Libertarian: What’s in a Label?
By Randall Holcombe • Thursday November 5, 2009 12:12 PM PDT • 25 Comments
John Stossel (who’s leaving ABC to join the Fox Business Network) gave a well-received talk at my university yesterday titled “Freedom and Its Enemies.” Several times during the talk he referred to himself as a libertarian.
Sometimes the libertarian label seems like a liability for people who are both (1) serious about substantially reducing the scope of government, and (2) actually are in a position to have enough influence to do so.
At times there is little distinction, as far as public perception goes, between libertarians and libertines, who just want the government to quit harassing people who want to live non-traditional lifestyles. So self-proclaimed libertarians get lumped in with the dope smokers and gay rights groups. Not that there’s anything wrong with that... but it can be a distraction from the broader goal of limiting the scope of government.
Sometimes libertarianism is associated with anarchism. One question asked to Mr. Stossel after his talk addressed exactly that point. This is another distraction. Government is not going to be eliminated in my lifetime, or in my childrens’ lifetimes, so arguing why government should be abolished isn’t going to do anything to make today’s government smaller. (It may make limited government advocates look more moderate, though!) Mr. Stossel answered that he’s not an anarchist, but again, dealing with the issue is a distraction from the libertarian message he was trying to present.
And then, libertarians are often associated with Libertarians; that is, members of the Libertarian Party. All Libertarians would claim to be libertarians, but the reverse definitely is not true. Many libertarians refuse to participate in politics on principle, and argue that Libertarians can’t be libertarians and participate in the political process as they are. At the other end of the spectrum is the Republican Liberty Caucus (RLC) whose members claim to be libertarian Republicans. A few RLC members I know who are converts from the Libertarian Party say they’ve given up hope that the Libertarian Party can have any influence, and believe their best hope to actually implement a more limited government is to make the Republican Party more libertarian.
Lots of people have libertarian views. They want lower taxes, less government spending, reduced regulation of commercial activity, and less government interference in their personal lives. But the libertarian label seems to carry with it a lot of baggage.
If asked directly, I will tell people I am a libertarian, but (with the obvious exception of this blog post) I will never volunteer the information. Why? My answer is in the paragraphs above.
With the Democrats now in charge of the White House and Congress, we are seeing a considerable backlash against their policies, including health care reform, energy policy and cap and trade, and the continuing addition of spending proposals to a budget that, even with their advocated tax increases, they forecast to be running trillion dollar deficits as far out as the forecasts go.
For those alarmed at what the Democrats are implementing, the alternative is offered by the Republicans. In the court of public opinion, this alternative falls short because of the eight failed Bush-McCain years. Whether that’s a proper assessment of Bush’s presidency can be debated (though I think there is a strong argument to be made), but my point is, that’s what President Obama campaigned on, and won. So, in the court of popular opinion, the alternative is to replace the undesirable policies of the Democrats with the failed policies of the Republicans who controlled our government prior to the Democrats. No wonder the Republican opposition can get so little traction.
There is another alternative lurking in the shadows. There is a mass of people who do not support the obscene expansion of government proposed by the Democrats, but who didn’t support the earlier Republican agenda either. There is a mass of people who want substantially smaller government in all areas of their lives. They want lower taxes, they want government programs curtailed or eliminated, they want substantial spending reductions and a balanced budget, they want freer movement of people and goods across our borders, and they want the government to allow them the freedom to make personal choices for themselves, even if many of their fellow citizens judge that they are making poor choices.
Rather than opposing these government initiatives one at a time — health care, tax increases, energy policy, etc. — it might be more effective to put them all under the umbrella of a single term that describes the political inclinations of those who want smaller government. One label that might work is “libertarian.”
I began by noting the baggage carried by the libertarian label, but one reason it carries this baggage is because it’s not mainstream, and many people don’t have a clear idea what the term means. So, they associate it with anarchists, or libertines, or a fringe political party. I like the fact that John Stossel describes his own political philosophy as libertarian, and when he becomes a regular on Fox Business Channel, he will be reaching tens of millions of viewers, many of whom think of themselves as Republicans because, well, they are against the Democrats, so that must make them Republicans.
Stossel is an excellent representative for libertarian ideas because he is thoughtful, sensible, and persuasive. If he keeps using the term to describe his views, many of his viewers will discover that they, too, are libertarians. Maybe that will push them toward the RLC, or maybe to the Libertarian Party. But I hope more people will see that the alternative to Democrat isn’t just Republican, and that the libertarian alternative fits many people better.
I have a tendency to want to avoid simplistic labels, and I began by giving some reasons for avoiding the libertarian label. But in political debate, sometimes a simple label that describes an underlying principle can help win the debate.
If the libertarian label becomes more recognized in mainstream politics, it can become a powerful tool. It has become more recognized over the decades, and if people like John Stossel use it regularly, it will become more mainstream. I would love to see the label become mainstream enough that a winning argument in a political debate could be, “That violates the libertarian principles on which this country is founded.”
Tags: Budget and Tax Policy, Civil Liberties, Free Market, Personal Liberty, Philosophy, Politics, The State 
This is a perennial problem. I don’t like the term and avoid it in my book Race and Liberty (Independent Institute, 2009). As I note, many of the people in the book were not full-fledged “classical liberals” (the term I use) or “libertarians” but they did embrace or espouse classical liberal positions on race.
Ditto 2009 — many people share classic liberal values on various issues. It’s a matter of reaching them. If pressed, I might say I’m a “small government liberal” — liberal as in “liberty.” Or I am a “libertarian” with a small “l” but the term boxes us in when few people can be boxed that way. After all, the greatest third party out there is the Independent party. I frankly don’t see the Democrats moving in our direction. The Republicans are bad but they do have factions that are classic liberal. Hopefully, they learned their lesson from their long period of misrule. The independents are also approachable. Yet even Democrats may be “saved,” as they say here in the Bible Belt. I’ve witnessed conversions with my own eyes. It may take time but people rebel and/or change.
I admit, however, that the Left has done a good job of distorting labels (hey, I’m in the label-production factory: higher ed!).
Perhaps South Park will cough up a really cool label we can all use. lol
Jonathan Bean | Nov 5, 2009 | Reply
Cute. You bring up “limiting the scope of government” addressing “spending proposals”, “trillion dollar deficits”, “health care, tax increases, energy policy, etc.” and... Wait... “Et cetera?!”
War, genocide, torture, kidnapping, wanton destruction, mass looting, odious global debt=”etc.”?!
You said: “I began by noting the baggage carried by the libertarian label, but one reason it carries this baggage is because it’s not mainstream, and many people don’t have a clear idea what the term means. So, they associate it with anarchists, or libertines, or a fringe political party.”
The label’s a joke when it’s presented as you did—a label about cutting taxes.
Little Alex | Nov 5, 2009 | Reply
I embrace the label and believe we need not just to get people to be more against big government, which is great, but we need a growing number of people devoted to libertarianism — non-intervention, free markets, individual liberty, private property, free association, non-aggression and peace — if we want a significant long-term change toward liberty. At any given time, it can look like there is a strong plurality mad at Washington. But that’s been the case for centuries. Until more and more people embrace fullblown libertarianism, I think most victories will be short lived and relatively minor.
Anthony Gregory | Nov 5, 2009 | Reply
I don’t disagree with you, Little Alex, but the one thing all libertarians have in common is that they want smaller government, from one end to the other. I’ve never heard anyone say “I’m a libertarian, but I think we should expand government in just this one area.” Never heard it. So, that’s a good fundamental principle to build on to make libertarianism more mainstream.
Randall Holcombe | Nov 5, 2009 | Reply
There’s a reasonable argument to be made that a new term is required, that “libertarian” has so much baggage that it can never be resuscitated... The venues in which most people participate in any discussions aren’t much more sophisticated than children’s playgrounds and the rules for playgrounds seem to apply there, so that meaningless name-knockoffs like “libertard” actually seem to have a lot of (negative) influence on people who might otherwise be sympathetic.
“Classical liberal” isn’t *so* bad but “liberal” has so much non-libertarian meaning attached to it now that I’m not sure it works. I see some merit in the term “liberaltarian” – when forced to give a label, that’s usually what I use – but it may not be different enough from “libertarian” to work, and besides, it kind of represents one “half” of libertarians, squeezing out those more closely associated with “paleo-libertarianism”.
The LP has made a huge mess of this branding. Their rhetoric is so “me-me-me” and “angry” that it alienates many who, as you say, are basically culturally liberal and fiscally conservative but don’t see themselves as revolutionaries or rebels, just rather people who think fiscal conservatism and cultural liberalism are preferable to their alternatives. Calling yourself “the Party of Principle” amounts to an inference that if you aren’t already in the LP, you don’t have “principles”, again alienating many who would otherwise be sympathetic.
It seems to me that what is needed is something much more lowkey and something much more positive-sounding and inclusive rather than embattled and angry; not just a term, but also the accompanying “elevator speech”. Libertarianism and LP’s focus on “force” is unintuitive and difficult to understand in a casual way; while I think that the principle is intellectually crucial, I don’t think that intellectualism has to also be the branding.
The current association of libertarianism with a fierce individuality and focus on freedom is likewise counterproductive: people *want* to be part of collectives, we all understand that risks are less when we are parts of collectives, that there are economies of scale that come from collectives, etc. They see a disconnect between this individuality/freedom message and all the collectives that give them comfort: their family, their community, the company they work for, their clubs, their churches, their country and its national defense, etc. And “freedom” is a poor marketing message: it’s too selfish. It is almost always described in selfish terms: “*I* should be free to do what I want to do...”, etc. It gives an impression of irresponsibility, as people will fill in “you want to do what you want to do... and not be responsible for its consequences (and perhaps not anything else).”
A rebranding needs to be done that speaks simply to this huge group of fiscally conservative, culturally liberal people. It needs to speak in terms of what *they* get out of it, not what *you* get out of it. It needs to speak to an acknowledgment and even an embrace of collectives – voluntary, of course, but that can be in the fine print – and the sense of connectedness and responsibility that is important to them.
I am not a marketer, so I’m better at describing “requirements” than I am with coming up with a solution. The term that I’ve been kicking around the most – and I freely admit it has issues – is some variant of “Responsibility”. The notion that freedom and responsibility go hand and hand is well known, but libertarian branding has focused on the former much more than the latter, and this may have been a branding mistake, for the reasons I give before. For the large section of people that are comfortable with and want to be part of collectives, who want the “safety nets” that come from collectives, etc., but just think that fiscal policy should be conservative and that government should stay out of people’s personal lives, a focus on “responsibility” may work. In no way does it hint at a free ride, and it doesn’t offend the sensibilities of those who *do* think that people should be “responsible” for helping other people in the sense that it’s “the right thing to do”. But “responsibility” captures the notion that no one can shirk their responsibilities by foisting them off on the government to do them; we have to take that responsibility on ourself. And because freedom and responsibility have to go together – you can’t be responsible for something if you didn’t have freedom to make a different choice – freedom comes along, including its manifestation in law and government.
Andy Cleary | Nov 5, 2009 | Reply
Often the practical contemporary distinction between modest libertarians and indecently radical libertarians is not theory or the ultimate feasibility of abolishing the state. Instead it’s simply how much state killing one is prepared to accept – war and all that inconvenient bloody stuff from which the modest must avert their eyes.
D. Frank Robinson | Nov 5, 2009 | Reply
@Andy Cleary: Perhaps you are a communitarian.
D. Frank Robinson | Nov 5, 2009 | Reply
When the “fundamental principle to build on to make libertarianism more mainstream” means avoiding the basic principle of libertarianism, itself, it’s a joke. That basic principle of non-aggression isn’t about the size of the government; it’s the principle that you don’t just bomb Brown people because the people you’re looting to do it will be more likely to consent to it.
If the message is peace, all else follows. That’s not complicated. It’s the non-aggression principle to the most simple conclusions.
I don’t know about you, Mr. Holcombe, but I still have to meet that person who says they want smaller government who hasn’t heard your case for libertarianism a million times. They haven’t embraced it because they like war porn, can’t get over the FDR brainwashing from their youth or both. Libertarianism’s legitimacy isn’t in political football poo-flinging. It’s in the philosophy.
If we can’t sell the non-aggression principle, the society won’t be libertarian. That’s something people have to grip. Libertarianism can’t be “made mainstream”. The mainstream has to catch up to our logic, reason, consistency, legitimacy, morale; or we sacrifice pieces of that to lose all hope for a free society.
The ‘National Security’ Mass Murder State—imperialism, torture, domestic surveillance, militarization of local police, the military industrial complex robbing to create nothing but destruction—is a “moderate” cause. I’d guess more people are consistent with this power of the State how they relate the capital gains tax to Medicare, let alone the State’s most vicious crimes.
Frankly, it just struck me as kinda’ sick that that’s an “etc.” in you discussing the “libertarian” label.
I get what you’re saying, but libertarianism isn’t about “smaller government; it’s about no individual having the moral legitimacy to initiate force. Repeating “smaller government” just begs questions with long-winded answers that get wonky to the point where you’re the only one listening to yourself speak. That doesn’t sound like a good “mainstream” strategy. Non-aggression communicates a lot better. “Smaller government” just makes us sound like Republicans who can tolerate and be tolerated.
Little Alex | Nov 5, 2009 | Reply
I consider myself to be a libertarian. I sometimes tell people I’m a political atheist.
David | Nov 5, 2009 | Reply
The word “libertarian” has become almost meaningless as it has 10,000 different meanings to 10,000 different people. Years ago, many people had no idea what it meant. Now, people associate it with a very wide range of things – many of which aren’t good.
In the media, Glenn Beck is often referred to as a libertarian. Some people, even in the Libertarian Party, see no difference between libertarianism and conservatism. I’ve even heard some on the left describe Dick Cheney as a libertarian.
There is a good chance that Wayne Allyn Root, the author of “The Conscience of a Libertarian: Empowering the Citizen Revolution with God, Guns, Gambling & Tax Cuts” will win the nomination of the Libertarian Party in 2012 to run for president. God, guns, gambling and tax cuts, indeed.
I don’t really like being called a libertarian anymore. I’m just part of the resistance against the occupation forces.
Tom Blanton | Nov 5, 2009 | Reply
Libetarianism in theory sounds good to people but it’s not politically popular in practice. Try talking to voters today about eliminating all these “big-government” programs. The elderly love their Social Security and Medicare. The rural farmers love their agricultural subsidies. Blue collar unionized labor loves federal intervention into the workplace. Tons of engineers and managers work for companies that thrive on federal contracts. I could go on and on. Even younger voters love federal benefits (i.e., tax breaks for first time home buyers, student loans/aid, etc.). True, roughly 10% of the population luke-warmly agrees with us but the other 90% wants to know what goodies they can get from the magic government money machine.
AntiPartisan | Nov 6, 2009 | Reply
Little Alex: “Repeating “smaller government” just begs questions with long-winded answers that get wonky to the point where you’re the only one listening to yourself speak.”
I see your point, but does citing the “non-aggression principle” solve that problem?
Fact is, people also wildly disagree about what constitutes “aggression.” Murder, rape, and battery are considered by virtually everyone to be aggressive acts and morally wrong. Not so for abortion, inflation, defamation, business regulation, and so on. You don’t communicate much when you say, “libertarians are against aggression (or initiation of force).” You’d still have to state which acts do or don’t constitute aggression/IOF and explain why or why not (which even varies to some degree among libertarians). Discussions about abstract philosophy can be pretty “long-winded” as well.
JT | Nov 6, 2009 | Reply
Being for small government or insisting on non-aggression are fine in principle but they are effectively “anti” positions, being against something(s) which one finds abhorrent.
It is better to position ourselves in positive terms. And the key to it all is voluntaryism. We favor voluntary cooperation. This solves the anti-social problem noted earlier. We are not averse to groups and communities; we believe in free association though.
D. Saul Weiner | Nov 6, 2009 | Reply
A common problem with symbols is that their meanings tend to change over time, either through deliberate co-optation or more commonly through gradual usage change. That is why I am more and more avoiding any of the labels I’ve used to describe myself in the past, specifically classical liberal, libertarian, and market anarchist (in chronological order).
When appropriate to say something about my political views, I just tell people first that my primary aim is to be left alone by all and sundry except those with whom I enter into voluntary arrangements, and that I am opposed to all forms of slavery, to any degree, and imposed by any means.
I find that this description is better understood and is more likely to generate thoughtful discussion as opposed to heated argument with those whose views differ substantially.
Alan Esworthy | Nov 7, 2009 | Reply
@JT: The message is non-aggression as an opening for discussion. One way to communicate what is and isn’t aggression goes hand-in-hand with libertarian ethics and justice: reasoning.
With reason, libertarians communicate that nothing is immune from scrutiny. These gray areas in the mainstream don’t disappear if libertarians do our best to blend in with Republicans.
A libertarian isn’t a conservative who accepts the status quo and lays the burden of proof to disqualify the status quo on the challenger. The libertarian scrutinizes the status quo which attempts to assert authority. If we’re afraid of philosophy-based discussions, it’s all a waste and the label should be at all poltical. Those who wish to be political can be “Ron Paul Republicans”. When you’re talking about a philosophy that isn’t based on creating authoritarian structures to monopolize society, you’re just not going to have it all planned out. A hypothetical ‘libertarian’ society would be a participatory one, formed by the interpersonal relations, ethics and institutions created in this new order.
“Let’s make government smaller” just doesn’t mean anything. It gives nothing for anyone to think about. There is no libertarian political base, so playing it safe isn’t even pragmatic; it’s perpetuity in irrelevance. Rhetoric like this communicates like this (skip to the 4:00 mark): http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-november-4-2009/indecision-2009—local-election-results
Little Alex | Nov 7, 2009 | Reply
“Make government smaller” is, I regret the need to point out, at best an impossible aim. I suggest it is actually a meaningless aim given the coercive nature of government.
I respectfully suggest instead we strive to “make government less powerful.”
My own preference would be to make government about as powerful as a dead gnat.
Alan Esworthy | Nov 7, 2009 | Reply
I embrace the libertarian label, too, but using this definition:
“A libertarian is a person who believes that no one has the right, under any circumstances, to initiate force against another human being, or to advocate or delegate its initiation. Those who act consistently with this principle are libertarians, whether they realize it or not. Those who fail to act consistently with it are not libertarians, regardless of what they may claim.”
– L. Neil Smith
So libertarians are proponents of peace, but most, myself included, are not pacifists. We believe only that nobody has the right to INITIATE force. Self defense against an initiator is encouraged. But the state does almost nothing BUT initiate force. You know, what government agents do if you refuse to pay your protection money (taxes), or if you change your consciousness by imbibing one of their banned substances. Or fail to obey basically any of their so-called “laws”. So I consider anarchy to be the logical conclusion of libertarian belief. It would certainly be a very different sort of government that didn’t EVER initiate force. Hardly worthy of the name.
Bill St. Clair | Nov 8, 2009 | Reply
Thanks for all of your comments, Little Alex. We’re probably in agreement on almost every policy issue. I didn’t see anything to disagree with in your posts, and I didn’t see you disagreeing with anything in mine as far as policy goes. Yet it’s interesting that your reaction to what I posted is so negative. You started by calling my post “cute,” which isn’t too bad I suppose, and later calling it “kinda’ sick,” which seems worse.
I wasn’t trying to define libertarianism, but rather was suggesting it might be useful in political debate, using John Stossel’s self-proclaimed libertarianism as an example. I see you don’t agree with that, because “it just doesn’t mean anything,” and “It gives nothing for anyone to think about.”
The reality is, most people don’t want to think about political philosophy or government. Their lives are focused on their jobs, their families, and if there’s time left, recreation and entertainment.
Even when the discussion is on concrete policy issues like health care reform, cap and trade, or the war in Afghanistan, most people don’t care much, not because these things aren’t important, but because there’s nothing they can do about them. So many people just tune it out. That’s why I was thinking that a label like “libertarian” might be helpful in moving public policy toward less government in all areas.
You disagree. I accept that.
Randall Holcombe | Nov 8, 2009 | Reply
Yet one more person talking about limited government values and leaving out the noninterventionist cornerstone of our libertarian beliefs. This is just as bad as when the Campaign for Liberty president, John Tate, got in front of the 9/12 crowd and preached the values that C4L stands for but forgot to mention our noninterventionist stance on foreign policy (the reason I stopped sending money to C4L). Fox watching republicans will most likely feel comfortable calling themselves libertarians as long as we don’t tell them about our stance on foreign policy. If we have to trick people into using the label without them understanding one of the cornerstones of our policy is more than a bad idea, it is destructive to the cause. The Fox watching Hannity listening “great Americans” that has become the American right will never see eye to eye with us in regards to this issue. That is why we will remain a fringe party; the “conservatives” want to maintain our empire. They love the warfare state and only reject the welfare state. Recruiting them is hopeless.
Also, there is nothing debatable about calling the previous 8 years a failure. Massive failure is the only plausible “assessment of Bush’s presidency.” If there is an argument to be made in defense of the Bush years, please do tell. I am yet to hear one.
Wes Dillard | Nov 9, 2009 | Reply
John Mackey and I created FLOW, Freedom Lights Our World to promote voluntary cooperation as the path to sustainable peace, prosperity, happiness, and well-being for all six, soon seven, billion people on earth. We are libertarians who share the idealism of the 1960s but who realize that for the most part government is the problem, not the solution. We will be emphasizing “Conscious Capitalism” more going forward, with an increasing emphasis on capitalism (and capitalists) becoming more conscious of its power to do good within a Misesian free market framework (most of the harms done by capitalism, and they do exist, are due to government interventions).
Our project is a long-term one, but the idea is to capture the moral high ground: Instead of lots of rhetoric around the notion of low taxes and hatred of government, we place the emphasis completely on the desire to create a better world. This positioning of our ideals, combined with John’s commitment to Conscious Capitalism and my background as an educational entrepreneur, provide us with the credibility needed to shake off the darker associations of “libertarianism.” John and I sometimes joke that we created FLOW because the usual stereotype of a “libertarian” is a cranky old guy shooting up heroin while firing his machine gun at the rusted cars in his unzoned backyard before going in to watch porn for the afternoon. With all due respect for our libertarian friends who want to live such a life, the most important reason to be a libertarian is to eliminate world poverty and to create world peace.
Michael Strong | Nov 10, 2009 | Reply
All:
Great discussion! As a long time (20+yr) philosophical libertarian and a recently (3 yr) returned (from Libertarian) Republican, I now call myself a member of the Libertarian Wing of the Republican party. For a few years I’ve been volunteering with the County GOP offices and now serve on the County and State Central Committees, trying to educate the other members. I believe the soil for Liberty is more fertile in the Republican party than in the Democrat party. However, I am bothered by many in the GOP who advocate for fiscal conservancy and smaller government but still want empire, social security, medicare, border fences, etc. It seems to me if we can gently point out the inconsistency of those ideas we might slowly make progress in the direction we all wish the Country to move.
Ed Jucevic | Nov 10, 2009 | Reply
D. Frank Robinson said “Perhaps you [me] are a communitarian.”
Thanks for the suggestion. I looked it up on wikipedia, and I think that no, I’m not a communitarian at all. It says things like
“central to the communitarian philosophy is the concept of positive rights, which are rights or guarantees to certain things. These may include state subsidized education, state-subsidized housing, a safe and clean environment, universal health care, and even the right to a job with the concomitant obligation of the government or individuals to provide one.”
Not at all what I believe in. My thoughts on government are definitely the same as libertarians. Where I differ is A) my *derivation* of libertarianism: most libertarians take “rights” as an assumption, and build from there. I do not. I start only from self-interest, and *derive* “rights” as things we voluntary choose to give away as part of contractual agreements that I think can be sold to the vast majority of people; B) I do not lump libertarianism with individualism, recognizing that “individualism” is just one choice that someone could make in a free world and that other much less individualistic choices are still choosable in a free world (including e.g. “socialism”, *as long as everyone in that socialistic group is there voluntarily*).
I’m actually a little disappointed that a “libertarian” (I’m assuming that if you are here you probably are one) could read what I wrote as communitarian. It means that my writing is, alas, still poor.
Andy Cleary | Nov 10, 2009 | Reply
If libertarians cooked up another term for themselves, the government propaganda machine would still turn it into a pejorative.
If people show dismay at terms like libertarian, anarchist, even libertine, just explain to them that they are victims of government propaganda designed to prevent them from honestly considering alternatives to the one-party system we have now.
I’d suggest libertarians not criticize anarchists, by the way. We will all need allies in what is to come. If we survive we can sort out differences later. There is no reason a United States that has been “reset” cannot have some states that are libertarian, and some that are anarchist.
Paul Bonneau | Nov 12, 2009 | Reply