Shards of Libertarianism
The libertarian movement across America lies in shards. Discussions among Americans using the terms freedom and liberty are now plentiful chiefly among reactionary populists who use those words to deny individual rights, to wield a continental power against their perceived enemies, to excuse the manipulation of markets for the benefit of a few, to ban books and confine to the closet, and to threaten free peoples abroad while aiding and mimicking dictatorships.
We heard not long ago, yet now a lifetime ago, that we were on the verge of a libertarian moment. We thought we were, and would have been freer, safer, and more prosperous had that moment arrived.
It did not.
Here we are: Many who recently professed individual liberty, free markets, and limited government came quickly and loudly to support child-caging, wall-building, tariff-imposing, and race-baiting Trumpism. (So complete is their transformation that those who readily abandoned long-standing teachings are now searching for new names for their autocratic nativism beyond the eponymous link to Trump: MAGA, Dark MAGA, conservative populist, America First, American Greatness, etc. They see an eternity in their new terms for old tyrannies and bigotries.)
Self-described libertarians who balanced loss of individual rights against tax cuts were never libertarian despite their insistence. These separate concepts are not of equal weight; freedom is more than one entry among others on a sheet.
The immediate circumstance: We now face a wall-building and Capitol-wall-climbing horde holding power over a continent. They aim the end of America's liberal democratic society. Self-described libertarians who imagine that there's a practical third way are deluded. There is a grand coalition in defense of this constitutional order and a fascist party that seeks to replace the constitutional order with a herrenvolk state.
If libertarians don't support individual rights against the horde, then they support nothing; if they cannot see where the greater threat to liberty lies, then they see nothing.
Where is libertarianism among the hundreds of millions of Americans across this continent? It's holding out at a think tank (or two), falsely touted by a cockamamie third party that's now rightwing in practice, and the occasional social where someone tries to impress another with how much of a free-thinker he is (and that was always a mug's game).
In any town, one finds the left, a small center, and (all-too-many) reactionary populists. Libertarians? No, not at all.
The liberty movement has not survived an association with, or attraction to, those who have eroded fundamental rights while claiming to be champions of freedom.
Libertarianism, despite having fallen so very far, yet deserves better. It's a truism to say that all people can influence society, but not in conditions of their own choosing. These would not have been conditions of any humane person's choosing. And yet, and yet, there are shards to collect, and principles to reaffirm, within a diverse coalition of millions, committed to a constitutional order.
There are countless worthy endeavors. Joining others in advancing a libertarian philosophy within a liberal democratic society is among them.