The journey toward libertarian thought
June 16th, 2007, 4:40 pm · Post a Comment · posted by Scott Shackford
So how does a lifelong lefty liberal ultimately find himself drawn toward libertarian philosophy?
It’s a bit of a paradox, really. My dislike of the behavior of President George W. Bush and his administration led me away from the left toward the center over the course of several years.
That probably doesn’t make much sense, so I’ll have to explain. Way back in 2000 I was living and working in San Diego. One day I was having lunch with an acquaintance I knew from my work as an editor. We were discussing the presidential race and I was expressing my dissatisfaction with Al Gore (I thought he was a condescending phony – and still do). He had already decided he was voting for Gore. He was a gay man with an adopted daughter. His fear was that if Bush won the election, there would be a serious rollback of gay rights, and he would lose custody of his daughter.
That’s certainly pretty heavy reason for his decision, and I don’t blame him for his logic, even though a rollback that severe didn’t ultimately happen. I recall thinking at the time how scary it is to have to hope for a particular side to win the presidential election in order to hope to have your rights secured.
But that’s exactly what happened in America. Our civil liberties are no longer being defined by the Constitution – they’re being defined by whoever happens to be in power.
Like any good leftist , I wanted to preserve my own personal liberties and those of my friends and allies, and use government to make the world of better place by collecting taxes and redistributing the money to help people I thought needed it.
I can’t exactly pinpoint the moment of epiphany. I think I might have been watching “The Daily Show” and listening to a rant or joke referring to the oppressive politics and misbegotten priorities of the Bush administration. Jon Stewart, quite accurately, enjoys skewering Bush over his arrogant expressions of power despite so much public opposition. He won. He gets to decide. He’s “The Decider,” if you’ll recall.
It’s the nature of Bush’s arrogance that led to my transformation. I realized that the real difference between my beliefs in government influence and Bush’s was not how much influence and control the government should have on citizens’ lives, but merely the direction in which the control would be manifested. I was just as willing to allow the government to curtail people’s rights, particularly property rights, in order to pursue what I believed to be an ideal society. So does President Bush. We differed only in our distinctions of what makes an “ideal society.”
Logic dictates that if I believe that I have the right – when people who share my values are in control of the government – to shape and curtail individual rights in order to build a society I want to live in, then I also have to accept it of Bush and those who support him. He won. He gets to be “The Decider.” I had to accept his authority if I were to demand the right of government to make similar decisions in a reversed situation.
But I won’t accept the right of the president to curtail civil liberties just because he and his party won. That runs counter to the very idea of civil liberties and makes a mockery of our own Declaration of Independence, which set forth the idea that certain rights are innate and not subject to government suppression. And so I, after a bout of soul searching, abandoned many of my beliefs that the government should play a role in shaping society. The society that government shapes would always be defined by whoever is in control, and at times, those people are not going to share your values and ideals.
Ultimately that journey led me to libertarianism, where everybody gets to decide for himself or herself what kind of life to lead, and the government is responsible for preserving our security and rights. And to think, I used to believe libertarianism was an extremely selfish political philosophy.
