Back in the Dark Ages – you know, the 1980’s – when I was a wee college lass, I was, I admit – a libertarian. At least that was what it said when I took that stupid test to see where I fell on the political spectrum. Back then, libertarian was defined as ‘fiscally conservative, socially liberal’ and was obviously defined by someone who hadn’t ever seen me in a comic book store. But it seemed to fit – kinda – so I accepted it and even looked at voting Libertarian, which I had the good sense to never do. But for a few years, I considered myself libertarian.
Then I grew up.
The modern definition is even more vague and seems to basically revolve around ‘government bad, anarchy slightly worse’ except when ready to shuck that whole law thing in favor of violent resistance should the government ever get around to trying to take their guns. This is a step down from violent resistance to government taking civil liberties, which didn’t actually materialize. Probably for the best.
Pretty much, libertarianism teaches that the law should protect citizens from lawlessness and government is otherwise bad. I’m not prepared to wholly disagree; both aspects are somewhat true. There are many points I fully agree with avowed libertarians on: civil liberties, rule of law, Google and its ilk are all jerks. Yep, we can agree on all that.
The devil is, of course, in the details.
Government has an interest in marriage, despite what libertarians will tell you. Government’s interest in marriage is its own survival. Literally (traditional definition – remember when we didn’t have to literally define literally just to use the word?). Governments only survive if their nation-states do. That doesn’t work out so well when all you have is a generation of mal-adjusted, over-grown children as your body politic. In fact, nation-states collapse when they are run by infants, no matter how big those infants grow to be.
Nation-states need a fairly high proportion of well adjusted adults to continue on in the world. Where do you get these well adjusted adults who are willing to preserve your nation-state and its government? Some can be imported – the US is good at this – but most have to be bred and raised in the homeland. Turns out, crazy alternative family structures tend to get crazy, alternative results – which is not usually the well adjusted adult the nation-state needs.
Because the battle over traditional marriage was a hard one – and unpopular with the strongly ‘civil liberties means anything goes’ crowd – libertarians simply abandoned it in favor of ‘government shouldn’t be in the marriage business’. Catchy slogan, but we’ll be paying the social, fiscal and political cost for at least a generation – more if we’re not very careful.
The road between freedom of the individual and freedom of society is full of potholes. It’s a pain in the backside to navigate. It’s hard to even know when we need to use that middle road instead of staying on one of the others. Libertarians often prefer the freedom of the individual road to the exclusion of all others. But that’s a trap.
Freedom isn’t free if it has no limits. I know, sounds contradictory but hear me out. The freedom of the open road we Americans like to wax poetic about – no limits, right? Wrong. Lots and lots of limits – which side of the road to drive on, speed, when to stop and start, even which way you’re allow to go – are imposed on travel by road. Those limits make the roads freer, not less free.
Driving head on into another car ends your road trip pretty quickly. So does flying off the road at a high rate of speed because the sign was right about how fast to take that curve. Heck, even just trying to drive wherever you want can reduce your freedom – getting off the road either eventually messes up your tires or you find that it really isn’t possible to drive through a swamp or forest.
True liberty – to live well and in accordance with one’s wishes – NEEDS some limits. They must be good limits. Limits that improve, not oppress. Limits that make things better for all, not just the few. No limits is a great slogan – and a recipe for disaster, not a prescription for a good life.
To avoid that disaster is part of what politics is all about; the slogging through all the boring stuff about whether or not we actually need that stop sign, if a law is too restrictive, has the government overstepped its bounds and coming to a decision that we then use government to enforce. Libertarians fall into the trap of just wanting the freedom without paying part of the price.
They see government as always the problem, rarely the solution. But they are looking at the trees, not the forest. That Constitution thing makes it clear; the people are the source of the authority of the government. Government just wields our authority as delegated to it. Ultimately, we are the real power – the actual government. The price of freedom is more than the service of those who serve to defend our borders; it’s the service of each citizen in slogging through the messy business of the body politic and maintaining our control of the government we authorized.
Libertarians aren’t all irrational anarchists. It’s a flaw imbedded in libertarianism. The problem is that the slope is just as slippery on the licentious side as the authoritarian. Libertarianism ultimately prefers to slide down the licentious slope.
However, to preserve our freedom, we have to navigate that difficult ridge between the two.
