“Libertarians emerging as Trump resistance,” Politico declared in a recent report on how liberty movement political leaders and organizations—Rand Paul, Justin Amash, Campaign for Liberty, Young Americans for Liberty—have quickly become the primary faction on the right willing to criticize Donald Trump.
Campaign for Liberty head Norm Singleton (disclosure: Norm is a personal friend) told Politico, “There’s a tendency, especially in the honeymoon period, that people can be unwilling to criticize a president-elect.”
“The liberty movement, though, because it tends not to view politics through a partisan lens… they’re more willing to not view it as, ‘Well, we can’t be as critical of Donald Trump as we were of Barack Obama because he’s our [party’s] president,’” Singleton added.
Singleton is right. Our movement, originally born out of Ron Paul’s antiwar challenge to George W. Bush, flourished and maturated as an oppositional force during the Obama years, and now, despite a tumultuous 2016 election, remains standing as the Trump era dawns.
Criticizing the political establishment, Democrat or Republican, has always been a primary and critical liberty movement function.
Yet, though Politico’s picture of the liberty movement was comprehensive enough, it was still incomplete. The necessarily limited focus was on the most popular face of political libertarianism in the United States—Paul family-related, Republican-aligned, center-right figures and groups.
But within the liberty movement coalition, there are non-conservative and left libertarians, most of whom reflexively loathe Trump. There are anarchists and “paleolibertarians” who have cheered Trump. There are conventional conservatives who have leaned liberty in the past, but are now so giddy over Trump that they seem annoyed libertarians would dare criticize the president-elect on anything.
All of these categories have been important parts of the liberty movement throughout its history. We’ve been a broad coalition from the very beginning.
We’ve been a broad coalition from the very beginning.
But right now, there seems to be more dissension as we begin 2017 than there has been at any time in the history of the movement.
After the election I began putting together my thoughts on where the liberty movement might be headed and it turned out to be a much longer analysis than I originally envisioned. A 700-word column just wasn’t going to do the subject justice. Our movement has too many moving parts.
But I thought doing so, surveying the movement, albeit from my perspective, could be helpful. Clarifying, even.
The natural tendency of political movements is to factionalize. Given our hyper-individuality, libertarians are particularly prone to this. I have long thought it more interesting to find points of commonality for the greater good—to try to hold things together as much as can be expected. Despite some of my critiques in this piece, that is my purpose here.
My hope is that moving forward, the liberty movement will continue to fight for the same principles and ideas that originally brought us together. I’m certain we will.
There’s as much to be hopeful about in the Trump era as there is to fear.
I have been in this movement from day one. It is the center of my professional life, and much of my personal life. Many of my friends and allies have similar biographies. Needless to say, I care deeply about the liberty movement’s future and success.
So, in this unusual moment in our movement’s history and our country’s, let us reflect on who we are, what we believe, and what the future might look like for liberty under President Donald Trump.
Who are we? The liberty movement has always been both political and philosophical
Some of us came to the liberty movement as fed-up conservatives, some came from the left (often progressives who already agreed with us on foreign policy or civil liberties and began to see the light on economics), and others were cured of their apathy.
So many were young, discovering libertarianism for the first time. Some were longtime libertarians reenergized by Ron Paul. There are so many journeys and so many different stories. I love hearing them, actually.
Libertarians had always been thinkers. Now they would be political players, too.
Yet despite liberty movement’s members’ different origins and the various factions they would form or become parts of, the movement in its totality has also always been something particular.
Yes, libertarianism as a philosophy and movement that has been around for a very long time. However, what is today called the liberty movement didn’t begin until 2007, when a professorial Ron Paul explained to an angry Rudy Giuliani on a debate stage how our wrongheaded foreign policy emboldens America’s enemies.
That historic moment marked the first time libertarianism in the United States began to explode as a new and potentially formidable political force. Paul’s political enemies who declared his campaign dead after that exchange couldn’t have been more wrong.
Libertarians had always been thinkers. Now they would be political players, too.
At the beginning of the movement, The American Conservative’s Daniel McCarthy (also a personal friend and Ron Paul campaign 2008 staff member) described how it was taking shape: “The Ron Paul ‘revolution,’ as it is known to its adherents, has made deep inroads into an area where Republicans are otherwise weak: energizing and mobilizing young people.”
“Already, Paul has inspired other Republicans, mostly young themselves, to campaign for Congress on his antiwar, fiscally conservative platform,” McCarthy observed in 2008. “A new youth movement is also coming into being as Students for Ron Paul reconfigures into a permanent libertarian-conservative activist organization, Young Americans for Liberty.”
McCarthy was talking at the time about emerging Republican liberty candidates like North Carolina’s B.J. Lawson and Michigan’s Justin Amash, and also a libertarian youth organization that today is the largest in the country, surpassing even College Republicans.
In 2015, I described Ron Paul’s political impact in context, “There was a libertarian movement before the liberty movement, in the same way there was a conservative movement before Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan. The conservative movement just mattered much less before Goldwater and Reagan. These men helped popularize conservatism. Particularly Reagan. Few conservatives would disagree.”
“Libertarianism mattered less before Ron Paul. He helped popularize it. He made it mainstream.”
But it was also Ron Paul, the politician who ran for president as a Republican twice and inspired his son Rand Paul, Justin Amash and Kentucky’s Thomas Massie to take up his liberty torch in Congress, who also emphasized the primacy of philosophy over politics.
Pragmatism vs. radicalism: Are we an educational or political movement?
A defining feature of much of libertarianism has long been that many adherents reject politics. Yet a prominent, and I would argue primary, aspect of the liberty movement is that it has been a political vehicle for that philosophy, something libertarians had never really enjoyed before (with apologies to the good people of the Libertarian Party, who, despite achieving more in 2016 than ever, are still relatively incomparable to the larger movement Ron Paul sparked).
As with any movement, there are factions. There has always been an argument within the liberty movement over whether it’s more important to use politics primarily as a platform to educate the masses about libertarianism, or to play to win electorally, to advance and implement liberty policies materially.
More simply put: Should we educate or be political?
The answer has always been both. The liberty movement has always done both. Nor are they mutually exclusive.
Arguably the greatest single educational liberty act in the movement’s history was also an overtly political one. Rand Paul’s historic 2013 filibuster over the targeted drone killings of U.S. citizens succeeded in swinging public opinion by a whopping 50 percent in the direction of liberty, galvanizing left and right around constitutional principle.
When Edward Snowden educated the global public in 2013 about the U.S. government’s controversial mass surveillance practices, between the Democrats who defended the Obama administration and Republicans hawks who literally wanted Snowden dead, it was Rand Paul and Justin Amash who sounded the alarm most in Congress. Others who eventually did the same were mostly following Paul and Amash’s lead.
If Paul and Amash had not been there, Snowden’s revelations would have mattered less. But the political stances they took were also educational.
Again, the liberty movement has always done both.
Ron Paul did, and does, both politics and education. As noted, Rand Paul, Justin Amash and Thomas Massie do both. The more political activist-oriented Young Americans for Liberty still does both. Students for Liberty, which specifically focuses on education, still does both. Reason does both. Lewrockwell.com does both. FEE’s Jeffrey Tucker has done both. Sheldon Richman does both. FFF’s Jacob Hornberger does both. Libertarian pundit Julie Borowski does both. Anti-political, right-leaning anarchists and paleolibertarians also do both (this paragraph can only be so long, sorry to all I left out!).
Even so, education and politics are still different, with both featuring different inherent pitfalls.
Important differences between philosophy and politics
When dealing primarily with philosophy, you have the luxury of being as radical as you like because it’s theory, and philosophers often do go to extremes. For example, many of the overtly non-political libertarians I know, from academics to activists, believe the inevitable end to their anti-statist philosophy is anarchism. Many even try to outdo each other in their anarchism.
Pragmatism is necessary for politics, but there is always justified fear that moderating too much might surrender the philosophy
When working in politics, being too radical or extreme can be a benefit or a hindrance depending on the context precisely because you’re dealing with actual people in the form of voters. Pragmatism is necessary for politics, but there is always justified fear that moderating too much might surrender the philosophy, and thus defeat the purpose of pursing a political agenda in the first place. I’ve seen some go too far in this direction, once even watching someone attempt to sell libertarians on the supposed liberty value of Mitt Romney. I’ve seen others give establishment Republicans too much credit.
The philosophers will wag their fingers at political “sell-outs.” Political types dismiss the philosophical types as “crazies.” We all know this drill by now.
From the beginning of the liberty movement, there has been a tension between libertarians who feared politics would corrupt their philosophy, and those who saw no point in subscribing to that philosophy if it wasn’t going to be advanced politically. Along the same fault line, there has been a chasm between those who believe that few libertarian ideas are too extreme, contrasted with others who believe there can be no libertarian concept of governance without addressing practical concerns.
I believe this divide tells us much about what happened in 2016 election with our movement, and what the future of liberty politics might be under President Donald Trump.
For those unaware, I should be clear about where I stand.
I came to the liberty movement because of politics. My broad agreement with fellow libertarians on limited government, individual and constitutional rights, a more non-interventionist foreign policy and Austrian economics is not something I explore philosophically often because there are so many great minds within our movement that can do it better. I have always, from the beginning and for the foreseeable future, been most interested in how to advance these ideas politically.
Thankfully, today our movement is such an enduring force that we should hope to have influence on Trump’s administration, in tandem or opposition.
What do we believe?
The movement Ron Paul inspired has meant different things to different people over the years, but here are five broad areas where most can likely, or hopefully, agree.
A sincere dedication to smaller, constitutional government that both parties ignore (big government also being anti-free market).
The promotion of a restrained, prudent and more non-interventionist foreign policy.
Standing up for civil liberties that both parties abuse.
Putting principles before parties, or shattering what some have called the “false left-right paradigm.”
Championing individualism over the collectivist ideologies that plague left and right.
To recap: Less government. Less war. Less partisanship. More liberty. More individualism.
Libertarianism… has largely embraced the best parts of the right and left, while rejecting the worst parts.
Acknowledging this formula, libertarianism as a philosophy and as a more recent political movement has largely embraced the best parts of the right and left, while rejecting the worst parts.
While as a liberty conservative, I believe our most comfortable political home in the U.S. is on the right because of significant disagreements with progressives on core economic beliefs, there are left and right libertarians and always have been.
There always should be. This transpartisan dynamic is integral to the character and continuing success of the liberty movement.
The 2016 election was turbulent for the entire movement, with the explicit liberty presidential candidates like Rand Paul and later Libertarian Gary Johnson falling short, and much of the movement falling into pro-, anti- or neutral Trump camps as the cycle progressed.
Different factions and individuals—including me—were wrong about many things, and others were proven right when few thought they would be. No doubt, this will continue over the next four years.
Now let’s look at what various liberty factions did in 2016 and what these distinctions all might mean going forward.
Rand Paul or bust: Political right libertarians
Americans desperately wanted something different than just another establishment politician in 2016. Rand Paul banked on that, running as a “different kind of a Republican” who would meld traditionally non-GOP voters with the existing party base, using liberty issues to create a new coalition that could include a majority of conservative Republicans, but also more independents, young people and minorities. If you look at the primary polling, it was often Paul who did best with these groups.
Then Donald Trump began to rise.
Looking back, it’s almost impossible to fathom how any would-be anti-establishment Republican candidate—and certainly any establishment candidate—was going to overcome the Trump phenomenon in 2016. I’ve heard some try to make the argument that it was possible, but not a single one convincingly.
Being angry or bitter that Rand Paul, or Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio—or whoever any Republican voter’s favored candidate was—didn’t win is something very different than saying they could have won.
What political right libertarians got wrong
As a pragmatist, Paul thought an approach that could be key to mainstreaming libertarianism might be to explain our positions in more appealing ways, particularly to conservative audiences still leery of libertarians. This is a standard method for most political right libertarians, and has long been a professional goal of mine.
As Amash said in 2014, “I don’t see much space between classical liberalism, conservatism in the American sense, and libertarianism. I think they’re basically the same philosophy.” Many libertarians also believe that our positions are ones most Americans would agree with if only explained in the right way, often pointing to polling data that back up these claims.
The neocons and anti-libertarian left have always been justified in their fears about our movement.
The neoconservatives have always portrayed Ron Paul as not a “real” conservative, and as more on the left began to find civil liberties and foreign policy champions in Ron and Rand Paul and their GOP allies, the progressive establishment was always quick to say these libertarian Republicans were just as bad as any other red meat right-winger (one of my primary jobs as Ron Paul’s 2012 campaign blogger was to counter these attacks from both right and left against Dr. Paul).
The neocons and anti-libertarian left have always been justified in their fears about our movement. Libertarianism is something different and in so many ways, something better than what the conventional right and left has had to offer. The Republican and Democratic establishments did not want their constituents to discover this. It was up to libertarians to broadcast this effectively, against our enemies and in sync with a majority of voters.
This was part of the messaging war Rand Paul had planned to wage during the election. Unfortunately for him and our movement, few wanted to hear it. The mood among voters wasn’t even in the vicinity of this script. If there is a libertarian moment to be had, the 2016 election didn’t appear to be it. The full-bore, populist red meat strategies of Trump and even Ted Cruz proved to be more successful.
But it turned out Americans really did want a different kind of Republican: Donald Trump. They wanted someone who acknowledged their pain, particularly the white working class who felt abandoned by political and cultural elites. Perhaps Paul could have also tapped into what Trump did. It’s arguable. But realistically, I just can’t see how anyone in the 2016 GOP field could have possibly outTrumped, Trump.
Has Paul been too political at times? Too pragmatic? Too eager to build coalitions as opposed to always standing alone, come hell or high water (“like his father,” goes the refrain)? Perhaps, and perhaps not. But the perception in 2016 was, by too many, is that he was too pragmatic, or at last compared to Trump or Cruz. Donald Trump being the exact opposite (and having zero political record) paid off significant dividends including the White House, but Trump was also a special creature where things he said or did would have destroyed most candidates, and yet he emerged each time virtually unscathed.
In retrospect, Rand Paul probably would have performed better if he ran around naked screaming. I’m only half-jesting. That kind of outrageous behavior would have gotten him more attention than simply being a reasonable libertarian Republican who wanted to chart a new course for the party. Still, I can’t fathom anyone thinking this would be good political advice for Paul or any other Republican candidate in 2014 and 2015.
Also, in retrospect, the liberty movement might not have also ever taken shape if Donald Trump had decided to run in 2008 (which he teased), or if Ron Paul’s first Republican presidential foray was in 2012 or even 2016. Or perhaps Trump would not have got the same traction in 2008. We simply don’t know. It’s impossible to know. The conditions on the electoral ground were different in each cycle.
We do know that the pragmatists, Rand Paul chief among them, miscalculated. I did too.
What political right libertarians got right
Unfortunately for Paul in 2016, he wasn’t willing to lash out wantonly and make sweet-sounding promises he probably couldn’t have kept. It was liberty principles that inspired him to run, and it is adherence to those principles that continues to animate him today.
The primary national political players in today’s liberty movement are separate individuals with different personalities who are passionate about liberty, but each is in Washington for all the right reasons and that consistently shines through. We need 100 more like them (as of this writing, there are potentially at least two more on the horizon in 2018).
Perhaps most importantly, liberty Republicans offer something different. In 2016, voters undeniably wanted change, but, again, it happened to be Trump. Political right libertarians must, and I believe are, trying to learn lessons from the election about how they might do better in the future.
All of American politics got its head rung in 2016, including libertarians.
In the meantime, we should all thank God that Paul, Amash and Massie are in Congress right now. For every promising thing Trump had said about foreign policy or the Federal Reserve, there are a dozen more times he’s vowed to do demonstrably anti-libertarian things.
In the Republican Party, those most likely to stand up to the president will be liberty Republicans. Rand Paul has already thrown down the gauntlet more than once in defiance of Trump.
All of American politics got its head rung in 2016, including libertarians.
The political libertarian right is by no means limited to these congressional figures. The youth activist arm is Young Americans for Liberty, there is the Ron Paul-founded Campaign for Liberty, and you can read about the activities of political right libertarians at sites like Rare, Reason, The American Conservative, The Libertarian Republic, and Antiwar.com (sorry to the many I no doubt left out).
Political right libertarians were right to stick to principle, then and now, and not to attempt to refashion themselves in some Trumpian mold to adjust to the popular fury of the moment. Pragmatism is one thing. Selling out is quite another.
Even for political libertarians, philosophy must always be a priority.
Libertarians for Trump: Philosophical right libertarians
As a former Republican congressman, Ron Paul is both a political and philosophical right libertarian, with very deep roots in the latter. Paul predictably supported his son for president in 2016, but was outspoken against Trump and never endorsed the Republican nominee.
But many of Ron Paul’s friends and allies basically did.
There are different types of philosophical right libertarians. For my purposes here, I will focus on one of the most high-profile figures, who has had one of the closest relationships with our movement’s founder, and who has also been one of the most integral thought leaders in the liberty movement.
LewRockwell.com (LRC) has long been one of the most popular liberty websites, named after its founder, Ron Paul’s former chief of staff and Mises University Founder and CEO, Lew Rockwell. Rockwell coined the term “paleolibertarian” in the 1990s to describe certain types of radical right libertarians, though he has since abandoned it. (I use it occasionally here not out of disrespect, but as an easy identifier many of my paleolibertarian friends haven’t seemed to mind.)
LewRockwell.com was Ron Paul central during the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections, and of course long before that.
But throughout the liberty movement’s existence there was little to nothing about Rand Paul, Justin Amash or Thomas Massie at Lewrockwell.com or related sites. When you did read something there, there was a decent chance it was criticizing these prominent libertarian Republicans. After all, they are still politicians.
Philosophical right libertarians—anarchist, paleolibertarian, or otherwise—reject politics wholesale and therefore virtually all politicians. Their one exception to this rule was Ron Paul.
Until Donald Trump happened.
In fact, for at least the latter half of 2016 and still now, there was more news and opinion about the day-to-day activities of Donald Trump at LRC than about Rand Paul’s monumental filibuster, or Justin Amash’s heroic play to end mass surveillance in 2013 that only failed in the House by 12 votes.
There is logic in philosophical right libertarians’ outsized interest in politics when it comes to Donald Trump: Being anti-political, philosophical libertarians want to challenge and disrupt the system. Many (but not all) see Trump as their best opportunity to do it. They see him as the anti-politician—a solid anti-establishment hero for a libertarian faction with an aversion to politics.
Not all philosophical right libertarians reject politics. In my experience, the younger you skew among this group, the more you will find a nuanced approach to politics. Some of their intellectual leaders even supported Rand Paul for president originally, most notably Walter Block.
But the overarching theme among right philosophical libertarians is still anti-politics and yet now pro-Trump.
Many only appeared to get excited about the 2016 election when Trump began to rise, and have continued to see other non-Ron Paul or non-Donald Trump politicians as dangerously directing libertarian minds toward the supposedly fruitless effort of politics.
What philosophical right libertarians got wrong
If a constant danger for political right libertarians is being detrimentally pragmatic, philosophical right libertarians often dart hard in the other direction—they go extreme.
My favorite thing about liberty icon Murray Rothbard is that he insisted libertarians should be involved in politics, to the chagrin of many of his fellow radicals. But Rothbard—who promoted anarchism—would also end up attaching himself to the most extreme movements available, no matter how socialist, racist or authoritarian. (No one should construe this as an attack on Rothbard or philosophical right libertarians; it’s an attempt to help explain in a larger context how some libertarians have ended up allying with controversial or even anti-libertarian movements.)
Rebelliousness is part of any worthwhile revolution, but by no means the whole.
The general argument then, and now, was that any formidable anti-establishment grassroots movement represents a genuine challenge to elites and the existing political order. It need not be a libertarian movement to help achieve libertarian ends, goes the logic.
Before Ron Paul’s movement, I would have defended and even participated in this type of thinking. But I have since come to believe there has to be something more substantive to achieve long term victory—particularly results—than merely being anti-establishment at any cost.
Rebelliousness is part of any worthwhile revolution, but by no means the whole.
My major disagreement with philosophical right libertarians over most of the last decade is that Ron Paul’s political accomplishments in 2008 and 2012 should have been capitalized upon institutionally, and thankfully they were. Paul’s electoral defeats should never have been a cue to reject politics wholesale and revert back to mere philosophy or academics alone (for example, after antiwar Republican Pat Buchanan made an impact in the 1996 GOP primary, no Buchanan-style political figures or groups followed).
But political organizing or strategy is simply not what most philosophical right libertarians are interested in.
They prefer to raise hell.
In the 2008 and 2012 elections, Ron Paul was the most “extreme” thing to support, so to speak, but he was also, conveniently and heroically, the most libertarian thing. Dr. Paul was the logical choice for president for libertarians of any type.
In 2016, Donald Trump was simply the most extreme thing. In comparison, however it was rationalized at various junctures during the election, the underlying reason the actual libertarians in the 2016 election (Paul and Johnson) were rejected by many philosophical right libertarians is precisely because they were perceived as too mainstream or moderate.
To radicals, right and left, the worst possible thing you can be is mainstream.
But now, for the first time ever in modern American politics, the most extreme thing has actually won the White House.
So now what?
Since the election, I’ve watched anarchists and people who supposedly hate politics try to defend or ignore obvious anti-libertarian things related to the incoming administration, with some even declaring their absolute loyalty to Trump, right or wrong. Today, Lewrockwell.com, a diehard anti-establishment site that throughout the aughts condemned GOP voters who elected George W. Bush as “red state fascists,” now regularly defends a Republican president that other radical libertarians worry is an actual fascist.
It’s weird.
To radicals, right and left, the worst possible thing you can be is mainstream.
It’s the more pragmatic political right libertarians that Politico cites who are most willing to criticize the incoming president of their own party, while many libertarian radicals continue to be forgiving of Trump. There are also philosophical right libertarians who have criticized Trump and his picks, and even Lew Rockwell would probably not claim to be a supporter in the same way Walter Block has been—but there is undeniably a pro-Trump arch currently in this faction of the liberty movement.
With Trump’s victory, much of the philosophical libertarian right has been turned on its head.
Rockwell said of libertarians in 2012, in a great and defiant quote that even became a popular meme, “We don’t beg for scraps from the imperial table, and we don’t seek a seat at that table. We want to knock the table over.” But now LRC is one of the likeliest libertarian sites to find favorable news on who, quite literally, might sit at Trump’s table.
Prioritizing extreme things is how you end up in the bizarre place of believing Rand Paul and Justin Amash aren’t worth libertarians’ time, but Donald Trump is. Philosophical right libertarians right now are too often in the strange position of defending the incoming regime in the name of being against regimes.
There is another unavoidable irony on the liberty movement right. I highlight it only to help foster, hopefully, an important point of agreement moving forward.
Some of Trump’s picks have been good and others have been bad from a libertarian perspective, but there’s only one surefire way that he and future presidents will have a better, more liberty-friendly pool to choose from: Having more libertarians involved in politics.
Philosophical right libertarians have long said say there’s a limit to what can be accomplished in politics, but now, with Trump’s victory, we’re learning more definitively that there is also a limit to defining libertarianism purely as permanent revolution.
Simply put: Once you overthrow the establishment, what do you replace it with?
However you look at this dilemma and whichever side you favor, pragmatic political right libertarians have an important role to play here. If Trump’s administration is favorable to liberty ideas, it will be due to pressure and influence from within or without by liberty movement figures and allies.
And if more libertarians do continue to become involved in politics, chances are those candidates are going to look more like Rand Paul, Justin Amash or Thomas Massie than something more radical.
There are limits to political pragmatism. There are limits to extremism, too.
What philosophical right libertarians got right
The most obvious thing philosophical right libertarians got right is the same constant point their left philosophical brethren preach—without a solid liberty philosophical foundation, there’s no point to even thinking about politics.
Sites like LRC, organizations like the indispensable Mises Institute, figures like Mises President Jeff Deist, Rockwell, Tom Woods (still arguably the best right libertarian speaker in the movement), economist and karaoke king Robert Murphy of the Free Market Institute, Antiwar.com’s Justin Raimondo and others, continue to educate and inspire countless libertarians, particularly young people.
But most pertinent to this election and Donald Trump, philosophical right libertarians got two big things right.
The first was a need to challenge elites even if it took supporting an un-libertarian candidate to do so. Those ideologically and emotionally wedded to the success of Rand Paul’s campaign (none more so than me) were slow to see that Trump did pose a direct challenge to libertarians’ natural political enemies—the neoconservatives, the larger Republican establishment, political and cultural elites on the left. Sen. Paul called Trump’s victory a “repudiation of the liberal elite” the day after the election, and it certainly was, among other things.
But am I still glad Trump defeated Hillary Clinton? You bet.
I could not vote for Trump because he was too virulently anti-libertarian on too many issues. For every criticism of the Iraq War or bashing of the Federal Reserve, there were calls for national stop and frisk, more mass surveillance and even the execution of whistleblower hero Edward Snowden, to begin a very long list of offenses. My political pragmatism has its limits.
But am I still glad Trump defeated Hillary Clinton? You bet.
I’m optimistic that there is a chance for libertarian figures—and more importantly, liberty policies—to flourish under President Trump than ever could have been hoped for under Clinton, or even any other Republican president not named Paul.
A second significant thing philosophical right libertarians got right—or perhaps this was just Lew Rockwell—is the inherent messiness of what any pro-liberty political process might look like.
There is not—and never was going to be—an uncompromised liberty safe space for our movement to exist within, between what Ron Paul started and what any libertarian political successes might look like moving forward. The calls for purity at any cost, and against accepting politics or any political realities, have typically come from philosophical libertarians, both right and left.
But Rockwell wrote something particularly poignant in December: “So the Trump years will, no doubt, include their share of statist idiocy and outrages. That’s been true of every presidential administration any of us living today can remember.”
Rockwell continued (emphasis added):
But it’s unreasonable to expect the changes we hope for to occur according to a neat playbook. Presumably, we all assumed that before we could reach the libertarian goal we’re striving for, the major institutions that have poisoned the public mind against liberty would have to be shaken up, and the public alerted to their true nature, one way or another.
Amen. I hope this quote becomes the next popular Lew Rockwell meme.
“One way” for libertarians to challenge elites and their institutions was Ron Paul—and the elite knew it. “Another” way is what Rand Paul, Justin Amash, and Thomas Massie have done—all of whom have also been constantly and repeatedly been targeted by elites, fearful of these libertarian Republicans’ growing influence. Most of the elite attacks against Rand Paul have come from neoconservatives within his own party (I should know).
And yes, another way to challenge elites has been Donald Trump. But a significant problem with Trump, as opposed to these other explicitly liberty examples, is after elites are challenged or weakened, you simply don’t know what you’re going to get. We generally know what a Paul, or an Amash, or even a Supreme Court justice appointment like the liberty-friendly Mike Lee would probably do based on their ideologically driven careers. With Trump, it’s a crapshoot.
Trump could now just as easily bolster the elites he’s challenged. Of course, unlike these liberty Republican examples, he’s also going to be president of the United States. But whether in his administration or a future one, you will ultimately need leaders ideologically committed to liberty to see any such progress occur in the political realm.
Still, Rockwell’s larger point stands. Any political endeavor is always going to be messy by its very nature. Four years ago, I made a similar argument to right and left philosophical libertarians, that what our political success might look like in real-world terms would probably never look like the “neat playbook” many of them imagined.
Gary Johnson or bust: Left and non-conservative libertarians
As a libertarian conservative who comes primarily from the Ron and Rand Paul world, I must admit I’m not as intimately familiar with much of left libertarianism, though I call a number of left-leaning libertarians friends and certainly allies.
Among those figures, the Libertarian Institute’s Sheldon Richman comes to mind. I first met left libertarian <a href="http://www.independent