American Libertarianism

Buckley -- National Review

“Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose (The more things change, the more they remain the same) -- French writer Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr, 1849.

Most Americans – including, of course, citizens of Connecticut – are unfamiliar with libertarianism as a political orientation.

Libertarianism has a long historical pedigree and a sometimes tangled history. Were the anarchists of the post Romantic period in Europe libertarians? Some historians would answer yes. Was Robespierre, partly responsible for the worst excesses of the French Revolution, a libertarian? Some historians believe he was. May the revolutionary writings of the Marquis DeSade be characterized as libertarian?  Were DeSade’s moral judgments likewise libertarian? What is the difference between libertinism and libertarianism?

Historically, libertarianism has two taproots, one on the left, rooted, though not inexorably, in what might be called anarchic individualism, and another on the right, rooted in ordered liberty, a resistance to disorder not at all incompatible with American conservatism.

William F. Buckley Jr., largely credited with the regeneration of American conservatism in the post-World War II period, several times in his writings unabashedly identified himself as a libertarian. One of his last books, Happy Days Were Here Again, is subtitled Reflections Of A Libertarian Journalist.

It must be obvious to objective observers who have been paying attention to political ruminations in the post-World War II period that Buckley was never an anarchist, and his religious precepts put him at odds with DeSade’s attempts to eroticize traditional morality or to make a cultural virtue of, say, sadism.

So, “things change,” as the French say. And the more they change, the more they do not remain the same. The broad political and cultural thrust of both American conservatism and libertarianism is similar: to preserve the good in politics and culture, while showing the door to what is harmful.

Both American conservatism and libertarianism recognize that there are limits to things both good and bad.

Libertarianism is not a doctrine; rather it is a cultural and political orientation that values liberty and is watchfully suspicious of any attempt by agents of force to suppress free expression. “I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man,” said Thomas Jefferson while in the grip of a libertarian mood.

The most important American libertarian economist in the modern period is Milton Friedman, whose posture towards unnecessary governmental force is similar to Jefferson’s. Friedman, an apostle of liberty, is a conspicuous spokesman of American libertarianism, which supports the maximization of ordered individual liberty – provided my liberty does not abort your liberty.

Friedman’s libertarianism is rooted in classical liberal free market property notions. His chief idea, he says, is that no one is better able to care for and make decisions  related to property than its owners. The poorest regulators of property – which necessarily includes the distribution of money and goods – are those busybodies who have no direct interests in economic, cultural and political outcomes. Disinterest is not always benign. Sometimes, it can be positively unhinged from reality.

American libertarianism carries all these golden perceptions with it in its ideational portmanteau. Libertarianism is not motivated by greed, even less so by self-interest, despite the disposition of Ayn Rand, the high priestess of atheistic libertarianism, to raise selfishness to the level of a secular virtue.

The average libertarian reacts intemperately to the many uses of autocrats’ “big sticks”, and they are rightly suspicious of tasty carrots as well. They demand that choice be unfettered by political machinations , which is less likely in the era of top-down government by noxious special interest groups, whatever they may be called: “one party” states, narrow-minded “experts,” and “politicians for life “ who cannot bear to leave the political stage to their betters.

“Every profession,” George Bernard Shaw used to say, when overcome by a fleeting libertarian spasm, “is a conspiracy against the laity.” The unchecked rule of experts often leads in short order to a gulag, where liberty itself expires. And a rule by doctors – as the now departed head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID, 1984 to 2022) “I am science” Anthony Fauci reminds us – may be worse.

Such notions as cited above do not arise from selfishness. They are the result of an application of skeptical, in the best sense of the word, common sense to an uncommonly disordered society.

Let us not forget that it was Buckley the libertarian who told us that he would rather be governed by the first 100 people picked at random from the phone book than the Harvard Law School faculty.