Don't fence me in

When I first realized that I was not a leftist, I joined the Libertarian Party until the kookiness of it's members drove me into the stodgy but sane world of the GOP but I still have a strong libertarian streak insofar as the major tenets of libertarianism are based on the same Lockean liberal/Whig ideas of individual sovereignty that inspired the American Revolution.

Brian Doherty recently published a book called "Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement." Here are some excerpts from his latest essay, Libertarianism: Past and Prospects:

To the extent that libertarianism’s history has been told, it has mostly been treated as a weird, overenthusiastic little cousin to right-wing conservatism. Rescuing libertarianism from that sad fate was one of my purposes, and one of the reasons I put the word “radical” in its title—as part of a phrase invented by novelist and libertarian inspiration Ayn Rand to identify her own ideological mission.

[...]

I was obligated to wonder: did this libertarian movement—this tightly-knit group of economists, novelists, publishers, philosophers, think tankers, and politicians whose story I tell—actually accomplish anything of unquestionable significance?

That question has become particularly relevant, not only for the framing of Radicals for Capitalism, but in the larger world of libertarian discussion about the next appropriate, or likely, step in libertarian influence in actual politics and policy.

[...]

The extent to which major political parties ought to or must reach out to libertarians has become one of the hottest topics in libertarian discourse, just as my book debuts.

We have seen recently Ryan Sager’s theory from his book, "The Elephant in the Room: Evangelicals, Libertarians, and the Battle to Control the Republican Party," that Republicans are losing out, particularly in the Mountain West, because they have abandoned policies that appeal to the libertarian-leaning in favor of outreach to the evangelical religious right. The GOP, in Sager’s telling, especially after the apparent repudiation of Bushism in the 2006 elections, needs to heed and reach out to the libertarian voter.

Cato’s Brink Lindsey, initially in the pages of the New Republic, has taken a different tack, offering up the libertarian voting bloc to the Democratic Party. He’s argued that “A refashioned liberalism that incorporated key libertarian concerns and insights could make possible a truly progressive politics…that joins together under one banner the causes of both cultural and economic progress.” So far, some prominent Democratic partisans have been unreceptive to Lindsey’s offer, dismissing libertarians as opposed to the massive entitlement programs seen as non-negotiable central elements of the Democratic Party, and politically insignificant besides.

Buttressing the Sager and Lindsey message—that both major parties need to think about appealing to libertarians—is a body of research recently issued from Cato’s David Boaz and the American Future Foundation’s David Kirby. They find, analyzing survey data from Pew, Gallup, and the American National Election Studies, around 14 percent of American voters as recognizably libertarian, in the sense of embracing both fiscal conservatism and social liberalism.

The Libertarian Party no longer stands for the Lockean liberal idea that "government is a necessary evil" but has fallen under the control of the anarchist hippie peaceniks who are not much different from the anti-war Democrats like Cindy Sheehan yet there a whole lot of Americans who have a libertarian outlook on life but who probably would never use the word "libertarian" to describe themselves.

Western Republicans are still mostly libertarian. The rural west is still a little like the Wild West where justice was seen to be done instantly and enforced with guns. The Western libertarian "cowboy" philosophy is similar to the Southern "redneck" philosophy: live and let live; don't tread on me; give me lands lots of land, don't fence me in. Of course the Western cities are almost completely socialist but you can travel from the eastern parts of Washington, Oregon and California through the mountain states and the Southwest and find the libertarian "cowboy" mentality everywhere west of the Rockies.

Now, I've travelled across the USA by car six times and the thing is that I've seen that same mentality in small towns in every state that I've visited - even in the Bible Belt where the "rednecks" also have that "don't fence me in" libertarian mentality which was after all the driving force behind our War of Independence. Maybe there are fewer of us folks with the "cowboy" and "redneck" philosophy and more of those who want government to change their diapers and tell them what to think and do. But, as long as I'm alive, I'm sticking with my "don't tread on me" philosophy and I think a whole bunch of Americans think the same way. We don't like socialist nannies bossing us around anymore than we like prissy preachers and other nosy-parking busbodies telling us how to live.

Evangelicals and libertarians have one thing in common and it's the most basic tenet of the American Revolution: keep government out of our homes and familes; don't tell us how to raise and educate our kids; we can take care of ourselves and don't need any assistance from Big Brother, thank you. I know there are some evangelicals who would like to see government interfering in citizens' private lives but hopefully they are in the minority and most conservative Christians realize that a theocracy is a two-edged sword. Secularist atheism is also a religion and look what horrors their "atheocracy" has wrought over the past few decades. The best government is the least government.