A question for the Libertarians

[nclib]

Since there appear to be quite a few Libertarians on this board, I figured I'd ask a question...

I certainly know that Libertarians advocate less government in general...pro-gay marriage; anti-gun rights; anti-welfare, etc.

But what issues are controversial within the Libertarian Party? (I'd love to hear a response from a Libertarian poster.)

[Bono]

Well, let me name a few:
--Abortion;
--Education, namely if there is a role for the state in education;
--Intelectual proprety;
--Government monopoly of the use of force.

[Beefalow and the Consumer]

Since there appear to be quite a few Libertarians on this board, I figured I'd ask a question...

I certainly know that Libertarians advocate less government in general...pro-gay marriage; anti-gun rights; anti-welfare, etc.

But what issues are controversial within the Libertarian Party? (I'd love to hear a response from a Libertarian poster.)

I get the feeling that abortion is a real dividing wedge between the Left- and Right-Libertarians.  The LP website makes no mention of it in their positions statements, and in their platform, they sort of side-step the issue:

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I'm also not sure that Right-Libertarians are totally keen on drug legalization and open immigration (they probably would favor decriminalization and controlled immigration), although the LP has made those into planks of their official platform.

[Beefalow and the Consumer]

Well, let me name a few:
--Abortion;

Certainly a Left/Right divide there.

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This is an interesting one I hadn't thought of.  I'm going to guess it's also a Left/Right divide, with the Left-Libertarians supporting the status-quo, and the Right-Libertarians wanting greater rights to form private militias.  This is where the differences really stand in stark relief.  You have the "we don't want the government to pester us when we want to get high" Libertarians, and the "government is essentially bad, and we need to be able to overthrow it if and when the time comes" Libertarians.  Radically different cultures.

[stry_cat]

Yes Abortion is a rather touchy subject.  But the platform addresses it directly:  http://lp.org/issues/platform/platform_all.html#womerigh

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The only other major issue is the War in Iraq. Inspite of the traditional anti-war stance of the Party a lot of members seem to think we should do whatever military action is necessary to bring to justice Osma and anyone who might be helping him.   I myself have been avoiding the anti-war rallies since they seem to also be we hate our troops and hope they die rallies.  

Those are the only major issues.  Most internal debate that I hear is which group of issues should be empahsized (i.e. more emphasis on the Drug War vs. more emphasis on the IRS).  There is also a lot of debate about should we work for and support half-way measures like the FairTax or supporting shall-issue CCW laws instead of Vermont/Alaska style gun laws.

[stry_cat]

I certainly know that Libertarians advocate less government in general...pro-gay marriage; anti-gun rights; anti-welfare, etc.

Oh one more thing...Less government yes.   I wouldn't say we're pro-gay marriage.  We just don't think the government should be involved in marriage.   Lastly we're pro-2nd amendment rights not as you said anti-gun rights.

[Beefalow and the Consumer]

"It is the right and obligation of the pregnant woman, not the state, to decide the desirability or appropriateness of prenatal testing, Caesarean births, fetal surgery, voluntary surrogacy arrangements and/or home births.

Solutions: We oppose all laws likely to impose restrictions on free choice and private property or to widen tyranny through reverse discrimination."

Translation: "We want to sound like we're Abortion-neutral, while satisfying the Pro-Choicers at the same time."

You can't have it both ways.  The whole thrust of the Pro-Life position is that the unborn are fully human, with full human rights.  As soon as your position invokes "free choice and private property," it becomes Pro-Choice.  Period.  If the unborn are living human beings, it's no longer a question of free choice and private property, any more than killing your six-year-old son is a question of free choice and private property.

Their position is that the unborn are not human beings with rights; they are part of the mother's body, and government should butt out of telling her what to do with it.  But they hide that doctrine in the feel-good language of privacy and limited government, in an effort to appear to be "all inclusive" on the issue.

[John Dibble]

"It is the right and obligation of the pregnant woman, not the state, to decide the desirability or appropriateness of prenatal testing, Caesarean births, fetal surgery, voluntary surrogacy arrangements and/or home births.

Solutions: We oppose all laws likely to impose restrictions on free choice and private property or to widen tyranny through reverse discrimination."

Translation: "We want to sound like we're Abortion-neutral, while satisfying the Pro-Choicers at the same time."

You can't have it both ways.  The whole thrust of the Pro-Life position is that the unborn are fully human, with full human rights.  As soon as your position invokes "free choice and private property," it becomes Pro-Choice.  Period.  If the unborn are living human beings, it's no longer a question of free choice and private property, any more than killing your six-year-old son is a question of free choice and private property.

Their position is that the unborn are not human beings with rights; they are part of the mother's body, and government should butt out of telling her what to do with it.  But they hide that doctrine in the feel-good language of privacy and limited government, in an effort to appear to be "all inclusive" on the issue.

Actually, there's just disagreement within the party. Badnarik is pro-life believe it or not.

[Beefalow and the Consumer]

Actually, there's just disagreement within the party. Badnarik is pro-life believe it or not.

I realize that there is disagreement within the party, but the platform position is disingenuous.  It would have been far better for them to not have any official position on abortion, than to try and pass off a Pro-Choice stance as being a "neutral and inclusive" one.

As it is, a Pro-Life LP candidate is very attractive to me in this particular election, even if I don't really like a lot of what the LP stands for.  I want to send a "this moderate/conservative is not voting for Bush" message, and with the Reform Party endorsing Nader, the only real conservative alternative to Bush is Badnarik.

The LP usually scores better for me on political quizes than the Democrats.  I usually rank Republican, Green, LP, Democrat, if that makes any sense at all.

[cwelsch]

Inside the party, abortion is a big one.  The political differences are relatively small in that there's not a whole lot of problems.

Now there are plenty of divisions in the broad movement, which includes Democrats, Republicans and Independents.  The biggest GOP-LP divisions for libs are the war and abortion, followed by immigration, then drugs.  The biggest LP-Constitution Party divisions for libs are abortion and immigration.  The biggest LP-Dem divisions are taxes, usually regulatory agencies followed by welfare, and of course philosophical stuff like who can own land.  These are big grievances and disputes, but they're not Libertarians, they're libertarians.


The biggest divisions are always, always, always strategic.  1980: Rothbard v. Crane/Clark/Koch, should we be purists or should we be "low-tax liberals?"  Stuff like this.  It's all strategy, which issues to emphasize, what coalitions to build, is it better to be LP or GOP or some new party, which races to focus on, and so forth.

And of course, there are the anti-LP libertarians.  The purists/anarchists refuse to organize or even vote, but they aren't too numerous.  The moderates refuse to join a party that "can't win" and of course it never will without their help.  The Republicans like the clubhouse feel in the GOP (you wouldn't believe how widespread that feeling is) and want to bring back the libertarian GOP, so they vote "lesser of two evils."  And of course, tons of independent libertarians and Libertarians vote for some non-LP candidate (Buchanan, Nader and Bush in 2000) to either make a statement or most usually, to keep out the worst candidate.  This is the real division.

The biggest libertarian movement division is whether the LP could ever be a legitimate, effective means of political involvement, and how should we vote and contribute to get libertarians in power?  In 2000 Browne, Nader and Buchanan got nearly equal libertarian support (30% Browne, 26% Nader, 24% Buchanan) and tons and tons of libertarians admitted to voting Bush to stop Al Gore.

Within the party the biggest division is: should we recruit, should we focus on local/state races, or should we devolve the national party and send almost all money to state affiliates.  2000 was a test run for massive recruitment (Project Archimedes) which failed astoundingly on all fronts.  In 2002 we've had some policies focused on facilitating the states in running local campaigns and had some new party elections that have seen the recruiters swept out and more incremental folks moved in.  Instead of grand recruting schemes or massive decentralization, the LP is right now moving toward being pragmatic with what it has to expand its appeal to non-LP libertarians.

Ultimately, that means focusing our limited money on state races, getting the Badnarik campaign to spend over 80% of its funds on TV, and trying to spoil the Bush campaign by getting Badnarik enough votes in a couple states to make Kerry win (in other words, be the Nader of 2004).  I prefer this strategy, of the three, although I'm a bit of an alternative, as a Free State Project member (many of whom have totally abandoned the national LP as ineffective, but the majority of whom are just very optimistic about changing things).


Oh, and speaking from all my experience, the ultimate division across it all tends to boil down to purism versus incrementalism.  Moderates always take incrementalism, extreme libs are split but often take purism because they like its righteousness.  Debates fall down along these lines all the time, with the groups accusing each other of being uncommitted or crazy.  Purists call the incrementalists moderate, compromising, weak or wishy-washy.  Incrementalists call the purists close-minded, ignorant, and foolish.


People like to reduce it right-libertarian and left-libertarian, and sure those dvisions exist, but they're nothing compared to strategy debates.  The left-libertarians (usually geo-libertarians) are actually very uncommon, they split between the Democrats on one half, and the other half spread out in the Libertarians and in the Greens.

Right-libertarians are incredibly more comon, especially in the GOP and talk radio.  The tendency among right-libertarians, especially in talk radio, is to be pro-war.  This is true with Boortz, who got booed at the LP convention even though he didn't mention the war, and it's been true for a while (the purists in 1983 wanted to nominate a talk show host until it became known he was pro-war and they dropped him).  Buckley is very pro-war, anti-communist, got tons of enemies in libertarian circles for his Cold War stances (which from what I've heard we're incredibly right-wing and authoritarian, haven't verified that myself though).

You'll find tons of conservatives who are libertarian "except for" then they say one to three things, usually among them drugs, immigration and the military.  Coulter almost ran as a libertarian but she refused to vote to legalize drugs until it would be clear that drug addicts wouldn't get public health care, etc.  There's a lot of stuff like this, and the Constitution Party is full of people who'd vote libertarian except for abortion (I'm a Libertarian for Life, I'm not voting for the Constitution Party).

So the left-right division is mostly fake.  There are very few left-libertarians mostly because either you love capitalism and civil liberties or you accept the welfare state and love civil liberties that are regulated by the government.  The ACLU, for example, is slightly libertarian but accepts tons of government with regard to affirmative action, gun control, and of course most are very pro-welfare (the founder was a communist, after all).  The ACLU is in the right direction for the Dems, but in the end is still pretty pro-state, they just don't like a GOP-run government.

The number of left-libertarians is very, VERY low.  The most appropriate definition is a libertarian that does not believe in land as private property (what other libertarians derisively call a "land socialis" libertarian).  So this justifies land taxes and regulations on land, and every left-libertarian, or "geo-libertarian" as they say, defines it a little differently.  They justify it since nobody creates land and because there's a limited amount of land.  Other than this, left-libertarians can be distinguished by their distrust of corporations since corporations are actual a legal construction of the state.  So ultimately, a geo-libertarian (left-libertarian) is just a libertarian who wants taxes on land, rules for its equitable ownership (or even communal ownership, but usually not) and the elimination of corporate charter laws.

Anyway, the division is overblown, there are libertarians, right-libertarians, moderate libertarians, and then a handful of geo-libertarians.

[nclib]

I certainly know that Libertarians advocate less government in general...pro-gay marriage; anti-gun rights; anti-welfare, etc.

Lastly we're pro-2nd amendment rights not as you said anti-gun rights.

Actually I was thinking 'anti-gun control' (i.e. pro-gun rights) and just typed it incorrectly.

[Beefalow and the Consumer]

[...]
Ultimately, that means focusing our limited money on state races, getting the Badnarik campaign to spend over 80% of its funds on TV, and trying to spoil the Bush campaign by getting Badnarik enough votes in a couple states to make Kerry win (in other words, be the Nader of 2004).  I prefer this strategy, of the three, although I'm a bit of an alternative, as a Free State Project member (many of whom have totally abandoned the national LP as ineffective, but the majority of whom are just very optimistic about changing things).
[...]

Thanks, cwelsh, that was very enlightening.

I'd like to say I did my part for the LP in 2002 by voting for Ed Thompson for governor.  Because the LP got over 10% of the vote, they now have a permanent position on the state canvassing board.  McCallum was incompetent, and Doyle was too liberal.

I may cast a vote for Badnarik this November.  I don't want to vote for Bush, and my wife really really really dislikes John Kerry - and I trust her people sense .  I'm really more interested in casting a vote against Bush than I am in casting a vote for a liberal Democrat.