Libertarianism is often dismissed, by both the Left and the Right, as a playground for idealists who are detached from reality and a philosophy whose ideas look great on paper but would never work in the real world. Questions lobbed at libertarians often take the form of “how could this work in a purely libertarian society?” and the portrayal of a typical libertarian inevitably skews to the guys who sit around arguing, for hours, minutiae of an idealized libertarian world that any practical person knows will never come to exist.
Those parents’-basement purists certainly do exist, and they are certainly fun to mock, but portraying them as the face of the movement and the philosophy, even when done so by open-minded and possibly sympathetic people, is either unfair or dishonest. What other political system or ideology gets presumed to demand 100% compliance and conversion? Would it be fair to presume that the desired end state of all liberals is a purely communist system, with no private property rights or money? Would it be fair to judge all social conservatives on the presumption that their goal is a Christian theocracy with strict Biblical law applied to everyone?
Of course not, and of course most liberals and conservatives don’t embrace such extreme end states. Moreso, even if some do, we don’t presume that the sane ones think they’re achievable and that, for their ideas to work, the end state must be reached. Yet this is often the presumption associated with libertarian ideas.
Is there something unique to libertarianism, something ‘gestalt’ about the philosophy, that precludes achieving benefit unless and until it’s fully implemented? Is there nothing to be gained from reducing government involvement in our lives until the level of that involvement reaches a particular nadir? When phrased this way, the critique sounds silly, of course, yet that is exactly the implied message behind the line of questioning noted in the first paragraph.
What, then, are we to make of this apples-and-oranges challenge to libertarianism? From some quarters, I’d surmise it reflects an ignorance of the principle itself. This shouldn’t be of too great concern, because ignorance can easily be met with rational and reasoned discussion, especially from a well-versed libertarian. The greater concern stems from those quarters who employ this “purity” line of questioning as a straw man to torpedo the small-goverment movement en toto. Both the establishment Left and the establishment Right dislike libertarianism and libertarians, because it and they are wild cards in the electoral process. Libertarian ideas have long resonated with the young, and nowadays, with both parties having marched inexorably towards statism over the past years and decades, they offer a real alternative to Statist Flavor R and Statist Flavor D. Challenging that alternative on its merits is hard, because both parties would have to confront the disconnect between the lip service they pay to liberty and their anti-liberty practices. Much easier, it is, to attack the principle in a broad and vague fashion and discourage those who are still trying to find a political voice and identity from going down that path. And, when dealing with people more accustomed to discussing and defending their “unusual” ideas than to engaging in cutthroat politics, it’s quite a simple trick to lead libertarians into a trap of this sort.
It is true that there are many libertarians who fit the mold of the intellectual purist, detached from practicality and far more interested in theorizing about libertarian utopia than engaging in more mundane and practical debates about moving society in the direction of liberty. It is also an unfortunate reality that many of these folks gleefully flay each other as “not real libertarians” the moment a point of disagreement or divergence occurs. It’s something that can be witnessed on libertarian message boards when names such as Rand Paul are mentioned. Paul is, by many measures, among the most libertarian politicians in Washington, and in my humble opinion would do wonders for the cause of liberty were he to ascend to the presidency. Yet I’ve seen countless libertarians denounce him because he has this or that or the other particular belief that doesn’t fully hew to the orthodoxy, or because he’s on the “wrong” side of an issue that even libertarians disagree on, or because he is a little too Ôright-wing-religious’ for some. Lost in such denunciations is the question of what is achieved by pounding on someone who’s 80% of what you want when the 95%er who you really like but who’ll be running on the third-party ticket will be lucky to get 1% of the vote.
Of course, this argument against purity has been put forth by the Republican Party regulars in the last couple elections, with their demands that libertarians vote for McCain or Romney, despite the lack of any real libertarianism in their makeup. Better to support the lesser of two evils than “waste your vote” on the third party candidate or, by abstention, support the victory of the other guy. Yet there’s a fundamental difference. Paul (among others) would be an imperfect “good” from a liberty perspective, a step in the right direction rather than a smaller step in the wrong direction. There and thus is the proper advocacy of libertarianism in the political forum: the philosophy would move the nation in the correct direction for a change, rather than simply slowing the rush toward ruin that decades of statism have wrought. And, there is the proper response to the purity straw man: we don’t need to achieve the end state in order to make things better. Liberty, even in little bites, can do wonders.
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