out. I can tell you some areas that I do think I now deviate from libertarianism on, though:
Democracy is good and I’m not right about everything.
Environmental regulation. I don’t think we can simply rely on “if you’re caught, you have to pay restitution”. No amount of restitution will make you whole if you are dying of cancer from some pollutant in the water supply. I think it is acceptable to have sensible regulations in place to reduce the likelihood of such events occurring.
Government programs to help the poor are OK, provided that they don’t involve nationalizing or socializing an entire industry and avoid creating the welfare cliff problem. Such programs should aim to keep people afloat enough to be able to make their situation better, but not so much that they aren’t hungry for something better, except in those cases where someone literally will never be able to support themselves.
International alliances, including defensive ones, are necessary and are only going to grow over time. The more countries that exist within a pact of civilized, modern nation-states, the better. This also means I'm fine with sending some money to Ukraine in order to defend the free world more broadly.
And for a quick list of things where I don’t expect to deviate from libertarianism any time soon:
Freedom of speech is very very very important. Where dialogue ends, violence begins.
Capitalism is indisputably good. Policy should inhibit capitalism as little as possible. People should be free to trade and immigrate across borders.
All drugs should be legal. All sexual activity between consenting adults should be legal, including prostitution.
Wars of aggression are never OK, and neither is nation-building or funding coups.
There are entirely too many unnecessary laws over trivial nonsense that need to go. We don’t need to license hair stylists or regulate what color someone is allowed to paint his shed. People shouldn’t need a license to own a dog.
The justice system needs some serious reforms, particularly when it comes to how incentives line up. Nobody should be considered more successful at their job based on how many people get arrested or how many get convicted.
If you liked this piece, you might like my prior pieces The Classical Liberal/Libertarian Divide and The Populist Ethos. They both provide a look into some of the thoughts and ideas that have led me here.