On Leaving the Libertarian Faith

Those who have read many of my earlier essays on this website, particularly those starting three years ago will find that I once advocated a very muscular libertarianism. On of the features of Associated Content I like is that you can't delete things once they are here meaning that you have to take the stands as you did. I cannot simply cover up my libertarian past nor should I, it is a part of me and was for much of Bush's second term and a large part of Obama's first. I was truly a libertarian's libertarian and for some time flirted with anarcho-capitalism. I was a major Ron Paul supporter in 2008 and voted for eventual Libertarian nominee in November of that year. In the past year, however, something has changed in me and I have gradually drifted away from libertarian politics.

Otto von Habsburg, the 98 year old former heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne and German politician once said that, "Once you have tasted the opium of politics, you never get rid of it." I think that is 100% true. When I first became interested in politics at an early age I saw myself as being a Democrat since that is how I was raised to be. At some point in my teenage years, like so many others, I heard rumors about this author named Ayn Rand and her "controversial" books The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. The word "controversial" was all it took for me to seek out both books in my public library. I can't even remember now which of the two books I read first or the exact mechanics of how they led to libertarianism but the bottom line is that they did for me as they fatefully did for many other people. There is a saying among libertarians that, "It usually begins with Ayn Rand." In this Tea Party era with libertarianism at its zenith I'd say now it "usually begins with Ron Paul" but I became a libertarian before Ron Paul ran for president when it really usually did begin with Ayn Rand. The interesting thing is that Rand hated libertarians and would have abhorred being known primarily for her politics but the reality is that most people pick up Ayn Rand and only a few become full bore objectivists, the rest tend to take away primarily the political message of Rand.

In my libertarian phase I was, as I said before, truly a libertarian's libertarian. I wanted a gold standard, no government intervention in the economy, total legalization of all drugs, and all the standard libertarian fare right up to even more radical positions like abolishing all immigration laws. For a while I was big into Murray Rothbard's work and had a theoretical flirtation with anarcho-capitalism but in the end I just couldn't make logical sense of what the anarchists were saying. I was still, at the very least, perhaps a step away from anarchy. When Ron Paul (who I knew about before 2008) announced he was running for president in 2008 I was ecstatic and spread the Ron Paul message frantically. Looking back on it all when I see how popular Ron Paul has become and when I see the influence of the Tea Party I see myself as being sort of a pioneer of that whole movement. Before libertarianism became all the rage on the right me and my fellow libertarians were in the wilderness laying the groundwork in the first Ron Paul campaign. I doubt Ron Paul will win this time but I imagine he'll be able to actually win a primary or two unlike last time. The bottom line is this, whichever way you see it libertarianism is now a viable political force and Ron Paul more than any other person laid the groundwork for that with the help of fanatics who spread the message of libertarianism dutifully long before it graced Glenn Beck's lips. I say these things not to brag but to show that I have demonstrably libertarian credentials. Hell, all you have to do is scroll down my Associated Content user page and read what I wrote only two or three years ago to see my libertarian credentials.

Then something strange happened over the course of 2010 and early 2011. During that period I was quite busy with other pursuits besides politics which explains why I didn't write much during that period. Something interesting happens when you get away from politics, particularly if you are an ideologue as I was. The less time you spend reading the blogs of your side and listening to the voices of your side the less ideological you begin to feel. There is an interesting process at work. The more plugged in you get the more sure of your convictions you become so the irony is that becoming more political doesn't always make you more informed, it often simply makes you more ideological. That was the case with me. As I gradually unplugged from politics I gradually abandoned the libertarian faith. I call it a faith because it functions like that. Libertarianism must be taken on faith after all, since it has not been tried in its purest form. It is much like Marxism in that sense, even if Marxism is a faith at the opposite extreme. Now imagine you are a religious fundamentalist and imagine that you gradually unplug from organized religion for a year or two. Undoubtedly you will become less firm in your faith. I went through a period where I admit I was falling away from Christianity because I did not spend enough time in the Bible. I was more or less drifting toward a softened deism. The interesting thing is that the decline of my Christianity came as I grew more political and I did not pick up the Bible again until my political decline began. Ironically it was my picking up the Bible again that I credit my gradual drift away from libertarianism.

A lot of readers may put their palms to their face when I say, "Ironically it was picking up the Bible again that I credit my gradual drift away from libertarianism." At this point they expect a screed against the evils of libertarian relativism and how we must work to establish the Kingdom of God on Earth. This is hardly the case. In fact I do not think the Kingdom of God on Earth will be established by the free effort of men, but at the return of Jesus and the arrival of the world to come. My drift away from libertarianism came not because I came up with some new utopian vision but because I have come to reject utopian visions entirely as part of my new worldview. Libertarianism is undeniably utopian because it has little historical precedent and proposes a radical change in the entire system. It also has a certain Pelagian undertone, that men are good and thus can be trusted to do the right thing in complete freedom. Thus the free market will take care of every problem and there should be little limits to personal liberty because man would do what is in his best interest anyway. This Pelagian undertone also, ironically, underlies the visions of the communists although with a different emphasis. Communism of course requires man to be good and nobody to slack off. Since this is not the case it has to result to brutality to get everybody to cooperate. Libertarianism is more or less the same. The free market, they say, will take care of it all. Yet they fail to recognize that the Invisible Hand is a deity which does not exist and that the machinery of business is in the hands of fallible men. It does not make much for greedy men to trample on the rights of the poor. While we have never had a libertarian society we once had something much closer to it in at least the economic sphere. Howard Zinn's excellent book A People's History of the United States recounts some of the abuses of big business prior to the time those evil unions and evil regulations came along. It is horrific to say the least. It represents the worst of unchecked human will. Zinn of course is something of a naive leftist himself in that his rails against "liberals" for supporting the mixed economy and thus leaving more radical projects like anarcho-socialism to wither in the dust.

In my study of history I have learned many things and one of the things I have learned is that the Pelagian values of enlightenment liberalism have caused the greatest destruction to mankind of any phenomenon ever. For those who do not know what "Pelagian" means it refers to "Pelagius," a heretical theologian who denied original sin and believed all men to be essentially good. There is something hopeful in Pelagius as there is in enlightenment liberalism, who after all wants to believe man is a sinner and his striving for utopia impossible? It isn't pleasant. Yet in the end the ideologies that enlightenment liberalism spawned, classical liberalism, now called libertarianism, socialism, communism, etc. all ended up trampling on people. Libertarianism trampled on the rights of the workers and socialism did the trampling in the name of the workers but both of those ideologies ended up hurting people because in both cases their theorists were well intentioned men who believed that humanity was essentially good and could be trusted but when absolute economic freedom and central economic planning in each case respectively fell into the hands of much coarser men they used it for self interest. This much I know, the robber barons of the 19th century and even today do not really believe in free market capitalism and Stalin didn't really believe in socialism. Each of these ideologies served their interests so they used them, and this is something the theorists of libertarianism, socialism, and other utopian ideologies fail to recognize.

Perhaps one can say that I am "giving up" in embracing centrism but I do not see it as the case. The way I see it is that politics will never create a utopia and if we are to have any politics at all it should be one that recognizes and accepts man's limitations. I think what qualifies as "centrism" has done that the best. We should not look to the new and tried but to the old and untried. Looking back on history I have seen that time and time again the economic system that has performed the best has been capitalism, albeit capitalism with some socialist checks and balances such as regulations, unions, and a welfare state. This system is imperfect to the ideologues of left and right but it is the system that has worked. Man simply cannot cooperate enough for socialism and communism but nor can the capitalist be trusted without the balance of unions and some government power. In the same sense when I look at the values that have worked over the years the values that have worked for the stability of society have always been traditional Christian values. Liberals may seek to impose some new utopian scheme of moral relativism but in the end it only led to societal breakdown. Who but a fool would argue now that the sexual revolution has been a positive thing? It may be temporarily but it always has led to long lasting misery. In some sense I've kind of come to understand why God made the laws he did, not simply to create arbitrary rules to test our obedience as some believe, but because when they are followed they lead to a better result and when they are not followed they lead to misery. On the flip side I think it is equally utopian of conservatives to think government can somehow enforce conservative cultural mores and restore us to a Shining City on a Hill we once were in some conservative myth. It is simply an impossible task. Somewhere there has to be a line drawn though, and where that line is drawn is in the eye of the beholder.

As a final note I am not going to deny that there is something relatively unexciting about my new found centrism. Libertarianism and other utopian ideologies are simply sexier than boring old moderates. Yet the way I see it libertarianism is kind of like a high class whore and centrism is kind of like a plain Jane. One may look more attractive on the outside but in the end one of them ends up giving you the clap and the other one doesn't. Which one would you choose?