Draining the libertarian kiddie pool: Political effectiveness

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Written By Kevin Tuma

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Image courtesy of Aaron under CC BY-NC 2.0.

It’s time for libertarians to discuss political effectiveness. We are in need of some.

It’s clear that John Q. Citizen is tuning out. Even though we essentially have two libertarian parties—in the form of both the Libertarian and Constitution parties—we still can’t break the one-percent barrier in a presidential election. Both parties are ineffectual. Some people are ready to start another Third Party. There is a lot of talk that the platforms need to be changed, and nuanced…especially the Libertarian Party platform. This is possible, for if one thing is certain, it’s that the number of professed libertarians greatly outnumbers the number of people who actually vote ‘Libertarian’.

I would submit that the problem with the Libertarian and Constitution parties is not that they have bad platforms or ideas. The problem is that their priorities are spectacularly off base.

As a libertarian voter, I can use my own feelings as a barometer…and then consider just how much more turned off non-libertarian voters might be when reading their messages. Since libertarians are practically invisible in the mass media or political advertising, what libertarians yak about on the Internet is as good a yardstick of their political priorities as any.

Reading the rants, one gets the impression that some of the biggest libertarian issues of our day are the War On Drugs, sexual (im)morality, and the ‘War of Northern Aggression’.

For starters:

I really don’t care if gay people want to be married–or not—nor do I care whether townsfolk in middle America want to ban pornography, or not. I am a Christian, and I do believe in the Bible, but I do not care about these issues on a political level. I don’t think gay marriage is an issue to confront one way or the other when there are much bigger threats to our Liberty and way of life. Nor do I think banning Smut on a community level comprises an illicit use of aggression that breaches the sanctity of the highly vaunted “Non-Aggression Principle”. Nor do I care about Smut in general. (In truth, I don’t care much about the Non-Aggression Principle, either.)

Similarly, I don’t like the way the Civil War is taught in our school classrooms…but it’s been taught that way for 140 years, and it’s hardly the only Big Lie about American History to which schoolchildren are exposed. I think improving knowledge of real history is a laudable goal, but to prioritize it now implies that we are comfortable enough to engage in cultural fine tuning. Even if libertarians had sweeping numbers and political throwweight that they currently do not have, it would take at least a generation to reeducate the masses on our history. In consideration of that, it is small potatoes.

I don’t like the Federal ‘War On Drugs’, but I do not use illegal drugs, and I consider overzealous government prosecution of recreational drugs that ought to be legal to be as much a matter of annoyance as cause for alarm. Our marijuana laws are no more or less stupid and Draconian than our traffic laws, our zoning laws, our family divorce laws, or our pharmaceutical laws. Ranting about the need for drug legalization not only tends to needlessly separate libertarians from the mainstream, it also amounts to ‘fiddling while Rome burns’. I don’t personally care whether the government allows medicinal marijuana to be legalized. Or not.

There are more important issues.

What I care about, deeply, is the steady, relentless march toward despotism that Washington DC has engaged in during the past fifteen years…particularly since 9-11-01. I am talking about the rapid erosion of our Bill of Rights–which greatly transcends the right to roll and smoke a doobie.

The most egregious, extreme example of this is the USA-Patriot Act.

The Patriot Act is about to be signed into law a second time—despite the fact that it should have been thrown out by either Congress or the Supreme Court a long time ago. If either of these two esteemed bodies had not been corrupt, it would have been. Thanks to the pro-government media, the people still know very little about this act, aside from what Rush Limbaugh and the White House have told them. The Patriot Act doesn’t just infringe on our constitutional civil liberties–it throws them down and stomps on them. It crushes them. It nullifies the Fourth Amendment altogether. It hands federal police sweeping powers that are historically unprecedented. The Patriot Act is the most heinous, anti-constitutional piece of legislation since the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798–and if its provisions were abused on a daily basis by law enforcement, it could be far, far worse. Its usage by law enforcement so far has been admirably restrained. If we had more rogue cops in our society than we currently do, the Patriot Act would have already been our undoing. It is a truly abhorrent law, and any sane electorate would demand that it be repealed. Instead, we are about to see it reenacted by an arrogant, out of control Federal government.

What have libertarians done to stop the Patriot Act? Damn near nothing—even on a rhetorical level. Almost all protests to date against our Orwellian “anti-terror” laws have come from the fringe Left of the ACLU, various Democrats, and Green Party hippies. Libertarians should be ashamed.

Go to any cutting edge libertarian editorial page on the Web, and tell me how many columns you see on the Patriot Act, the Office of Homeland Security, the BATFE, Posse Comitatus, the UN’s attempts to enforce illegal laws via a World Court, Agenda 21, and the WTO’s illicit dominion over our supposedly capitalist economy. You will find scattered crumbs of columns on these topics–most likely after archiving and Googling–but most of what you’ll read on any given day will be protest pieces on Iraq and puff pieces on such things as the Capitalist Glory of Wal-Mart, politically incorrect foods, the housing bubble, the robust economy of Red China, the size of the US military, the history behind ‘Saint’ Lincoln, the drug war, the gold standard, Alan Greenspan, and so on. Accompanied by more protest columns about the war in Iraq. If you are lucky— sandwiched between columns on Iraq–you may read some fairly spirited Bush bashing; although it’s unlikely said bashing will attack the administration’s Big Brother laws. Most likely, the Bush bashing will be about the war in Iraq. (Did we mention that libertarians really, really don’t like the war in Iraq?) If you go to some fairly right wing libertarian sites, you will read still more Bush bashing, even more complaints about the war in Iraq, and a lot of articles about guns, guns, guns. Not Gun Control. Just guns and survivalism.

The obvious irony here is that libertarians are supposed to care about things like civil liberties and constitutional freedoms. Yet very little I hear from libertarians convinces me they take such things seriously. Instead, libertarians seem to embrace what feels good to talk about. Things like Big Brother are painful, and require sober thought.

If the political world is a roiling, tempestuous ocean, the libertarian world is a kiddie pool populated by dreamers who paddle around on inflatable toy animals.

Perhaps before draining the swamp on the Potomac, we should consider draining the kiddie pool. And getting serious about the ebbing of our freedoms.

Published originally at EtherZone.com : republication allowed with this notice and hyperlink intact.”

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