An ideology that does not fit tidily with the Republicans or Democrats

January 6, 2025 12:57 PM

Of course, the problem is that, in Trump, libertarians are dealing with someone whose nature is entirely transactional and who has no real ideological core. It means that, while libertarians might be able to achieve certain objectives by working with him and his acolytes, they can never be sure that they’re not undermining their beliefs in civil liberties by strengthening Trump’s position. Any victory you give to Trump could mean putting another nail in your own coffin. from It’s a Weird Time to Be a Libertarian [The New Republic; ungated]
posted by chavenet (60 comments total)

Is it weird to have a set of core beliefs that are as deep as a bumper sticker, a set of policies that aren't even internally consistent, and a complete disconnect from objective reality (see e.g. 'organ markets are sacrosanct,' or 'I believe Gary Johnson could win in 2016')?

Because I feel like libertarians have been like that my entire life.
posted by box at 1:20 PM on January 6 [31 favorites]

<ctrl-f>abortion
Phrase not found

Disappointing but not surprising. The Libertarian Party's ambivalence over abortion rights compared to their raging boner for tax cuts and business deregulation and their consequent support for Republicans has long told me everything I need to know about their commitment to the principle of individual liberty.
posted by Reverend John at 1:26 PM on January 6 [78 favorites]

I know this a smug hot take but from my encounters libertarianism it's all about transactional relationship management. It's a thought system with the goal of allowing those with privilege to redefine the world to be a contractually transactional as possible.
posted by Agent_X_ at 1:28 PM on January 6 [30 favorites]

For a good time ask a Libertarian whether they support open borders, which has been a plank in their platform for decades and as recently as 2017 (and maybe still today, I'm not up to date).
posted by The Tensor at 1:30 PM on January 6 [9 favorites]

pfft -- "A Libertarian is just a Republican with a bong."
posted by Pedantzilla at 1:34 PM on January 6 [39 favorites]

I saw something recently that effectively said “all of our systemic problems are fixable, but everyone is focused on making enough money that those problems simply don’t impact them.”

Sounds like a decent description of the Libertarian party.
posted by ifatfirstyoudontsucceed at 1:37 PM on January 6 [24 favorites]

Pedantzilla beat me to it.
posted by adamrice at 1:42 PM on January 6 [3 favorites]

Was there ever a non-weird time to be a Libertarian? There's a real revulsion among some right-wing types to not self-identify as right-wing. They want to separate themselves from the old fogies and claim a difference, mainly because they want to smoke weed and not be connected to religious nuts (though some Libertarians are, in fact, religious nuts). But Libertarians are in lockstep with Republicans what? Probably 80% of the time? They just don't have the escape velocity to be true mavericks. Which is why they never really distinguish themselves as a legitimate political party and never win elections.

Libertarianism is cognitive dissonance as a political party.
posted by zardoz at 1:43 PM on January 6 [19 favorites]

I regularly look at (and occasionally read) Reason and The Volokh Conspiracy, and a lot of people there hate Trump. Like they think that Harris is wrong, but Trump's Wrong in new and terrible ways. Leading up to the election, one of the Volokh contributors did a series on the ethics of voting for the lesser evil. (He was for it.)
Sure, some of them will work for him, but they'd work for anyone in power, who'd let them do their thing.
posted by Spike Glee at 1:58 PM on January 6 [4 favorites]

Like worries about the deficit or 80-year-old presidents, libertarianism just disappears during Republican administrations. It's a stick to beat Democrats with.
posted by zompist at 2:05 PM on January 6 [24 favorites]

Disappointing but not surprising

Republicans/libs will keep abortion access open to the wealthy. You can fly your mistress out of the country to where clinics are legal, or if your daughter gets in trouble with the authorities for using medication, you just buy off the presiding judge with RV keys or whatever. Money dissolves those kinds of problems.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 2:13 PM on January 6 [10 favorites]

Libertarianism is a weird place politically anyways. It's like partial anarchism. And because it is this weird part-way point people can choose how much and what parts of the state they want to keep - often the shitty parts. It ranges from "get rid of the bits of government I don't like" to booing candidates who refuse to allow 10-year-olds to buy cocaine. Most of them are just Republicans who like pretending they're smart and have an ideology. Some ARE true believers - they can even be not shitty. (There ARE left-libertarians out there, apparently.) But it is so very rare and makes you want to ask them, "why are you identifying with this shit?"
posted by charred husk at 2:22 PM on January 6 [6 favorites]

(There ARE left-libertarians out there, apparently.)

It's a big tent; libertarians can really come from any part of the useful idiot ideological spectrum, from extremely naive to extremely confused.
posted by mhoye at 2:25 PM on January 6 [20 favorites]

I've always read Libertarians as conservatives who waffle back and forth on if they're embarrassed by that and try to pretend to appear slightly more progressive in a few minor ways, or are embarrassed about it and try to be more openly regressive in important ways. Either way they're a shitstack.
posted by GoblinHoney at 2:31 PM on January 6 [5 favorites]

“Left-libertarian” kinda just fits somewhere in the triangle between left-liberalism and anarchism and libertarian socialism, no? I mean I think I could be described as “left-libertarian” in many ways but I think it’s a different thing from big-L Libertarianism.
posted by atoxyl at 2:37 PM on January 6 [5 favorites]

As far as big-L Libertarians, my sense is that in recent years people who once identified with the movement or especially younger people who might have been attracted to it, not too long ago, have tended to go one of two directions - if they’re more inclined to social liberalism, “bleeding heart Libertarians,” while being big on markets and consequentialist arguments for minimally managed capitalism, there’s a place for that with the “reclaiming neoliberalism” crowd. If they are the “might makes right” sort at heart, well, there are stronger versions of that available.

It’s my understanding that Chase Oliver was seen as representative of the more socially liberal wing of the party - i.e. “too woke” - by the faction that went for Trump.
posted by atoxyl at 2:46 PM on January 6 [1 favorite]

Libertarian expressing sorrow at their abandonment of their principles at their 10th sequential conference.
posted by lalochezia at 3:01 PM on January 6 [3 favorites]

"Modern libertarians are more interested in making it legal to give heroin to the children they’re dating than they are in what libertarians are supposed to be interested in, which is arming drag queens so they can fight the cops."
—Robert Evans, Behind the Bastards
posted by Mister Moofoo at 3:24 PM on January 6 [61 favorites]

Libertarianism is a weird place politically anyways. It's like partial anarchism.

It very much seems like libertarians break into two groups: anarchists who are afraid to admit it and embarrassed Republicans.
posted by hoyland at 3:30 PM on January 6 [3 favorites]

Left-libertarians (or just libertarians if you're in Europe) exist and they have nothing whatsoever to do with the Libertarian Party, which stands for petty middle class grievance in service of total corporate dominance of American life.
posted by jy4m at 3:36 PM on January 6 [10 favorites]

Just to clear up some confusion upthread, "libertarian socialist" is in no way similar to "libertarian", In fact the modern (right) libertarian movement stole that word from the far left. Murray Rothbard (*spit*, gnashing of teeth, etc) proudly proclaims this in his book, "The Betrayal of the American Right":

One gratifying aspect of our rise to some prominence is that,
for the first time in my memory, we, “our side,” had captured a
crucial word from the enemy. Other words, such as “liberal,” had
been originally identified with laissez-faire libertarians, but had
been captured by left-wing statists, forcing us in the 1940s to call
ourselves rather feebly “true” or “classical” liberals. “Libertari-
ans,” in contrast, had long been simply a polite word for left-wing
anarchists, that is for anti-private property anarchists, either of the
communist or syndicalist variety.
posted by Grimp0teuthis at 3:38 PM on January 6 [5 favorites]

I was a libertarian when I was a very young man, but 9/11 and its aftermath cured me of the belief that the libertarian party and the vast vast majority of self-proclaimed libertarians in America understood the ideals of libertarianism or even preferred them to fascism. That became even more obvious when Obama exposed its racist underbelly and even more obvious than that when they all voted for the orange man.

I do still think following principles of freedom and simplified government could be done with progressive goals in mind though, and that we'd end up in a better place. For example, replacing our dystopian system of disability, welfare, social security, and medicare/caid in it's entirely with a straightforward universal basic income supplied by taking all the money we spend on those programs and taxing the rich for the rest. Imagine ordinary people being able to take risks with their careers and lives without, you know, dying. Like the rich can. That's of course a nonstarter of an idea around most libertarians, who like nearly all conservatives fundamentally believe that there is an underclass, stupid but cunning, plotting to leech off of their amazingness at all times.
posted by teh_boy at 3:38 PM on January 6 [9 favorites]

Until about 50 years ago, Libertarian chiefly meant “anarcho-socialist”, which is still what it means outside the US. The right-wing meaning was the result of conservative think tank ghoul Murray Rothbard making a deliberate choice to crib the term from the left.
posted by Jon_Evil at 3:39 PM on January 6 [10 favorites]

The Fuck You I Got Mine crowd meets the Fuck You I Got Mine president.
posted by tommasz at 3:48 PM on January 6 [10 favorites]

Here’s Gary Johnson being booed because he was the sole libertarian primary candidate in favor of driver’s licenses.

These are not serious people and they never have been. And they voted for Trump just like every other conservative did, despite what they might claim.
posted by AlSweigart at 3:54 PM on January 6 [14 favorites]

they voted for Trump just like every other conservative did, despite what they might claim

you never know, they could be one of the 640k people who did vote for Chase Oliver

(that’s the third most popular third-party candidate of 2024 so no, it’s not so impressive)
posted by atoxyl at 4:07 PM on January 6 [4 favorites]

Libertarians seem to be immune to cognitive dissonance. I had a discussion once with a self proclaimed libertarian. He didn’t think he should pay taxes for roads but couldn’t really articulate who should pay for them, just someone else. Of course, he worked for Booz Allen as a consultant to the US government so was 100% paid by taxes.

If there are two groups split by political differences, and you look around at who is in your group and there are dyed in the wool Nazis, you may need to reevaluate a few things.
posted by Farce_First at 4:17 PM on January 6 [6 favorites]

It’s a Weird Time to Be a Libertarian

Good
posted by JoeXIII007 at 4:41 PM on January 6 [4 favorites]

For example, replacing our dystopian system of disability, welfare, social security, and medicare/caid in it's entirely with a straightforward universal basic income supplied by taking all the money we spend on those programs and taxing the rich for the rest.

Unfortunately, UBI without strong price controls on basically everything would result in disaster. What we need is a Universal Guaranteed Standard of Living, which is much more complicated, but would actually solve the problem.
posted by Faint of Butt at 4:42 PM on January 6 [14 favorites]

Libertarianism is a soothing thought-based credo, usually adopted after leaving indoctrination from another party or movement, but not confident enough to join their former enemy. There are other such credos too that offer a purist mode, to remove any responsibility for inaction.
posted by Brian B. at 4:46 PM on January 6 [1 favorite]

Universal Guaranteed Standard of Living

Social Security tries to tie remittance to cost-of-living adjustments.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 4:56 PM on January 6 [3 favorites]

Surely the face-treading jackboots won't tread on my face
posted by swr at 5:05 PM on January 6 [3 favorites]

Libertarians are just the tax-hating wing of the anarchy ideology, and just as impractical and destructive.
posted by Pouteria at 7:02 PM on January 6 [2 favorites]

Trump is all on your side as long as it benefits him - he and the Libertarians should get along like a house on fire, since they understand each other so well.
posted by JustSayNoDawg at 7:06 PM on January 6 [1 favorite]

he and the Libertarians should get along like a house on fire

Screams, flames, people running for safety...
posted by Faint of Butt at 7:19 PM on January 6 [9 favorites]

I grew up on the fringes of the 1%, and live a thousand miles away from there and never go back. But the magic of Facebook keeps me in loose contact with my high school class, and maaan are there so many doughy white dudes with glasses who I vaguely remember as academic also-rans and who are Real Ardent about being libertarians. I'm like you were born on third base, guys: you can't possibly have drunk your own Flavor-Aid enough to think that in a lawless society you'd be like a duke with a harem instead of assistant stableboy to a psychopathic warlord.

I did have fun at first pretending I was one of them and relentlessly advocating for everyone building their own roads, but got sussed out and now mostly stand gobsmacked while they fellate Trump. I've never been to a reunion.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 7:21 PM on January 6 [11 favorites]

For example, replacing our dystopian system of disability, welfare, social security, and medicare/caid in it's entirely with a straightforward universal basic income supplied by taking all the money we spend on those programs and taxing the rich for the rest.

Simplification is a beguiling idea, but not necessarily a good one.

Those programs are complicated because the world is complicated. And they exist for specific purposes that don't correspond perfectly to UBI.

I'm sure nobody would claim they're perfect, but I also think quite a few people would argue with calling them "dystopian". They are in fact godsends for tens of millions of Americans.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 7:49 PM on January 6 [3 favorites]

Under no circumstances do you need to take libertarians seriously.
posted by Reyturner at 8:27 PM on January 6 [7 favorites]

The time to whinge at me about Donald Trump was before I was born. You made your bed. Sleep in it.
posted by East14thTaco at 9:16 PM on January 6 [1 favorite]

Under no circumstances do you need to take libertarians seriously.

No, you take them. Seriously!

😁
posted by Big Al 8000 at 9:18 PM on January 6 [11 favorites]

"Everything is worse with libertarians"

This is ALWAYS true.
posted by AsYouKnow Bob at 9:20 PM on January 6 [3 favorites]

....Libertarian Party, which stands for petty middle class grievance in service of total corporate dominance of American life.
posted by jy4m at 3:36 PM

My understanding is that this is the social class that was Mussolini's base when he brought fascism into the world- know nothings with a tiny bit of property, and overly concerned with maintaining that class status despite a recent global war and pandemic
posted by eustatic at 10:29 PM on January 6 [4 favorites]

Didn’t a bunch of these guys sort of take over a small town in an eastern state and then get defeated by garbage bears? I guess it makes sense they’d have trouble with an orange poo bear blessed with total immunity.
posted by house-goblin at 11:07 PM on January 6 [5 favorites]

Under no circumstances do you need to take libertarians seriously.

No, you take them. Seriously!

Surely you can't be serious....
posted by gtrwolf at 11:33 PM on January 6 [1 favorite]

Didn’t a bunch of these guys sort of take over a small town in an eastern state and then get defeated by garbage bears?

Oh, good lord, The Free State Project (previously and previously). I wonder if they're still tilting at that windmill?
posted by KingEdRa at 11:39 PM on January 6 [4 favorites]

Radley Balko takes a detailed look at what Trump and and can't do to immigrants

Balko specializes in reported on US government atrocities. I think you'd agree with him about a lot, though not everything. He counts himself a libertarian.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 12:14 AM on January 7 [1 favorite]

That's worth reading.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 1:38 AM on January 7

To the degree that it's useful to understand the US Libertarian movement, it's helpful to understand the history and current status. As Jon_Evil notes, Murray Rothbard was a major part of dragging the Libertarian Party into the racist fringe; between Rothbard and his protege Lew Rockwell, who was a close associate of Ron Paul, you've got the quasi-intellectual core of the worst of the Libertarian Party.

But it's also important to know about the other major influence on the Pauls, R. J. Rushdoony. In short, Rushdoony developed the Christian reconstructionist movement. "Reconstructionist" means he thought that society needed to be reconstructed along Biblical lines, including Old Testament law. A major portion of his efforts went to popularizing homeschooling; this was explicitly intended to get the government out of education. If you're homeschooling and you're not a Christian reconstructionist, as I understand it from friends in that situation, you need to spend a fair amount of your time screening resources for weird ideologies.

Rushdoony denied that 6 million Jews died in the Holocaust and didn't approve of at least some interracial marriages. His kid says he was misunderstood but that's sort of what you'd expect. Amusingly enough, Rothbard didn't have much use for him and didn't think Rushdoony was a real libertarian -- Rothbard called Rushdoony "almost incapable of ratiocination."

Rushdoony's son in law, Gary North, bridged the gap between Rushdoony and Rothbard. North was a research assistant for Ron Paul (aha!) and contributed to Lew Rockwell's website. North also wrote for Ron Paul's homeschooling curriculum. Apparently Rothbard's distaste for Rushdoony and North's religious totalitarianism didn't mean his wing of the libertarian movement wasn't going to make use of the homeschooling movement to try and weaken the state.

This wing of the Libertarian movement split from the Cato Institute in 1982. More recently, it successfully took over the Libertarian Party in 2022 in the form of the Mises Caucus, when Angela McArdle was elected party chair. However, Chase Oliver -- who is distinctly not part of the Mises Caucus -- squeaked out a victory at the convention for reasons I won't pretend to completely understand and wound up as the party's candidate in 2024.

I think Oliver would be a mildly disastrous President, but I have to give him credit for being morally consistent. He opposes Atlanta's Cop City, he criticizes qualified immunity for cops, and he's pro-choice. Unsurprisingly he's not a big fan of Medicare or gun control.

As a rough rule of thumb, at this point, you can use a libertarian's relationship with the Mises Caucus to figure out whether you're dealing with a paleoconservative in disguise or an minarchist idealist. I think the TNR article misses by not making that distinction explicit -- the quotes from Oliver carry some implications, but TNR didn't dig into that at all.
posted by Bryant at 2:29 AM on January 7 [6 favorites]

Libertairans think the government overstepped peoples rights when it required desegregating schools but not when state governmenrs required segregating them.

Same with the north foghting and winning the civil war, but not the south keeping people as slaves.

It thinks the police and government overstepped peoples rights when it banned drugs they wanna take, but not when it kills people for shoplifting.


They think Eminient Domain and taxes are theft, but don't think Turtle Island was stolen from the first nations.

Who funded Cato institute and Reason? Yup, the Kochs.

Are there individual libertarians who beliece the nonsense? Yes. Juat like the 17% of americans who pew found believed prowrestling was real, or the dlat earthers etc. You can get people to believe anything. But the project of US Libertarians is a way to be a racist republican who doesn't want the stigma.
posted by No Climate - No Food, No Food - No Future. at 4:16 AM on January 7 [2 favorites]

Miron fears that Trump’s policies, rather than genuinely helping the working class by increasing prosperity for all, will instead redistribute benefits to those who have offered him the most support…

You know, he may be on to something there.
posted by TedW at 7:18 AM on January 7 [3 favorites]

I too was a dumbass college libertarian once, which is why I get extra special joy from reposting this every few years:

I am the very model of a modern Libertarian:
I teem with glowing notions for proposals millenarian,
I've nothing but contempt for ideologies collectivist
(My own ideas of social good tend more toward the Objectivist).
You see, I've just discovered, by my intellectual bravery,
That civic obligations are all tantamount to slavery;
And thus that ancient pastime, viz., complaining of taxation,
Assumes the glorious aspect of a war for liberation!

You really must admit it's a delightful revelation:
To bitch about your taxes is to fight for liberation!

I bolster up my claims with lucubrations rather risible
About the Founding Fathers and the market's hand invisible;
In fact, my slight acquaintance with the fountainhead Pierian
Makes me the very model of a modern Libertarian!

His very slight acquaintance with the fountainhead Pierian
Makes him the very model of a modern Libertarian!

All "public wealth" is robbery, we never will accede to it;
You have no rights in anything if you can't show your deed to it.
(But don't fear repossession by our Amerind minority:
Those treaties aren't valid---Uncle Sam had no authority!)
We realize whales and wolves and moose find wilderness quite vital,
And we'll give back their habitats---if they can prove their title.
But people like unspoiled lands (we too will say "hooray" for them),
So we have faith that someone else will freely choose to pay for them.

Yes, when the parks are auctioned it will be a lucky day for them---
We're confident that someone else will freely choose to pay for them!

We'll guard the health of nature by self-interest most astute:
Since pollution is destructive, no one ever will pollute.
Thus factories will safeguard our communities riparian---
I am the very model of a modern Libertarian!

Yes, factories will safeguard our communities riparian,
He is the very model of a modern Libertarian!

In short, when I can tell why individual consumers
Know best who should approve their drugs and who should treat their tumors;
Why civilized existence in its intricate confusion
Will be simple and straightforward, absent government intrusion;
Why markets cannot err within the system I've described,
Why poor folk won't be bullied and why rich folk won't be bribed,
And why all vast inequities of power and position
Will vanish when I wave my wand and utter "COMPETITION!"---

He's so much more exciting than a common politician,
Inequities will vanish when he hollers "Competition!"

---And why my lofty rhetoric and arguments meticulous
Inspire shouts of laughter and the hearty cry, "Ridiculous!",
And why my social theories all seem so pre-Sumerian---
I'll be the very model of a modern Libertarian!

His novel social theories all seem so pre-Sumerian---
He is the very model of a modern Libertarian!

posted by Mayor West at 7:24 AM on January 7 [10 favorites]

^F Ron Paul!

My favorite example showing (American?, Modern?) Libertarianism to be complete bullshit is Ron Paul lecturing in front of a Confederate flag about how the North/US Government was in the wrong for the Civil War.

Of all US history, the ending of slavery was the greatest increase in liberty. And Ron Paul, former Libertarian Party presidential nominee was against it. Bringing that up always rustles libertarians jimmies and the libertarian response is most commonly "No True Scottsman!"

In case it's not obvious, any argument that a Slaver's right to property overrides all of another human's rights shows incredible stupidity, shallow thinking and at worst, extraordinary racism.

And to be extra snarky, the most accurate response to the question of is it stupidity or racism is "Why not both?"

I formed my opinion on libertarians by arguing with them on USENET and nothing since then has changed it.
posted by jclarkin at 7:52 AM on January 7 [4 favorites]

I went through, embarrassingly, a stage where I called myself a libertarian. To be fair to myself this was before I could vote.

This was a time when same-sex marriage was "controversial" and Democrats didn't want to come out in support of it, so they'd either oppose it or offer some bullshit tiered "civil union" or whatever. This, to me, was wrong , and my introduction to libertarians was through the idea that the government shouldn't be in the business of deciding that some relationships are more valuable than others.

To me, this was a lot easier to understand than taxation and social welfare. There was also a big libertarian strain in online atheist spaces and I was an atheist kid in a very religious state.

Lol. Imagine my face when I realized that actually libertarians care about social welfare more than any of that. As in, they hate it.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 8:30 AM on January 7 [2 favorites]

For good time just ask libertarians what they think about the age of consent laws.
posted by srboisvert at 8:55 AM on January 7 [3 favorites]

“That's libertarians for you — anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.”
Kim Stanley Robinson (in one of his Mars books)
posted by house-goblin at 8:57 AM on January 7 [10 favorites]

I am all for libertarian's building their own model communities.

Seems like a great way to disabuse them of their deeply flawed ideas.

Rubber, meet road. Assuming anyone built one.
posted by chromecow at 9:33 AM on January 7 [4 favorites]

> the Christian reconstructionist movement. "Reconstructionist" means he thought that society needed to be reconstructed along Biblical lines

How depressing but predictable that the relationship between "Christian" and "Christian reconstructionist" is pretty much the direct opposite of the relationship between "Judiasm" and "Reconstructionist Judaism".
posted by vibratory manner of working at 11:32 AM on January 7 [1 favorite]

The narcissistic thing about libertarian fundamentalism is the belief that freedom should be based on money. Most people won't draw the same conclusion until they've accepted social ranking first. Early libertarians like Greenspan and Rand were known to be obsessed with dollar signs at their parties. Their veneration of money is a wannabe aristocratic status they were never born with. They must first pretend that money is not government insured and printed for a common economic good, but for a freedom lottery to reestablish the aristocracy. It's quite a delusion to entertain wealth as a publicly issued title of nobility and simultaneously fear the democratic power to claw it back for civic improvement. So their agenda is to ingratiate people about their legal rights by defending the rights that don't threaten their interests.
posted by Brian B. at 11:40 AM on January 7 [1 favorite]

You have no rights in anything if you can't show your deed to it.
posted by Mayor West

Perfect. :)
posted by Pouteria at 3:14 PM on January 7

For good time just ask libertarians what they think about the age of consent laws.

This sounds like the opposite of a good time.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 3:17 PM on January 7