American Libertarianism: An Obituary
The early 2010s were a fun few years. If only we'd been more observant, we might have seen what was coming
I was a college student in the early 2010s. Like most young people whose brains have yet to fully develop, I was filled with naive idealism. For most of my life, I’ve had a basically libertarian ethos. That is to say, I’ve never liked being told what to do or telling others what to do. As a young man of my time and place, this drew me to a student group on campus called Students for Liberty (SFL).
At the time, SFL was riding a wave of momentum. The “Liberty Movement” or “libertarian moment” as it was sometimes called, was the notable-but-brief resurgence of interest in libertarian philosophy, mostly among college-aged Americans. At the time, it was generating plenty of buzz and criticism from the pundit class. I still wish I could go back in time, grab the Paul Krugmans of the world by their oversized lapels, and shake them while I yell, “You thought libertarians were wacky? Wait ‘til 2016, bub. You ain’t seen jack.” Sigh.
I really liked the SFL crowd, though. Some of my fondest college memories involve going to the bar with a bunch of jovial libertarians and having spirited, nuanced discussions and friendly disagreements about politics and the state of the world. I had a lot in common with the SFLers. They were a diverse group (in every sense but ideological, I suppose). They seemed to want a lot of the same things that a typical Democrat might want - a more cosmopolitan, pluralistic America where everyone has the opportunity to pursue their own happiness and flourish, regardless of who they are or where they come from. Their ideas of how to achieve these things were often quite different from Democrats, generally favoring anything that involved less government. But the North Star for these libertarians was always something like Star Trek - a world of fully-automated material abundance where prejudice and poverty are things of the past, leaving discovery and creation as humanity’s primary goals. I enjoyed hearing thoughtful people debate the best possible path to this utopian future.
Then I realized something curious. SFL was not the only libertarian student group on campus. There was another group, Young Americans for Liberty (YAL), who really seemed to dislike SFL. Initially, I chalked this up to the narcissism of small differences. Just like the old Monty Python joke about the Judean People’s Front loathing the People’s Front of Judea, petty infighting among like-minded groups is nothing new. But my first clue that it was actually more complicated came when I and a few other SFLers attended a YAL meeting as a sort of good faith exercise. Right away, the vibe between the two groups couldn’t have felt more different.
The SFL crowd was unified by optimism, and maybe to some extent, dunking on pessimism and cynicism (I’m thinking of Penn Jillette’s classic quip about how things have basically always been getting better even if people always think they’re getting worse, or Louis C.K.’s famous “everything’s amazing and nobody’s happy” rant). That was the general vibe. The main government agencies they loved to criticize, in rough order:
DEA
ICE
NSA (more topical in early-2010s)
TSA (likewise)
IRS
So these, in retrospect, were the “left-libertarians,” I guess. No matter what you think about the proper role and scope of government, criticizing aggressive law enforcement will always make you left-coded in America.
YAL was… different. Aside from being notably less diverse (pretty much a white boys’ club as I recall), this crowd was also a bit more, shall we say, hysterical. And it was quickly apparent that the main thing they disliked about us was that we weren’t hysterical enough.
I remember hearing things from the YAL group like, “Why aren’t you doing anything? We’re living in absolute tyranny and you closet Marxists are all sitting around drinking beer and laughing?” Of course, whenever we would ask them to back up the claim that we were living in a state of “tyranny” (in 2012, lol), we’d be quickly disappointed to hear the incoherent diatribe of rambling nonsense and conspiracy theories that followed. If this had been my first exposure to so-called “libertarianism,” I would have run for the hills and cringed every subsequent time I heard the word uttered. These weren’t libertarians, they were spoiled conservative stoners who didn’t even understand the basics of how our government works.
But whatever, we reckoned. It’s not like these delusional nut jobs will ever morph into something bigger and uglier…. right? Oh, la dee fuckin’ da. You see where I’m going.
Today, most former SFLers, like me, have effectively become Democrats, while much of the YAL crowd has embraced the MAGA cult with open arms. In hindsight, it’s now perfectly clear to me that we were never part of the same ideological movement at all. The YAL folks were proto-MAGA, a group of resentful little boys, oblivious to their own privileges, willing to buy the most laughable conspiracy theories so long as they fortified a simplistic “government bad” worldview.
The saddest twist of fate is that back then, if there was one thing most of the YAL and SFL people seemed to agree on, it was that too much power had been concentrated in the executive branch for far too long. Today, my stomach churns as I watch some of those same people take to social media and gleefully celebrate that very problem getting worse. How’s “libertarians for authoritarianism” for Orwellian doublespeak?
As for the SFLers, the left-libertarians, I’d say the people now calling themselves abundance liberals seem like their (our, I suppose) natural successors. And even today, I still have some respect for self-styled libertarians (Tyler Cowan, Radley Balko) who choose to focus specifically on some of the most harmful things that governments actually do, rather than just adopting the simplistic “government bad” narrative.
Circa 2012, I was hopeful that libertarianism would at least have some influence on US national politics going forward. At the time, I even remember speculating that the GOP might turn into a libertarian-ish party someday. Then, of course, the exact opposite happened in 2016. Embarrassing and sad how wrong I was about that.
What I now realize is that even though the country (and indeed the world) has been improving by most measurable metrics for as long as I’ve been alive, if bad actors can hoodwink enough gullible people into believing things are in decline, simply by repeating this lie ad nauseam, they can will this darkness into reality, like a big orange tulpa summoned by collective paranoia and hatred.
The most regrettable and worrisome thing about this development is that I truly believe that something like pluralism is the one thing we all, or at least a critical mass of us, have to agree on if we want this experiment called constitutional democracy to keep running. As Judith Shklar put it, “every adult should be able to make as many effective decisions without fear or favor about as many aspects of their life as is compatible with the like freedom of every adult.” We can agree to disagree about everything thing else and still be alright, but the fact that one of our two major parties is vehemently opposed to this idea (and even the Dems aren’t always great about defending it) should be deeply concerning to anyone who puts even the slightest premium on individual liberty.
Oh well. Nothing’s permanent. It was fun while it lasted.
In an effort to reconnect with my college self and end on an optimistic note, I’m hoping that the thermostatic effects of the chaos being wrought in Washington today will push voters to embrace things like pluralism and pragmatism to a greater extent in upcoming elections. Maybe we needed some militant anti-pluralists in government for a while to remind us not to take it for granted. I mean, I didn’t, but maybe the typical American does.
Libertarians in theory: “Government should be afraid of its people and any regime that uses coercion or limits its citizens cannot be legitimate. In this 50,000 word essay, I will explain why the delicate balance between personal freedom and public service…”
Libertarianism is practice: “Look, I really need us to revisit this whole age of consent thing…”
Thank you for this honest reflection. We need more of this in our polity.
I've long been torn by libertarianism. I think of myself as a not-so-woke progressive, so I agree with libertarianism on the matter of personal liberties. But I've always been critical of it for the way in which it seems to disregard civic responsibility and social health. What differentiates people like me from the typical libertarian is how collectivist I am in my thinking.
We live in a world that is immeasurably more interconnected and advanced than the one in which this country was founded. Today, individual actors and parties exercising what might have once been fairly considered to be their own personal liberties have a potential to affect the rest of the world in ways that our founders couldn't have possibly anticipated.
Yet libertarians seem to want an 18th century government in a 21st century world, one in which politicians in Congress can be trusted to micromanage the jobs of qualified experts and professionals in government agencies. And so we get the obsession with the "administrative state". But in a world incomparably more complex than in the 1790s, even the "eminent men of letters" then intended to populate our legislative bodies would be ill-equipped for such a task, much less the Lauren Boebert's and Tomny Tuberville's of the world.
The perils of government being "too big" seem obvious right now, but I worry we will take the wrong lessons from this. The people being targeted by this purge are not the tyrants that libertarians rage against, but dedicated public servants who do their jobs apolitically and take pride in getting it right—in particular the agencies that compile information to inform the public. Despite the negative connotations of "sprawling" institutions, it is the distributed and bureacratic nature of our government which protects it from being easily commandeered by malicious actors like Trump and his mottled coterie of celebrity incompetents, vindictive malcontents, Christian fascists, and Yarvinite neo-tyrants.
And it's the latter group which are particularly concerning, because many of these are precisely the kind of people you described in your rival group—Peter Thiel, JD Vance, Marc Andreesen, David Sacks, and now Elon Musk, et al. Cosplaying as libertarians, yet flush with cash and influence and seeking a new world order that undermines and/or circumvents the institutions of democracy, these people are dangerous and are starting to get along a bit too well with the other MAGA factions.
I'm all good with the abundance liberals or "supply side progressives"; it probably best describes where I am. I once bought into the agenda of tariffs and protectionism before wising up. I now support free trade and a generous welfare state, along with a what I'd call a *wide* government, one which concerns itself with all of the things regarding which society may need to act in concert, but where power is distributed and duly delegated to the private sector where best, with a lot of checks and balances and independent moving parts.
Regardless of where you and I may or may not disagree, I'm glad to see that you've pulled away from the corrupting influence of the false libertarians, the enablers of moneyed, right-wing authoritarianism whose defense of personal liberties was born of a sense of privileged impunity and indignant superiority, who only opposed government when it was inconvenient to their personal designs, and who had no qualms about throwing in with those who opposed it because they believed it to be irredeemably secular and liberal.
I hope we can effectively band together to build a new and better America from the rubble of this current debacle.