There Were No 'Top Libertarian Moments' in 2024

It's early March 2025, and December 2024 now looks now like a lifetime ago. Then or now, however, a claim that there were 'top libertarian moments' in a year that saw Trump re-elected leaves one wondering from what outlook one might discern any (let alone top) libertarian moments of the year. (This is something like a man who wanted a pastry yet settled — delightedly — on crumbs beneath the cushions of his dirty sofa.)

There's positivity, there's toxic positivity, and then (one imagines) there's something like deluded positivity.

On December 18th, on YouTube, one heard from Libertarianism.org that "[t]his past year, the libertarian movement took vital steps towards achieving a freer world." Truly, those are the introductory words on the four-minute video (ah, but be positive — 4 minutes is 240 seconds!). Not utter collapse in the face of a bigoted authoritarian surge, not standing still, not even creeping forward ever so cautiously, but instead taking vital steps toward achieving a freer world.

Consider each of these supposed accomplishments.

DOGE: The video touts DOGE before Trump took power, relying only on a Trump-Vance campaign statement, and sees in an unelected multibillionaire with multiple federal contracts only an advance in efficient oversight. DOGE since the inauguration? All the supposed American gains are mere projections (trillions in savings, a 75% reduction in the federal workforce). But be assured, DOGE was inspired by "Argentina's Ministry of Deregulation under President Milei."

Well, well: DOGE Claims Credit for Killing Contracts That Were Already Dead (New York Times, 3.2.25), How DOGE detonated a crisis at a highly sensitive nuclear weapons agency (Washington Post, 3.2.25), ‘It Feels Like It’s Chaotic on Purpose’ (The Atlantic, 3.2.25), and The Trump administration may exclude government spending from GDP, obscuring the impact of DOGE cuts (Associated Press, 3.2.25).

FREE SPEECH SUMMIT: Vanderbilt's Global Free Speech Summit (October 17-18, 2024). Are gays, immigrants, and opposition politicians freer in speech and action after Vanderbilt? This was one campus, over two days, with a bit of videoconferencing known and felt by fewer people than a single football commercial. (Yes, I'd heard of it, but there are 330,000,000 people in America alone, of which libertarian lawyers and bloggers are a very small proportion.) Americans will be freer when, apart from a summit of which they know nothing, they protest and march across this continent in defense of their rights. The defense of liberty requires the work of these many millions; libertarianism must anchor itself there, among these many.

ASSANGE'S LIBERATION: Not release, but liberation! Whatever one thinks of Assange, he wasn't liberated. France was liberated. More pointedly, Assange isn't a Mandela-like figure. Holding him up at the end of a lengthy prosecution as a libertarian triumph defines triumph down.

LIBERTY & ARGENTINA: Argentina is not much like America: one-third the size, less than one-sixth the population (with about a third of that in the BA urban area), and only about a third of America's GDP per capita. There are few people in America who know of Milei, but he's popular with CPAC, so Trump-adjacent tech-bros see Argentina's example as close enough.

CHEVRON: The 2024 overturning of the Chevron decision¹ would, in fact, present obstacles to DOGE that the Top Libertarian Moments video doesn't seem to grasp:

“Overturning Chevron gives agencies less deference, and that’s true whether they’re trying to regulate more or regulate less,” said Jonathan Adler, a conservative legal scholar at Case Western Reserve University. “If anything, it will make it harder for them to overturn long-standing interpretations or take advantage of statutory ambiguity.”

See Pamela King, What DOGE gets wrong about Chevron, PoliticoPro, January 30, 2025.

Much has changed since January: DOGE and the Trump Admin have moved so fast, and look to remove so many workers from so many agencies, that one might ask: if an agency is surreptitiously crippled into virtual disappearance, will anyone apply long-standing statutory interpretations afterward?

Take note: if the Trump Administration can reduce and close agencies outside the law, and against the law, then practically it doesn't matter whether Chevron was overturned. Worries over an agency's legal overreach don't present themeless when the agencies are no longer under the rule of law. Changes under those conditions are a mere matter of power, not right. Supporting the end of Chevron is different categorically from supporting DOGE.

The end of Chevron mattered to those who wanted a different legal order (on the scope of agency action); an autocracy could use a Musk-like figure in charge of DOGE under an illegal and extralegal order (to destroy agencies). Those who wanted a constitutional approach could reasonably advocate for Chevron's rejection at the high court; only those who would countenance an unconstitutional approach would cheer anything like how DOGE operates, and how it was clear in December it would operate.

Last year ended as a dreadful year for liberty in America. This year is proving worse than dreadful.

1.  Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo (2024).