Q&A: Why should someone who distrusts both major parties believe the Libertarian Party is different? Last week on Mailbag Monday, we discussed where Libertarians fit along the popular but not-very-informative left-right spectrum. This week we discuss the logical follow-up that should appeal especially to the 20% or so of 8th District voters who have learned to hate both major parties: How can any party be trusted? Why should anyone believe the Libertarian Party is different?
I love this question, because it was my question for most of the last decade. The short answer is that while most parties exist to promote the electoral success of their candidates, the Libertarian Party exists to promote Liberty, win or lose. We would rather be principled than powerful. And that’s what makes it safe to trust us with power.
As we saw last week, the Libertarian combination of views looks like an ungainly hybrid to people who are used to arranging political views along a single left-to-right spectrum. By combining fiscally conservative and apparently “pro-business” views on economic matters with socially tolerant and anti-war views, Libertarians can look to some people as if they are trying to sew an elephant’s head onto a donkey’s torso.
But if we pay closer attention, we see that the part of each major party that Libertarians combine is the principled part. Libertarians oppose government interference with individual liberty for any purpose other than to protect the person or property of another individual. This is known as the “non-aggression principle,” and it is more fundamental for Libertarians than any particular plank of the party’s platform. Thus, what may look at first blush like a mixing and matching of standard R and D positions is actually a much more consistent application of a principled preference for individual liberty over government coercion.
Neither major party accepts the non-aggression principle, but that’s not the only way they differ from the Libertarian Party. In practice, there is no political principle to which either major party is committed more strongly than it is committed to winning elections. The two major political parties exist, first and foremost, to win elections. They are private clubs that exist for the purpose of electing their members, and if they believe that changing their policy positions or even their political philosophies will help them elect more members of their club, they will change positions in a heartbeat. This has actually happened many times in the history of the Republicans and the Democrats, as any good history of those parties makes clear. (For anyone who wants to check this out, I can recommend Lewis Gould's Grand Old Party.)
Libertarians are different. If you don’t believe this, go to the Libertarian Party’s website, http://www.lp.org/, and try to join the party. Before the party accepts your membership (or your money), you will be asked to take the following pledge: “I certify that I oppose the initiation of force to achieve political or social goals.” Libertarians don’t all agree on exactly what the pledge means, and there is sometimes room for reasonable minds to differ about what counts as protection of person or property rather than a “political or social goal." The value of the pledge, though, is that it anchors the debate around a principle that is much more protective of individual liberty than the perpetual, poll-driven pursuit of power practiced by the major parties.
The first time I thought about joining the Libertarian Party, I stopped at the non-aggression pledge. It was so broad that, even if it sounded good in theory, I wasn’t sure it would succeed in practice. After a few more years of watching the clown show we call Congress, I came to understand that it’s the unchecked pursuit of electoral power that is the ultimate practical failure. After spending years as an “unaffiliated” voter, it now seems to me that the pledge is the only reason I could consider joining any party again. It is the pledge, and the party’s principled commitment to non-aggression, that makes the Libertarian Party more trustworthy than the others.
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