Recently I have received a couple of surprising invites on Facebook to join the Jo Jorgensen/Spike Cohen For President/VP 2020 page. For the record, I don’t really spend much time at all on Facebook. In fact, this web page is something of a reaction to my frustration with Facebook. Nevertheless, I do check in every once in a while to catch up on family and close friends.
I suspect the invites stem from my well-known FB views regarding Donald Trump and the modern incarnation of the Republican Party, which is to say both are rather repugnant to me, and since 2016 I have been a man without a party. (Part of the Remnant, as Jonah Goldberg would say.) In that light, I am extremely appreciative of the invitations — there are people who recognize my position and want to accept me into their political/ideological fold, for which I am grateful. However, I don’t think I can in good conscience go that route, at least not for any long term.
None of what follows is particularly insightful or new. In fact, it’s rather old hat. But in the current political climate, there is a lot of talk about alternative candidates, and I haven’t seen anyone resurrect any of this stuff lately, so I thought I would. So sue me.
I think it’s important to distinguish between libertarianism (the ideology), libertarians (the people who identify with the ideology), and the Libertarian Party. I have no beef with libertarianism per se, at least in the abstract. I’m all for personal freedom, very limited government, and so forth, within limits. We’ll come back to that. I also have no problem with the Libertarian Party, although I do part ways with some of their stated policies. I don’t really know anything about Jo Jorgensen, what she believes, what policies she’s proposing, or anything else about her (I’m guessing she’s Scandinavian, but that’s about as much as I know about here, and even that’s a guess). But that’s not what I want to talk about.
No, it’s the people who call themselves libertarians that I struggle with. Now I’ll admit right now: I’m going to paint with a very broad brush here. Obviously there are lots of self-described libertarians who don’t fit my stereotype. You know who you are, and if I’m not talking about you, feel free to move along. But to judge from the comments on the aforementioned Facebook page (very dangerous; don’t try this at home — I am a trained professional), “libertarian” seems to be a not-so-subtle code word for “anarchist.”
Of course, a lot of this recent discussion is prompted by the constant news cycle reporting of police abuses, starting with the George Floyd death, and inexorably moving temporally backwards. As a result, the libertarians are jumping on board the “defund the police” bandwagon. But the craziness doesn’t stop there. Self-described libertarians (small “l”) also want to decriminalize all drugs, abolish all taxes, further deregulate abortion, and a whole slew of other policy “reforms” that are simplistic, childish, and sometimes just plain insane.
Libertarians — at least the ones on Facebook — tend to worship at the altar of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” . . . .
[Sidebar: these are not Constitutional rights, at least in the sense that they are not found explicitly in the Constitution. They are found in the Declaration of Independence, which is not part of our Constitution. The Declaration states that they are rights given by our Creator. They have also been enshrined in case law — by the very same Supreme Court many libertarians want to abolish. But they are not in the Constitution. End Sidebar.]
. . . The main problem I have with libertarians is that they tend to focus pretty exclusively on those rights as they apply on an individual basis, and they tend to ignore those very same rights as they apply on a societal basis. In other words, they usually don’t care if their life, liberty and pursuit of happiness interferes with someone else’s life, liberty, or pursuit of happiness. Because, hey, liberty, you know?
Let’s take abortion as an example, both because it provides a very stark illustration, and because it outs the elephant in the room from the get-go. Libertarians tend to be pro-choice because they believe that people should have the right to do whatever they want with their own bodies. That makes sense — right up to the point where you point out that by having an abortion the mother is actually doing what they want with somebody else’s body. Nobody argues anymore that an unborn child is not a life. Even pro-choice liberals don’t seriously make that argument anymore. The advances in medical science have pretty well established that life begins at conception, and so that argument is off the table. Consequently, libertarians are on the horns of a dilemma: they want the mother to be able to do what she wants with her body, but if they are going to be intellectually and ideologically consistent (a huge honkin’ “if”!), they should also want the unborn child to be able to exercise his or her right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. (Presumably, given the intelligent choice, the child would choose to live and pursue liberty and happiness). So whose rights win?
The same thing goes for decriminalizing drugs. I actually used to be in this camp. For years I believed that we should decriminalize drugs and let the addicts kill themselves with their own vice, thereby improving the gene pool. This is an extremely un-Christian, not to mention unsympathetic or merciful point of view, and I have since changed my views. But leave the moral component aside; it also presents the same libertarian dilemma as abortion: where does the drug-user’s right to pursue his happiness end and my right to life begin? Sure, some users of marijuana never go on to harder drugs. And some drug users never commit crimes. But study after study after study shows that hard-core drug users are more likely to commit criminal acts in order to support their habit. In 2002 about a quarter of convicted property and drug offenders had committed their crimes to get money for drugs. When drug users steal to finance their abuse, they infringe on other people’s pursuit of happiness. Between 1987 and 2007, on average 5.1% of homicides were drug-related. These people were definitely infringing on someone else’s right to life. In 2007, about 26% of the victims of violence reported that the offender was using drugs or alcohol. Again, these were violent crimes, fueled by drugs and alcohol.
But even leaving crime out of the equation, the fact is that drugs influence other behaviors, such as driving. In Colorado, the number of fatalities where a driver tested positive for any cannabinoid increased from 55 (11% of all fatalities) in 2013 to 139 (21% of all fatalities) in 2017 (Colorado voted to legalize marijuana in 2014). That’s nearly a 300% increase in four years. In 2018, 42% of all drivers killed in motor vehicle crashes in California, who were tested, tested positive for legal and/or illegal drugs. That percentage has been increasing every year. I could offer similar statistics for Washington, Oregon, and other states which have legalized marijuana, but you get the point. The innocent citizens who died in those traffic accidents may or may not have voted to legalize marijuana, but they did not vote, choose, or otherwise give their consent to be killed by a drug-user. Who’s rights are more important?
My argument isn’t that drugs should be illegal (although I believe that argument can easily be made). My point is that for most social (and many economic and political) issues, there is almost always a point at which somebodies “liberty” collides with another person’s rights. I would actually have a whole lot more sympathy for the argument against seat belt laws. I mean, I think riding/driving in a car without wearing a seat belt is really rather stupid, but at least the case can be made that it truly doesn’t really hurt anybody but the driver/rider. I mean, I suppose in a really wild fluke of an accident the moron flying through the windshield could wind up hitting a random passing pedestrian, but I’m willing to take that chance in the name of liberty. What I don’t want is someone’s “right” to get high interfering with my right to safely travel our highways and byways — wearing my seat belt. Most vocal libertarians don’t have an answer for this fundamental inconsistency in their ideology.
All of which leads to the conclusion that the opposite of government overreach and regulation is not liberty, but anarchy. Now, of course most libertarians will admit the problem when confronted with it in stark terms, and will confess that some laws and regulations are needed. But try to pin them down on where to draw that line, and you will get interrupted by very loud crickets. On the continuum between liberalism and libertarianism, conservatism is a better ideological option. Conservatism recognizes that true liberty requires some regulation, some laws. Finding that fine line is the trick.
So, bottom line, I’ll not likely join the libertarian cause (or Facebook page). Again, thank you for the very kind souls who recognized a kinship there and invited me into the family.
Does the Conservative Party still exist? Wonder what they’re up to these days.
