I’ll have to mobilize my research team, but I’m pretty sure that Islamic radicals were targeting Americans long before we showed up in Iraq. The Islamists’ ransacking our embassy in Tehran in 1979 comes to mind, as does the 1983 truck bomb attack on the American barracks in Beirut in which 241 American soldiers were murdered. It was the deadliest single-day death toll for the United States Marine Corps since Iwo Jima.
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It’s a great-sounding argument and I understand where it comes from; we’re as war-weary as we are broke. If we don’t pull our military back, the argument goes, there will be no country left to defend because we’ll collapse under the weight of our own debt. This is the perfect storm that I’ve been talking about for almost a decade now and, as a result, there are no good choices left.
But you have to look at this from another angle. We can survive even the worst economic depression if we strengthen people and communities. But we cannot survive being blindsided by a large-scale attack from Islamic extremists. That is a clear and present danger, an existential threat to our country. So you have to make a decision: where do you focus? You can’t do it all. Is the Fed more dangerous than Islamist extremism? Maybe in the long term—they both take away from our freedom—but only one has the chance of taking us down overnight.
I don’t want to be the “policeman of the world” any more than Ron Paul does, but that doesn’t mean we can simply shut our eyes and pretend that the world no longer has any evil in it. We can’t fall into the same trap that our politicians so often do and react so far in the opposite direction that we make America less safe and less able to defend herself. The world may have changed, but not the fact that there are many people who would like nothing more than for this country to no longer exist.
I’m only bringing up Ron Paul’s foreign policy to point out that this view is a recurring theme with him, not necessarily with libertarianism. There is nothing inherently libertarian about not being willing to fight for freedom or protection, and there is certainly nothing libertarian about blaming America for violence perpetrated by others. There is no reason that libertarians can’t make the argument that the United States has both a moral right and a national obligation to defend itself—and the liberty of its citizens—from threats that develop around the world.
Yet most of the media, and many voters, are under the impression that Ron Paul’s brand of libertarian isolationism is the position that all libertarians hold—as though Paul is somehow the national spokesperson for the cause.
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Following the Founders
The Founders advised us to trade and get along with other nations—and, for the most part, we do. Trade is one of the cornerstones of a healthy, free society. But they never advised us to be suckers. How would they have handled the idea that a country thousands of miles away could build a weapon that could be used against American citizens? How would they have approached a scenario in which sea routes that make “free trade” possible were threatened by a navy controlled by radicals?
Actually, we already to know the answer to that last question. In the early nineteenth century President Thomas Jefferson sent navy ships to the Barbary states of northern Africa to fight Muslim pirates who were blackmailing and terrorizing Americans. He realized that to protect American interests we had to take the fight to the enemy. Clearly, that concept of intervention was not a foreign idea to our Founders.
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Our Founders—who wrote the very Constitution that Paul says he gets mandates from—were keenly aware that they lived in a growing, interconnected world. One of the intellectual heroes of the Revolutionary War, Thomas Paine—a pretty libertarian guy by any standard—once wrote that “the cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind.” We can’t just ignore the events shaping the world, even if they are happening in another part of it.
In some ways it’s frustrating that we still have to have this conversation. Yes, I know that every situation is unique, but what would this world look like if we had never intervened in World War II? The Jews left in Europe would have been completely destroyed and perhaps millions of Chinese and Slavs (and many others nationalities) would have been massacred and enslaved. Sooner or later we would have had to confront Hitler or else we’d succumb to him ourselves. And sometimes sooner is better; sometimes it’s true that an ounce of prevention (although, in the case of war, it’s a lot more than an ounce) is worth a pound of cure.
If you reread Ron Paul’s description of his own foreign policy, you’ll notice one phrase that really sticks out: “practice diplomacy.” You’ll be hard-pressed to find anyone who disagrees, but you’ll also be hard-pressed to find anyone who doesn’t think that’s what America does. Even Ron Paul must understand that sometimes, however, it simply doesn’t work. Ask Hitler. Ask bin Laden. Ask Saddam. We’ve been working diplomatically with the U.N. and others to promote change in Iran and North Korea for how long now? If we, as a nation, don’t defend the welfare and lives of our citizens, there will be no freedom to protect.
And it’s not like the U.S. just started protecting its interests abroad when George W. Bush was elected; we’ve been doing it from the beginning. Almost immediately after our independence we found ourselves in an undeclared quasi-war when the French began terrorizing our ships and trade routes. And it was Founding Fathers like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison—not exactly a cabal of neoconservatives, I might add—who sent American marines overseas to protect our interest. Is Paul suggesting that those guys weren’t libertarian enough?
I agree that America should not be the world’s babysitter. I agree that we should not be in a war without declaring it. I agree that we should not have military bases all over the world (over 650 at last count). I agree that we should take a close look at our foreign aid every year. So, yes, there must be commonsense limits to our national defense, but libertarians do not need to be isolationists.
CAN’T WE ALL JUST GET ALONG?
When the Tea Party movement was getting off the ground, David Kirby, a policy analyst at the libertarian Cato Institute, became somewhat skeptical about the mainstream media’s portrayal of these activists. Were they really a bunch of angry, far right-wing, bloodthirsty racists? Shockingly, no. “Many political scientists and political pundits who have not examined the data,” Kirby wrote, “wrongly conclude the Tea Party is the GOP’s base of extreme fiscal and social conservatives.”
Kirby spoke with Tea Party supporters at the Virginia Tea Party Convention in 2010 and published his results on Politico.com. Instead of raging hatemongers, Kirby found a conservative move toward more pure libertarian ideas—especially regarding free markets.
Most legitimate national surveys have confirmed that result, finding that the Tea Party is libertarian leaning, but socially conservative. The bone of contention between libertarians and conservatives, in general, has always been whether or not government should be promoting traditional values in society.
One of the most misunderstood aspects of libertarianism is that people confuse policy and morality. Government can’t make you moral. It can’t make you thin. It certainly can’t make you sober.
Remember, the Founders believed that there was a major difference between “liberty” and “license.” Friedrich von Hayek put it best when he explained, “Liberty not only means that the individual has both the opportunity and the burden of choice; it also means that he must bear the consequences of his actions. . . . Liberty and responsibility are inseparable.”
In contrast, “license” is having liberty without any regard for rules of personal conduct or morality. There is a big difference. Liberty means recognizing the consequences of actions. License, as the most famous example goes, means yelling fire in a crowded movie theater. Libertarians believe in liberty, not license.
Ronald Reagan, the most revered modern conservative politician, said, “If you analyze it, I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. . . . The basis of conservatism is a desire f
or less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is.”
William F. Buckley Jr., one of the founders of the modern conservative movement and the founder of National Review, referred to himself as a “libertarian journalist.” Barry Goldwater, the godfather of political conservatism, was essentially a libertarian and, still today, remains a political hero to many modern-day libertarians. Yet all of these people, and many others like them, were stalwart social conservatives when it came to traditional values.
The initial success of the Tea Party bodes well for the future of the movement, as does the historic 2010 congressional victories by Republicans. That was, without a doubt, the most libertarian class of elected officials in history. Congressmen like Rand Paul and Mike Lee are libertarians who understand that, without the strong moral underpinnings of faith, freedom can’t work.
“I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism.”
There is another area of overlap between conservatives and libertarians as well: conservatives who want to preserve traditional values understand that dependency is not helpful to the cause. Being self-sufficient is the best antidote to moral decay. Senator Jim DeMint, one of the leading conservative voices in the Republican Party, has been arguing that voters need to take a more libertarian view of the world. When asked about how cultural conservatives could get along with libertarians he explained:
I think the new debate in the Republican Party needs to be between conservatives and libertarians. We have a common foundation of individual liberty and constitutionally limited government. We can rationally debate some of the things we disagree on. Because I don’t think the government should impose my morals or anyone else’s on someone else. At the same time, I don’t want the government purging morals and religious values from our society. We can find a balance there.
He’s absolutely right—but not only can we find a balance there, we must find one. And it shouldn’t be that difficult: libertarians agree that government intrusion is bad for the family and that government doesn’t strengthen families or our belief in God. For example, since the “War on Poverty” started we not only have more poverty; we also have destroyed the educational system and we’re breaking apart families—all because of bad government policy. You know what the best way for a kid to escape poverty is? Ben Franklin nailed it: to not make them “easy” in it, to show them by example that there is a better way but that it will take hard work and personal sacrifice. Libertarians, like conservatives, believe that prosperity fosters more self-reliance, stronger families, and more moral societies.
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Stand Up for Privacy
To understand just how far libertarians have come within the Republican Party, let’s look at the Patriot Act. For years, Republicans were champions of the antiterrorism legislation on the grounds that it made America more secure.
But, over time, things have changed, due in no small part to libertarian-minded politicians like Senator Rand Paul and Mike Lee, who are not afraid to question even those policies that their base finds acceptable. Senator Lee, for example, said:
The concept that regardless of how passionately we might feel about the need for certain government intervention, we can’t ever allow government to be operating completely unfettered. . . . We voted against it because we love America, because we believe in constitutional limited government, because we want to make it better, we want to make this something that can, at the same time, protect Americans but without needlessly trampling on privacy interests, including many of those privacy interests protected by the Fourth Amendment.
Whether you support the Patriot Act or not, this kind of view is healthy for America and has been missing for a while since neither party has made personal liberty and privacy a priority.
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Overall, there is much more that binds libertarians and conservatives together than what keeps them apart. With that in mind, I want to quickly go through a few issues—some minor, some major—and dispel some of the myths about what being a libertarian means you’re supposed to believe.
YOU CAN LOVE ISRAEL AND BE A LIBERTARIAN
Many libertarian purists oppose providing any and all foreign aid. I agree that it’s probably time we revisited the topic. Who are we giving aid to and why? But what makes me suspicious of too many other “libertarians” is that they seem to direct most of their criticism at one nation: Israel. Why would we be so overly concerned with the aid we send to the one nation that embraces the tenets of liberty and has been our most reliable ally?
Many libertarians falsely view Israel as the aggressor in the Middle East and have succumbed to the liberal inclination to always believe that the less powerful are victims—as if being less powerful makes you right. Some libertarians falsely believe that if the United States wasn’t in the Middle East then Israel would be more likely to deal with Arab nations themselves and peace would be within reach.
History tells us a different story, though. It tells us that Israel has tried to form healthy diplomatic relationships with all of its enemies and, with few exceptions, has been rebuffed. But what is most incredible is that a philosophy that claims to honor freedom would take the side of groups and nations that deny their citizens that basic right.
YOU DON’T HAVE TO BELIEVE IN THE GOLD STANDARD TO BE A LIBERTARIAN
President Richard Nixon took America completely off the gold standard over forty years ago. From that point on, America would no longer use “hard money,” a fact that has likely unleashed government spending and helped usher our national debt to unprecedented levels. Since 1971, the total amount of U.S. public debt held in the United States has risen over 500 percent (after adjusting for inflation).
But a return to the gold standard—as some libertarians like to promote—is a pipe dream. We seem to forget that even when we had the gold standard, the United States went though a serious depression and many recessions, along with years of deflation. Economic growth seemed to explode after we began turning away from gold.
Then there’s the small matter of gold being a precious metal and a limited resource. By my quick math, we would have to invade every county in the world and steal all their gold just to pay off our national debt.
What people who like the gold standard idea are reacting to is out-of-control government spending. They figure that if you tie politicians’ hands by not allowing us to print and inflate our money then fiscal sanity will follow. But there are other ways to do that, policies that would be effective and, just as important, could actually pass through Congress. I’m talking about things like a balanced budget amendment with future spending caps, term limits, and the like. (I covered these issues in depth in my book Broke.) These are not new ideas but they are absolutely things that both conservatives and libertarians should be able to embrace.
YOU DON’T HAVE TO BELIEVE IN OPEN BORDERS TO BE A LIBERTARIAN
Many libertarians believe in open borders. Not just relaxed immigration laws, but lawlessness. Sorry, that’s not going to work for me. I can understand the emotional arguments, the “free trade” arguments, etc.—but there is nothing libertarian about rewarding those who break the law.
Milton Friedman, the great libertarian economist, once observed that America “cannot simultaneously have free immigration and a welfare state.” I’m not sure why more libertarians don’t understand this concept, especially since it’s already happening. Allowing foreigners to take advantage of a system in which nearly half of Americans don’t pay any federal income tax is a libertarian nightmare.
BEING A LIBERTARIAN DOESN’T MAKE YOU SELFISH
One of the most consistent attacks on libertarians is that they are somehow selfish and hateful. For example, Van Jones, the former Obama administration green jobs czar recently said that libertarians “hate the people, the brown folk, the gays, the lesbians, the people with piercings . . .”
Progres
sives aren’t the only ones who label libertarians that way. Conservative Washington Post columnist and former George W. Bush chief speechwriter Michael Gerson once wrote that libertarians promote “a freedom indistinguishable from selfishness.” Economist Jeffrey Sachs wrote, “Libertarians hold that individual liberty should never be sacrificed in the pursuit of other values or causes. Compassion, justice, civic responsibility, honesty, decency, humility, respect, and even survival of the poor, weak, and vulnerable—all are to take a back seat.”
This argument is so stupid that it’s actually laughable. It’s like calling someone you disagree with a racist, sexist, or Islamophobe. I like to call it the “EZ Chair” argument because these people are so lazy that they resort to the most stereotypical line of attack possible.
It’s really ironic that those who support government taking the hard-earned money of private individuals—money that could go toward creating jobs, giving to charity, and sending children to school—and throwing it into one wasteful project after the next are the ones out there calling other people selfish.
It is common for the left, and even many Republicans, to confuse charity and coercion. It’s why politicians call the money they steal from taxpayers and spend “investments.” A libertarian believes in social cooperation, not social coercion. A libertarian believes in real charity rather than coercion that funnels their money to wherever government thinks it’s best served.
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