Liberaltarians?
Are Democrats now the lesser of two evils for Libertarians? CATO Institute Senior fellow and the director of its Center for Trade Policy Studies Brink Lindsey weighs in with a recent article he wrote for New Republic. You can also hear a recent NPR interview with Lindsey here.
Bob Barr, anyone? He just became a Libertarian.
More’s the pity… can you think of a time in recent memory when Americans have been as ripe for a viable third option as right now? I guess it would have been ’92, when Perot got almost 20%, despite his donning the foil hat from time to time (accusing Al Gore of having debate answers fed to him???).
Hey, who wants to start a 3rd party this summer? Maybe we could get it made into a reality TV show…
*sigh* The aliens all think I have good ideas. Maybe they’re just impressed with my Reynolds Wrap fedora.
The Libertarian Party is probably the biggest roadblock to libertarian ideas. Seriously, they’re foil-hat-wearing, silver-eating jokers who think that 1% is a “success” in a national, or state, or local election. They don’t kick out the insane, and they refuse to work with anybody else. It’s no wonder they’re relegated to the same political no-man’s-land as the Greens and the Socialists.
The Volokh Conspiracy is all up in this issue… this link has a series of posts on the subject, termed “fusionism” (as in conservative-ibertarian fusion, vs. liberal-libertarian fusion.)
There’s a lot to say on the subject, but most of what you read simply demonstrates my long-standing belief that political labels in this country have long ceased to hold any real meaning. In the abscence of any well-run, or appealing alternatives to the two parties of Tweedle, the idea of seriously considering the implications of “fusion” (also known as coalition-building, in countries where it happens regularly) is kind of goofy.
Without question, this debate should happen. I personally don’t care where anyone comes down on it though. It seems to me that the root of the debate is the fact that most people simply dislike both the parties and most of the candidates, and yet cannot imagine the possibility of a viable third party. Clearly the debate in blogosphere is not about whether the Libertarian Party should endorse the Democratic tickets, right? The Democrats aren’t about to make real efforts to woo the libertarians are they? This is really just democrats extending the “we hate bush” bandwagon welcome to self-described libertarians, right?
What I’m getting at is the all-too obvious point that our politics are simply fucked six ways from Harney County. If any of us knew what being a “Democrat” or a “Republican” means, or what the difference between a “Liberal,” or a “Conservative” is, the “fusionism” debate would be more meaningful. As it is, we seem rhetoricaly, conceptually, and politically locked into the Dee-Dum dynamic