Localism & Liberty

We libertarians are frustrated time and time again by our inability to enact any real reform toward greater personal and economic freedom. Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr recently remarked that, "Everybody is libertarian about something." Barr couldn't be more right, but unfortunately its true the other way around; everybody may be upset by government interfering in one area, but most people can probably think of at least one more where they'd like more intervention. Even I, the quintessential libertarian, hold positions on some issues that other libertarians vehemently disagree with; my position on the environment is to the left of most of my allies (although perhaps not as left-wing as most liberals) and my strong support for the death penalty among other things put me in a category among some of the toughest law and order conservatives (although I still disagree with them on the legality of consensual "crimes" like drug use and prostitution). I can even point to the strongly anti-legal abortion, anti-open immigration views of both Bob Barr and Ron Paul as examples of prominent libertarians gone adrift on certain issues. The point is that libertarians are always going to have a tough time because relatively few people are in total doctrinaire libertarians.

Recent polls have shown that only 16% of Americans have what can be described as broadly libertarian views (and only 2% identify themselves as libertarian in name). Of course, liberals and conservatives have the same problem that libertarians have with numbers, albeit to a slightly lesser degree. With the way the numbers break down the idea of any group enacting their agenda in the current political climate is a pipe dream. We can complain as much as we want about divisiveness in politics but it is simply never going to go away, at least not the way things are structured now. However, there could be a way to reduce divisiveness and also give everybody more of what they want than they get now.

Under our current system whoever gets elected president may claim to be elected by the people, but in reality about half the population would prefer it if somebody else were in office. As far as Congress is concerned a good number of people are continually upset by the actions of the party in charge (whichever party that may be at the time) but they find themselves helpless because they can only vote for their own congressman and not the entire Congress. Sorry to say, but it's become a zero-sum game and its moving more in that direction. The culprit, of course, is increasing centralization in government and the diminishing importance of communities in relation to states and states in relation to the Federal government. The more centralized that government is, the less it reflects the will of the people. In a centralized system it is always going to reflect the relative will of a number hovering around 51%, but with some exceptions most states (and even more so most localities) tend to be more in one direction than the other and as a result a more local system would reflect better the will of all the people within their own area rather than imposing the will of a slim majority on everybody.

Centrists often proclaim that compromise on specific policies is the solution that will make the situation win-win rather than win-lose. Unfortunately, compromise depends on one's perspective, and even if everybody wins a little bit everybody loses a little bit too, and in truth we already have compromise because we are deadlocked between liberals and conservatives and the compromises that come about are more or less worked out in shady backroom deals involving special interests. The naivety of consensus-oriented centrists is that they don't seek to eliminate a problem, they simply propose that compromises be less messy and by extension that politicians think of the good of the nation rather than the good of themselves and their supporters and by extension that human nature itself be altered toward a more noble orientation, something that simply cannot be done. The centrists are blind because they think that they are proposing an alternative to the left-right divide when in reality they are proposing absolutely nothing new at all.

The answer to the problem lies with localism; that is reorienting the emphasis around local, rather than national politics. We should devolve Federal power back to the states and leave the Federal government to perform its Constitutional duties, which basically are managing trade, defense, establishing post offices, among other things that fall far short of what the Feds are doing now. Some non-libertarians will object immediately because it sounds like I am proposing getting rid of most of what government does. The truth is that I'd like to get rid of most of what government does, but shifting it down to the state level doesn't do that in and of itself. In fact, conservatives and libertarians who would probably support my plan on the outset probably wouldn't like it if they lived in Massachusetts, New York, or California, because with policies relating to education, social services, healthcare, etc. removed from the nationwide debate, liberals in the deep blue states will almost certainly get around to enacting programs like universal healthcare, among other things. However, Wyoming, Utah, and other right-wing states could finally experiment in true free market healthcare rather than having universal healthcare mandated nationwide and not being able to experiment (or continuing to deal with the muddled compromise between markets and socialism that we have now).

The ultimate result of devolving Federal powers to states and communities will almost certainly force politicians to seek real solutions and actually deliver on promises, and that may be the only thing that stops such a plan from ever being put into practice. Politicians love to exploit ideology in order to win office and keep power. When politics are run at the Federal level they know they are never going to get what they want, but this is a good thing for them despite what it seems. No matter how ineffective politicians in some of the more ideologically cohesive districts and states may become they will always be able to win because they will always be able to say that if only it weren't for the other guy, their plans could get through. Under a more localized system, ideology would finally be put to the test in practice rather than language and as a result the days of politicians and other social leaders exploiting it would probably be over. Indeed, I can conclude that the only way a person could seriously object to my proposal is if they were simply fooled by politicians or were politicians themselves. My plan would allow the states to become laboratories of public policies where it could be demonstrated what works and what doesn't. As a result, the policies that actually work would probably be implemented in other states and the ones that didn't would be repealed.

Writing specifically to my fellow libertarians now, I have concluded that devolution is the only path to success for libertarianism nationwide. There is no doubt that (the Free State Project in New Hampshire not withstanding) certain states are very libertarian in some areas and others are very libertarian in others. When true free markets are allowed to operate in certain areas and when true social democracy is implemented in others, people will see the ultimate superiority of laissez-faire capitalism to all else. In the same sense, certain states with a live and let live mentality will no doubt attempt reform at failed policies relating to victimless crimes, gun control, and other such undue interferences in the personal lives of individuals and the overwhelming successes of such policies will stand in stark contrast to the failures of statism. The truth is that most Americans simply don't care about the economic policy of Hong Kong or the policies of the Netherlands on drug use and other consensual crimes, but if such policies were actually practiced in an American context it would lead many Americans to reconsider their beliefs. Successes in different areas will eventually be merged into a libertarian whole that will spread like wildfire around the world. Nonetheless, the exact words that I have spoken here could be repeated with minor changes in the context of any other ideology, giving people of all opinions an incentive to support devolution and they are equally entitled to their opinions as we libertarians are to ours.

The main question at this point is; how can we implement devolution and greater local control? The simple answer is quite cliché; raise awareness. We've got to engage in dialogue among people of all political stripes about the benefits of localism. In addition, we need to reintroduce the Tenth Amendment to public debate. The Tenth Amendment limits the powers of the Federal government to those constitutionally specified and delegates the rest of the powers to the states. We here so much about the First Amendment, the Second Amendment, the Fourth Amendment etc., but the Tenth Amendment is rarely discussed despite being one of the most important and probably the single section of the Constitution (with the exception of those pertaining to foreign intervention) that I can point to that is violated more than any other. Thankfully, there is a Tenth Amendment Center that is beginning the long fight to restore the Tenth Amendment to its former position. Bob Barr was right when he said that everybody was libertarian about something, and this could be the one issue that everybody is actually libertarian on. From this point forward, the only place the cause of localism has to go is up.

SOURCES

RCADE, "Bob Barr: Everybody is libertarian about something," The Drudge Retort

Steven White, "Ron Paul's Abortion Rhetoric," The American Prospect

B. Miller, "Victims of the Bob Barr/Ron Paul Immigration Policies, "Last Free Voice

"Poll Results - Libertarian Litmus Test," The Advocates For Self-Government