This past week has brought us a death sentence for mass murderer Dylann Roof and the intent to prosecute the Chicago Facebook Torturers under hate crime statutes. While I, as a libertarian, object to both the death penalty (I take issue with granting the State the power to kill its citizens) and to the concept of “hate crimes” (they punish thought rather than actual infringements of the rights of others), I have not and will not shed a tear for any of these pieces of human filth, nor will I go to any great lengths to object to the application of laws I disagree with in these particular cases.
Some libertarians have and will consider this an abandonment of principle or an “allowance” that such laws are OK in some circumstances. However, I reject the characterization. My commitment to liberty remains steadfast, but I acknowledge certain realities.
Libertarian proselytizers can choose one of two paths: We can protest with equal fervor in all situations, or we can choose our battles. The latter is not a sell-out or a defenestration of principles, it is a tactic for changing hearts and minds. With emphasis on “hearts.”
It is a reality that humans are affected by emotions, by the brain chemistry that makes us feel good at times, bad at times, attracted at times, revulsed at times, and outraged at times. It is a fact that some things shock our senses and offend us to our cores. It is a fact that we are not Vulcans, we do not elevate logic over passion, we are not strictly rational beings. And, it is a fact that most of us will, push come to shove, sometimes ignore irrefutably logical and rational arguments in favor of gut-check emotional responses.
Even the strongest, most rational and grounded arguments can crash and dissipate against walls of emotional outrage, and if our goal is to bring people around to a particular way of thinking, we need to recognize this unfortunate truth. People are visceral, and they will shut down and shut you out if you argue for something that hits them at that level.
There are countless non-libertarian laws and elements of our society. There is, as I mentioned, the death penalty. There is redistributive taxation. There are, as we see here, hate-crime statutes. There is occupational licensing, there are mountains of regulations, there is public accommodation theory, there is selective service registration, there is the War on Drugs, there are drone strikes, there is enhanced interrogation, there is police militarization. There is militarism and warmongering, there is welfare spending, there is Gitmo, there is the continue criminalization of prostitution, there is trade protectionism, there is domestic surveillance, there is Social Security and Medicare, there is ObamaCare, there is public education, there is antitrust, there is the excessive regulation and prohibition of gambling, there are property use restrictions, and on and on.
Libertarians can and do stand against all these and more, and from time to time we see opportunities to “move the needle” by making examples of specific cases. There are also times when making examples of specific cases is a bad idea and can actually drive people away from libertarianism. I doubt many who think that Roof deserves two thousand volts sent through his brain are going to be swayed by rational arguments about how the government shouldn’t be trusted with the power to kill, and I doubt that people outraged by the Facebook torturers are going to be convinced to rethink hate crime laws in that particular case. It is as or more likely that those making the rational arguments will be deemed fringe nuts by the people who they are trying to convince, and the latter may very well form or grow a prejudice against libertarianism itself as a result.
Sure, we, as good libertarians, can continue to denounce the death penalty and hate crime laws even in their application to these cases, and we should – to a point. If our goal is to virtue-signal to the world that we are good, according-to-Hoyle, 99 44/100% pure libertarians, we can invoke righteous indignation to the death penalty and the hate crime laws in these cases. But, if our goal is to advance the cause of liberty, we’d be better off investing the energy of that righteous indignation wisely and with the recognition that minds are rarely won without also winning hearts.
I know some disagree, believing instead that our greatest demonstration of principle is in fighting the hardest cases – that it is in the tough cases that we stand the best chance of showing others that we stand on principle and why our way is the correct way. There are times when I agree. There are times when the egregious or absurd makes a greater splash. There is, unfortunately, no formula to this, no codifiable litmus test that we can apply that will tell us when to go full-libertarian and when to sit back and bide our time. It’s not easy to figure out which battles to choose, and we may not always get it right. But, our liberties have been eroded in countless nibbles and over the span of decades, and we’re not engaged in a one-and-done battle of liberty vs statism. There will always be another day, another fight to pick, another infringement to challenge.
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Very insightful article Peter.