A Thinking Reed

"Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed" – Blaise Pascal

Left and Right: the prospects for liberty*

John is wondering how committed “the Left” is to civil liberties given that Barack Obama is largely getting a free pass on his deviations, while Bob Barr, a genuinely pro-civil liberties candidate, is being ignored. Meanwhile, in reviewing Bill Kauffman’s latest, W. James Antle III seriously questions whether “there is still such a thing as an anti-war right.”

I’m not any kind of doctrinaire libertarian, but on the issues of civil liberties, executive power, and war I’m in their corner. So, naturally, the question arises which party is better for “liberty,” broadly conceived as this bundle of issues. (If, as Randolph Bourne said, “war is the health of the state,” it makes sense to me treat these together.)

Given the last 8 years, most people would probably say that on the whole the Right is worse, and the Left better on these issues. After all, the Bush administration has pursued preventive war, an expanded national security state, unchecked executive power, and harsh interrogation procedures (that’s “torture” to you and me) with very little dissent from its supporters on the Right. And the grassroots Left, if not the official Democratic Party apparatus, has been quite vocal in its opposition to most, if not all, of this.

Yet we shouldn’t underestimate how the turning wheel of fortune might change things. Expanded discretionary power seems much less threatening when your guy’s wielding it. And let’s not forget how forgiving, or at least muted, much of the Left was during the Clinton administration, despite its generally poor record on civil liberties (not to mention its sharp tack to the Right on economic issues). Add to that the long record of executive power-grabbing and war-making by Democratic presidents, the undeniable charisma of Barack Obama, and the feverish devotion he inspires in some people, and you could have a recipe for a a kinder, gentler version (at best) of Bushism.

All that said, I think Antle is right and John is perhaps overly optimistic that there remains on the Right a principled core of anti-war and pro-liberty sentiment. Checking government power just doesn’t seem to be what motivates the conservative masses anymore, if it ever was. Red-meat culture war issues like gay marriage and immigration, liberal bashing, and apocalyptic fear of the great Islamic Other are, best as I can tell, far closer to the pulsing heart of contemporary conservatism. (Hence my growing alienation from it over the last 8 years.) However much antipathy for President Obama a right-wing opposition might have, my bet is that it’s far more likely to zero in on this stuff.
—————————————————–
*Yes, I’m burnishing my libertarian street cred by stealing a title from Murray Rothbard.

, , , , ,

4 responses to “Left and Right: the prospects for liberty*”

  1. David W. Congdon

    Libertarianism fails for me precisely because, like the neo-cons, it still makes the individual responsible only for him- or herself, and thus creates a culture in which we do not think we are responsible for our neighbors.

    Every libertarianism is also, in part, a hypocrite, because it’s always unclear just how much of the government ought to be removed. Sure, it’s easy to get support for the annihilation of the Dept. for Homeland Security, but what about the post office or the Dept. of Education?

    And if those aren’t persuasive enough, the entire libertarian movement fails precisely because it upholds the right of individuals to bear handguns, even as it denounces the military industrial complex. This is mixed message, and it’s also backwards. It would be far better to have a trained military that is the sole bearer of arms, besides police officers, rather than have a nation in which every qualified adult is able to pack heat.

    Honestly, the modern American interpretation of the second amendment is one of the biggest disgraces of our history. And libertarians contribute to this perversion.

    Reply
  2. Lee

    Mmmm – I guess I’m a “moderate” on gun rights, but I can at least see some of the point of the hard core 2nd Amendment folks. It’s pretty clear that part of what motivated concern about the right to bear arms in the early Republic was fear of a standing army. Better, in their view, to have a citizen’s militia of armed men than a professional army whose primarily loyalty was to the state. YMMV.

    Reply
  3. Gaius Sempronius Gracchus

    War is not the health of the state, which has rarely been at risk in the case of the US.

    War is the health of the mililtary industrial complex and has generally resulted (the Civil War perhaps excepted) from the plutocratic domination of the state.

    In the US, war is mostly a profit-generating and profit-guarding enterprise.

    Historically, the authoritarian subversion of civil liberties justified by some national security emergency (real or imagined and, if real, self-made or not) has been most markedly advanced by three Republicans (Lincoln, Nixon, and GW) and three Democrats (Wilson, FDR, and Truman).

    Generally, the Republicans have been more enthusiastically on the authoritarian side and, generally, the resistance has been led by a strong minority of Democrats.

    But nobody’s record is really any good.

    So far as limited government means limited police and executive power, neither party has been very reliably interested, though the GOP has been worse.

    Reply
  4. LP

    And if those aren’t persuasive enough, the entire libertarian movement fails precisely because it upholds the right of individuals to bear handguns, even as it denounces the military industrial complex. This is mixed message, and it’s also backwards. It would be far better to have a trained military that is the sole bearer of arms, besides police officers, rather than have a nation in which every qualified adult is able to pack heat.

    The military industrial complex is denounced because it is a tool the government uses to expand power and influence and ultimately take away people’s rights. Even Libertarians will tell you there is a place for the military: national defense. This is very different from colonization and occupation, which is what we seem to use our military for.

    It is in no way inconsistent to say that the general populace can be armed. Just as the organized military should be used for national defense, the courts have consistently ruled (as the Supreme Court just did in Heller) that individuals have the right to protect themselves, their families, and in some cases, their property, by use of firearms (Heller, of course, spells out the right to keep a handgun for this purpose).

    Libertarians are not anarchists, not in the purest sense anyway. Libertarians do believe government has a role, but that it should be as limited as possible. Some of the extremists in the Libertarian Party may use rhetoric that suggests likewise, but I think you will find most Libertarians to be fairly realistic about the current situation, and simply working to keep government for expanding and trampling even more on civil rights. After all, if stuff like FISA doesn’t scare the hell out of you, then something is wrong.

    Reply

Leave a reply to Gaius Sempronius Gracchus Cancel reply