Can Democrats and Libertarians Find Common Ground?

I pretty much hate rules and restrictions on what I can do. Because of that, there is no sense in which I would describe myself as someone who likes government intervention. But unlike many libertarians, taxation and the size of government are not my main concern. My worries about government come from its ability to intrude into my life, to tell me what I can and cannot do, to spy on me or otherwise invade my personal life and restrict my freedom. It's none of the government's business.

I'm astounded at those who tolerate so many intrusions into their personal lives or the lives of others, intrusions that have grown in recent years, just because their incomes are higher due to tax cuts. The power to tax is but one power the government has, and to me it's far from the most worrisome one. I want government to lend a helping hand where it's needed, to regulate markets and overcome market failures, to provide law and order, to protect us from enemies, etc., and I believe that, for the most part, the people in government are well-intentioned and dedicated. But I have no desire for a government that is constantly looking over my shoulder and setting bounds on what I can do, or a government that is any larger than is absolutely necessary. I know most on the libertarian side share that sentiment, but it sure is hard to detect it in today's political environment.

This continues the series at Cato's Economics Unbound on Libertarian Democrats:

Governing Well Is the Best Revenge, by Bruce Reed, Cato Unbound: I am not a libertarian. Unlike Markos Moulitsas, I will not try to convince you that most of our fellow Democrats are libertarians, either. ...

After six years of getting burned by an administration and Congress that promised to tame government, then injected it with steroids, you deserve to hear a straight answer, and a few honest pledges that will actually be kept. So let me start by leveling about the ways in which we may disagree. I grew up in Idaho, perhaps the second most libertarian state in the Union (behind Alaska)...

Growing up in the Rockies, a world away from Washington, I picked up a healthy skepticism of government, an independent streak, and a distaste for orthodoxy. ... I took other lessons from those years... First, personal liberty and personal responsibility go hand in hand. We won’t have more of one unless we insist on more of the other. Government is not the first nor the most important agent of responsibility, but its example matters. An irresponsible, unaccountable government of any size poses a far graver threat to individual freedom than a responsible, activist one.

Second, markets can be the most effective engine of individual opportunity, but only if they are honest ones, tempered in the public interest. Third, government must be an engine of individual opportunity as well, or else it will end up imposing a crushing burden of privilege and bureaucracy. ...

These beliefs lead ... to ... stands that many libertarians will not agree with. For example, I believe that every American owes our country a debt of service. I believe that government is bound to fail any time it values responsibilities less than rights. From my own experience in government, I even have come to believe that my hero George Orwell’s vision no longer holds: In a country like ours, the more likely threat to freedom is not government conspiracy, but government ineptitude and bureaucracy.

So, if you’re looking for government to close up shop, don’t vote Democratic. Unlike George Bush and the Republican Congress, we’ll give you accountable government that lives within its means. But we want government to do something useful, not just sit there.

I’ll leave it to the civil libertarians in my party to explain why our side is less likely to spy on your library books, read your e-mails, or infringe upon your constitutional rights. My case for voting Democratic rests on three simple, comparative tests: Which party can provide smaller, more efficient government? Which party takes the responsibilities of government and limited government seriously enough to actually deliver it? Which party believes in competition enough to wean the country from its dangerous addiction to corporate welfare and make free enterprise work?

Smaller Government: Forget the sweet nothings that Republicans have whispered in your ears for decades. The last 15 years have given us a perfect laboratory experiment to measure actual results. Bill Clinton produced the first balanced budget and the first surpluses in 30 years. He cut the size of the federal workforce by 400,000, and imposed a level of spending restraint the federal government hasn’t seen before or since. As Cato bravely pointed out, George Bush did just the opposite, squandering surpluses, abandoning all restraint, and presiding over the sharpest increase in domestic spending since LBJ.

If the record isn’t enough, look at our agendas. Going forward, Democrats are the ones insisting on restoring annual spending caps and pay-as-you-go-rules to put the teeth back in fiscal discipline. The Bush White House and congressional Republicans continue to oppose it, and claim deficits don’t matter. We now have a quarter century of evidence to prove that Republican tax cuts will never shrink the size of government—on the contrary, they just delay the day of reckoning, and add interest. ...

Limited Government: Thomas Jefferson said, “That government which governs least, governs best.” After six years, we can now postulate the Bush corollary: “That government which governs worst, governs most.”

Let’s face it: If you believe in the idea of limited government, you have to take government more seriously, not less. Nations have certain irreducible needs—like protection from natural disaster, for example. Do them well, and government need not grow in size or scope. Screw them up, and you’ll have to spend, meddle, and intrude a great deal more.

Just as important, the very essence of limited government is that it must be purposeful, performance-based, and mission-driven. When the purpose is not clear and certain, the outcome and the cost will never be.

In the Clinton administration, hacks knew their place. In the Bush administration and the Republican Congress, hacks know no bounds. The Bush playbook—bribes, no-bid contracts, disdain for competence, and a penchant for botching reform—invites more government. New Democrat answers like banning earmarks, closing the revolving door, and ending the incumbent protection racket by requiring competitive congressional districts, by contrast, will keep government in check.

That is the fundamental problem with the Bush administration and Washington conservatism. The Bush White House has been a political project, not a governing one. From Katrina to Iraq to its domestic agenda, the Bush crowd didn’t take governing seriously, and never even bothered to ask whether its ideas would work. It should come as no surprise that they didn’t.

Ending Corporate Welfare: For all their talk about markets, Washington Republicans have institutionalized corporate welfare and special privilege. Corporations are not the root of all evil, as some think. But if we believe in competition, we shouldn’t be doling out taxpayer subsidies that distort the market, bloat the budget, and invite corruption all at the same time.

For years, New Democrats have been beating the same drum as the Cato Institute: It is time to end corporate welfare as we know it. ... If we level the playing field by abolishing unnecessary subsidies, we’ll advance the general welfare and be in a much stronger position for the global competition ahead.

Democrats have a vision of liberty and responsibility that America could have used these last few years, and needs even more in the years to come. We may not be Rocky Mountain libertarians. But after the mess Bush has made, you have nowhere to go but up.

Comments

[dryfly]

Unlike Markos Moulitsas, I will not try to convince you that most of our fellow Democrats are libertarians

Wow. Libertarian and Democrat together. I didn't think it was lawful to have the two in the same essay let alone the same sentence for fear the two might get too close and explode - like matter, antimatter.

Kos broke the ice, now this. It's turning into a closet coming out party before our very eyes. Shocking.

But my suggestion is that instead of spending a lot of time, words & emotional energy telling us how Democrats are or are not like Libertarians... they spend that effort telling us what Democrats believe & stand for and LET US make the determination of whether it is Libertarian-like or not.

And if we care.

This from a guy who once thought he was a 'Libertarian' and who used to vote for them on occasion. Now I almost always vote Democratic. My conversion came when I realized most Libertarians couldn't lead a parade of one let alone a nation of almost 300 million on a planet with 6 billion others.

Their philosophy at its core works best on a chalk board or in the heads of rich kid college sophomores who have never had to work with others in a crowded office cubicle farm. The only real world place I can think of where Libertarianism 'works' is if you are alone on a deserted islands.

The point Reed makes about good gov't is a legit point. But until Libertarians admit there is 'common ground' - i.e. that there should be some public 'space' and not all private, a concession I'VE NEVER HEARD from Libertarians - then my guess is there will be little they really share with most of us.

JMHO.

Interesting series of threads though.

[donna]

I'm a registered libertarian working with the progressives right now.

People forget that the opposite end of the spectrum from libertarian is fascist, not liberal.

[dryfly]

donna - are Democrats 'progressive'? If not who are the 'progressives' you are working with and what are you working with them on?

Just curious.

[Bruce Webb]

Ever read Flatland by E.A. Abbott. Well you should and this link gives you access to the full text.

It describes the visit of a three dimensional person to a two dimensional world and is funny and instructive on all kinds of levels from sociological to its actual point which is to break people out of their three dimensional world and grasp the concept of four dimensions and beyond.

But the sad fact is that in politics we rarely even get to Flatland. One of the more amusing parts of the book is when one of the two dimensional inhabitants makes a visit to Lineland. Ironies abound.

There is an axis from Labor to Capital. There is another axis from Liberty to Authoritarianism. And God knows there are other axes from Young to Old and Man to Woman and untold others. Yet in politics the tendency is to remain within a Lineland narrative set in the French Assembly in the late 18th Century. You just can't take a multi-dimensional political/economic universe and condense it to Left/Right or Dem/Repub. While it is encouraging to see people like Kos trying to take a political line and turn it into a two-dimensional grid, E.A. Abbott is looking down from above (in the book quite literally) and laughing and laughing.

And I say this as a Libertarian New Deal Democrat. And for those that say that that is a contradiction in terms well I suggest reading Flatland and embracing its fundamental message.

[Holly W.]

Some political quizzes place you on an X-Y axis, going from communist to totally unregulated free trade (left-right) and authoritarian to libertarian (up-down) in an attempt to overcome the "Flatland" problem. It may be an unlikely result, but it's entirely possible to score on one of those as a communist libertarian who thinks the government should control business and minimize income equality, but leave the personal lives of citizens alone.

[coyote]

In the end, neither party is for small or less intrusive government. Politicians didn't go through all that effort to get elected just to sit there! They want to RULE, they want to impose their will, often with good intentions, on other people. They want to make sure you don't eat the wrong foods or make a mistake with your retirement funds or sleep with someone you shouldn't or accept a wage they think is too low.

Historically, I would tell people "If I were gay, or single with a casual attitude about birth control, I would certainly vote Democrat. Running my own business, though, I have to vote Republican."

Today, though, this crappy set of choices has gotten worse. Democrats are much more likely nowadays to meddle in your personal lives -- you've got the food nazis and the smoking nazis and Democrats have been right up there with Republicans supporting the failed war on drugs and silly crusades against video game violence. And Republicans have given up on excersing any control over government spending or regulatory expansion.

[Tom]

"This from a guy who once thought he was a 'Libertarian' and who used to vote for them on occasion. Now I almost always vote Democratic"

I would say you were never a Libertarian. Such a leap from very right to quite left skipping over Republican, and 'centrist' viewpoints is odd. More likely you were never there in the first place.

[anne]

"Such a leap from very right to quite left skipping over Republican, and 'centrist' viewpoints is odd."

Again, whatever could such a sentence possibly mean but a wholly private stereotyping?

[Bruce Webb]

"I would say you were never a Libertarian. Such a leap from very right to quite left skipping over Republican, and 'centrist' viewpoints is odd."

No Anne. Tom just revealed himself as a resident of Lineland. The notion that you have to "leap" or "skip" from Libertarian to Democrat to get past a Republican or 'centrist' viewpoint is simply to miss the point Holly and I and I daresay coyote were trying to make.

Here is another axis. Take any political system you like, pick any historical period you like, grant them their theoretical system of distribution of the gains of productivity. From Tonga to Pyong Yang to Leningrad to Revolutionary Paris to the 12th Century Vatican can you identify a single time and place where the people who exercise ultimate political power didn't decide that didn't mean living in relative luxury to the people they ruled?

They always have reasons. There are reasons why the Revolutionary Cadre that ruled Lenin's Soviet Union had to live in Dachas, why Renaissance Popes took vows of poverty and lived in magnificant palaces with statues and paintings by the Masters, why Senators and Representatives absolutely have to have raises and free golf trips while raising the minimum wage is a terrible idea.

After reading Flatland, read the last couple of chapters of Animal Farm. Orwell got it, Tom doesn't. Kos is pointing out that you don't have to get caught on the Dexter-Sinister Highway or for that matter on your side of the Mason-Dixon Line, you can take a nifty sidecut and zip right around the congestion at the center.

[georgist]

From Tonga to Pyong Yang to Leningrad to Revolutionary Paris to the 12th Century Vatican can you identify a single time and place where the people who exercise ultimate political power didn't decide that didn't mean living in relative luxury to the people they ruled?

Power corrupts. Keeping politicians in relative luxury may be a good thing, as long as that luxury is kept transparent, and well correlated with the things that enrich the country as a whole.

[reason]

Interesting discussion, but did no one notice how well Reed expressed himself. I thought all the Democrats were supposed to hopeless.

[Bruce Webb]

"Keeping politicians in relative luxury may be a good thing, as long as that luxury is kept transparent, and well correlated with the things that enrich the country as a whole."

Which is just to beg an answer to my question. I understand that correlation is not causation but I would at least like some correlation. Is there anyone who can correlate Mobutu's billions or Imelda's shoe collection to "things that enrich the country as a whole"?

Time's Up! Pencils Down! I don't expect anyone will score high on this particular quiz.

[calmo]

Following Bruce W following georgist's

Keeping politicians in relative luxury may be a good thing, as long as that luxury is kept transparent, and well correlated with the things that enrich the country as a whole

--it looks like we are bumping into that other thread on corruption that shows a remarkable wealth difference between US and other countries. I would say that the exhibition of wealth (is that close enough to the transparency?) is muted, even concealed here as compared to what little I know of Japan.
Imelda needs to exhibit those shoes to demonstrate her power in a country where the natives needed to have that demonstrated. Similarly, the recent legislation condoning torture in this country was a measure that this administration needed to demonstrate its authority --not so much to demonstrate/reflect people's human rights or its benevolence for its subjects.

Ok, did I pass the test? [Maybe not: and so the 'transparency' has to be unpacked. Transparent for whom? As always, the media/press are always important players that we overlook --maybe like Reid's speech that 'reason' mentions.]

Was that enough? [Maybe not: "Enriching the country as a whole" does not mean that the subjects get to try on Emelda's shoes. No, it means there is peace and prosperity for the caaw (chinese for 'cows', I just know it) for this little expense: 300 pairs of shoes (299 dresses, 298 silk blouses,.. 10 limosines, 9 tons of gold,...and a partidge in a pear tree --for anne of course).
Ok, broken pencil...when's the retest?

[piglet]

Found an old essay by Ellen Willis:

Their Libertarianism and Ours
http://prome.snu.ac.kr/%7Eskkim/data/bookintro/files/willis.html

Sadly, times have gone worse and not better since 1997.