Libertarians and Conservatives, Who Understands the US?

Topher Morrison

PurpleSerf.com

A friend of mine asked me a couple of days ago: what is the difference between a libertarian and a Republican (or conservative).  I offered him a simple critique: while Republicans may deride big government at home, at least publicly, they applaud military adventurism abroad and reinforcing traditional values at home.  Libertarians on the other hand are consistent in their advocacy of liberty from government intervention in all arenas.

           We were talking about Ron Paul (R-TX) at the time and my friend was very confused (as is Rush Limbaugh) about why Ron Paul would run as a Republican, "He's not going to win" he assured me.  I reminded my friend that I had heard that more than once, but also reminded him that, albeit Ron Paul hasn't come close to winning the presidency, he has greatly influenced American politics.  

          Additionally, Congressman Paul has infused the GOP with a viral dose of libertarianism, which has set brush fires in the minds of millions of young conservatives (and popular progressives) which will no doubt spread in the coming years.  Ron Paul sparked the modern day Tea Party movement (which he receives little credit for) a fact some conservatives would love to bury.  

          He has shattered campaign fundraising records with spontaneously ordered (how wildly appropriate!) moneybombs, the most famous of which occurred on the 234th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party with 58,407 individual donations in one day, which undeniably anticipated the popular movement.  Since 2008 Ron Paul has doubled his political visibility, almost won the '10 Iowa Straw Poll, brought two sons into politics and launched one, Rand Paul (an ostensible libertarian), into a higher office than Ron Paul ever attained!

          While there has been much written on the difference between conservatives and libertarians Ron Paul has exemplified those differences.  He has shown libertarians labor towards a fixed set of philosophical principles while Republicans tend to favor pragmatic principles informed by charismatic leaders and the varying political winds.   

          My friend reminded me of as much: "[Republicans] don't want to hear some of that stuff", referring to Dr. Paul's more controversial positions.  This is because unlike libertarians, Republicans (very much like Democrats) are often swayed by demagoguery, according to Ron Paul in his recent book Liberty Defined:

"...[these] demagogues seek influence and political power by appealing to the prejudices, emotions, fears, and expectations of the public.  They do not enlighten; they browbeat and play rhetorical games." 

          Paul showed in Monday's CNN/Tea Party debate he wasn't afraid to offend the prejudices of neo-conized Tea Partiers when he claimed 9/11 was in part a likely result of over 900 bases (that we know of) in 130 countries around the world.  He argued that 9/11 was arguably blowback from clandestine operations and overt intervention throughout the Middle East over the last 60+ years not merely because our culture is antithetical to fundamentalist Islam as Rick Santorum suggested - something conservatives in the audience expected to hear.  Dr. Paul even went further, admonishing the crowd, "...if your not annoyed by this there is something wrong!" 

          Libertarians are an international bread, whereas Republicans are found only within the United States.  They believe the Constitution was meant to extend beyond our borders as it defends "persons" not merely "citizens."  Not only can one find libertarian strains within left wing and right wing circles here in the US they are found internationally, albeit mostly in English speaking countries like Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.

          A Gallup poll (above) shows to me the most important synthesizing characteristic of the libertarian ideology.  Whereas Republicans and Democrats believe respectively that "big government" or "big business" are the biggest threats to the United States it is the libertarian who understands how the collusion of both these vested interests including, to a much smaller degree "big labor", threatens to our country.  Big government enables big business to buy political favor and cut down competition through regulation, barriers to entry and subsidies, which collectively raise prices, unemployment, profits and impoverishes the middle and lower classes. 

          Similarly, libertarians like Ron Paul understand like political winds the value of goods and services extend from the human mind alone!  Prices aren't set in some ivory tower at Harvard or Stanford and planes, trains, gold, bottled water and iPods don't have an inherent value besides what social needs and circumstance dictate.  Money is (or should be) the viewed the same way.  Why do we allow a few people like Ben Bernanke and a dark consortium of private member mega-banks whom run the Federal Reserve to dictate the worth of the dollars we hold in our hand?  For the same reason we don't allow them to decree what the tomatoes in our garden are worth.  

          It would seem in a democratic society, one that professes to have a free market, that the people should dictate the price of our currency transparently through Congress in accordance with the Constitution!  Never mind the standard on which the money is based (gold, silver, toenail clippings, etc.) libertarians want abolish this financial dictatorship, Republicans are coming around (a little) and 74% of Americans want it audited.  All signs the libertarian drum beat is being heard and felt.   

Image Source: Kevin Middleton at
RedBubble.com

          Lastly, there is something very special about libertarians and Ron Paul that America doesn't fully understand.  Ron Paul wants to put the "States" back into the United States of America!  Ask yourself an honest question: who is my state legislator?  Who is my state senator?  Who cares is probably the next question!  With so many decisions going on in Washington DC all eyes are now refocused on that humid swamp passed on long ago for greener more temperate pastures.  

          Many refer with derision to our 50 states enacting their own laws as a patchwork, a hodgepodge or a mishmash of different laws, but that was the original beauty of America.  In a phrase coined by Lord Bryce and popularized by Justice Louis Brandeis the separate states are seen as "laboratories of democracy" giving the United States a competition not only in the free market, but also in the market of governments, which generated fresh new ideas for public problems and therefore competed for citizens!  After 1913 when states legislators no longer elected Senators to serve as their ambassadors to Washington DC "senators became substantially less responsive to the policy interests of the state legislature."

          Besides the controversial legalization of drugs, dismantling of the FDA, EPA, CIA, FAA, etc. which bog down most debates over the libertarian ideology and Ron Paul's campaign there lies the magic we have lost in this country, respect for reason, life, liberty, property and most all limited government. 

          

The Patriot Act Is Not Conservative

Jack Hunter
The American Conservative
5/31/11

If Americans needed another reminder of why the Democratic Party is absolutely worthless, they got it during last week’s Patriot Act extension debate when Senate Majority leader Harry Reid again behaved exactly like the Bush-era Republicans he once vigorously opposed. In 2005, Reid bragged to fellow Democrats, “We killed the Patriot Act.” Today, Reid says that anyone who opposes the Patriot Act might be responsible for the killing of Americans. Dick Cheney now hears an echo and Americans deserve congressional hearings—as to whether Harry Reid is a sociopath, mere liar, or both.

But while Democrats stand pat for Bush Republicanism, the GOP now debates the extent to which it will remain the party of Dubya. Tea Party favorites like Senators Rand Paul and Mike Lee and Congressmen Ron Paul, Justin Amash, Allen West and others, all voted against the Patriot Act. To varying degrees, each of these GOP representatives questioned the act’s effectiveness and legality. But unfortunately, most Republicans still won’t ask any questions.

The “War on Terror” that defined and preoccupied Republicans during the Bush era brought with it not only massive government growth and debt, but an unprecedented expansion of extra-constitutional state power, symbolized most famously by the Patriot Act. In the name of national security, government officials could begin wiretapping phones, hacking into email accounts, prying into business records and spying on citizens—all without a warrant and at government officials’ own discretion. Defenders say the Patriot Act did what needed to be done after 9/11. Critics say it did away with the 4^th amendment.

Let us say both have a point, and that for arguments sake, both Harry Reid and Dick Cheney are correct in arguing that it is sometimes necessary to surrender our liberties for increased security. Is this still true a decade after 9/11? Will it be true two decades after 9/11? How about three? Have the actions of Osama Bin Laden and his fellow terrorists forever altered our Bill of Rights?

Allegedly, the default position for conservatives is to distrust the government and defer to the Constitution. Concerning the Patriot Act, too many conservatives blindly trust the government at the expense of the Constitution. This type of thinking mirrors the logic of the Left, in which the constitutionality of a big government program like Obamacare is considered irrelevant due to the severity of the problem at hand. The liberal healthcare ends justify the unconstitutional means. This characteristic mentality of the Left is exactly how most of the Right approaches the Patriot Act—though it is an outright rejection of what most conservatives of any generation have held most dear.

Think about it. Conservatives get upset about many things on a regular basis—ACORN corruption, NPR funding, demanding that French fries be renamed “Freedom Fries.” At any given time there is always some new and outrageous rightwing distaste of the week.

But most of these controversies are a speck on a gnat’s ass compared to the damage done to the Constitution by the Patriot Act. For genuine constitutional conservatives, something like NPR funding is undoubtedly wrong but ultimately trivial and peripheral—while the protection of the Bill of Rights is crucial and integral. If George Washington or Thomas Jefferson were alive today, are we to believe that they would be more outraged that: A. The federal government helps fund public radio. B. The federal government snoops on citizens without restraint. Those who answered A. truly don’t understand the mindset of the men who founded this country.

A Republican critic of mine once asked me during a radio broadcast “Jack, can you show me where any American has been harmed due to the Patriot Act?” I replied, “Can you show me where any American has been harmed by Wikileaks?” The caller said he couldn’t, but stated that he believed private individuals shouldn’t haven’t access to private government documents. The gentleman was basically saying that whether or not Wikileaks has hurt anyone to date is irrelevant—the whistleblower outfit shouldn’t be trusted with such power to begin with. I argue the same is true of the federal government. So did the Founding Fathers. That’s why they wrote the 4^th amendment.

The entire reason we have a written charter like the Constitution is to specify the enumerated powers that define the hard parameters of our federal government. Among those powers is national defense and security. But much of what we call “defense” is anything but. Similarly, a total police state could undoubtedly provide much better security, though few Americans would desire a country so void of liberty. After all, most Americans can barely tolerate the way the federal government handles air travel these days.

When Ronald Reagan said there was nothing closer to eternal life on this earth than a government program he could have easily been describing the Patriot Act. When Barry Goldwater said that “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice” he could have easily been describing the minority of Republicans who now at least question the Patriot Act. When James Madison wrote, “Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other,” he could have easily been describing our current state of perpetual war that now gives seemingly permanent life to the Patriot Act.

If the “War on Terror” is a perpetual war—as so many politicians readily contend—have we now permanently given up our liberties? If terrorists really do “hate us for our freedoms” is the best method of defeating them to permanently surrender our historic freedoms? And if so, who is really winning the War on Terror? Us or the terrorists?

By the very nature of their philosophy, conservatives are supposed to question their government. And given the very nature of our Constitution, this is precisely how the Founders would expect any true patriot to act.

Read more of Jack Hunter's work at The Southern Avenger.