I'll admit to being frustrated by
this conversation about libertarianism; there just isn't enough conceptual or definitional clarity about what people are talking about. What is the difference between a "libertarian" and a "liberal democrat?"
I'll suggest an answer: it's the scope of "normal politics."
That's not going to be satisfying without a bit more explanation. Allow me to continue...
Libertarianism privileges certain economic and social arrangements and attempts to enshrine the foundations for those arrangements in the constitution -- American society's foundational document. Constitutional politics are distinct -- higher from -- normal politics, susceptible to change only through the arduous amendment/convention processes, incremental judicial interpretation, and revolution.
Some liberal democrats may support exactly the same economic and social arrangements as a typical libertarian, while believing those arrangements should be implemented through the normal political process -- congressional action and executive signature at the federal level, or through various state and local government action. That doesn't make them a "libertarian democrat" -- they remain a liberal democrat.
The distinction lies in "democrat." Liberal democrats recognize that there is independent moral value in the idea of popular sovereignty, in being able to participate in the decision-making processes that determine our government's direction and scope. That value is so great, in fact, that we accept its cost unquestioningly: the possibility that policy we don't like will become law.
The understanding of freedom underlying libertarianism is thin as rice paper. I blame Isaiah Berlin's two concepts of liberty, not for any failing of its own, but for the reductionism of so many it's influenced. They assume: there is positive liberty (freedom to act) and negative liberty (freedom from constraint), they are mutually exclusive, and negative liberty is the only properly constitutional variety. The dichotomy is shockingly poor, for a number of reasons, but regardless, neither of those interpretations is considered to encompass a comprehensive understanding of liberty. For one, neither addresses political liberty.
Political liberty played a central role in the founding of the United States. The rallying cry was not "No Taxation," but "No taxation without representation." The constitution was the first modern attempt to resolve the fundamental tension between constitutionalism and democracy, tnesion about the normative foundation for any prior constraint on the authority of the people. That tension was resolved by locating the source of legitimacy for the constitution itself on the consent of "we the people," rather than on divine right, natural law, or some other deductive approach to delimiting democratic authority.
The compromise was ugly -- the theoretical debate about its contours that began in the Federalist/Antifederalist papers is still ongoing -- but it's the only one that's worked in the last couple of centuries, and it's served as a model and inspiration for multitudes around the world. But libertarians tend to view the muddled boundaries between constitutional and normal politics with disdain, lusting after a quasi-deductive formalism.
Rather than explicitly basing their formalism on the old-standbys, libertarians have assembled an anachronistic hodgepodge of authorities, ranging from debased readings of John Locke and Adam Smith to the enshrinement of Milton Friedman and Ayn Rand to the fetishization of Hayek and Mises. Perhaps the greatest irony of libertarianism is that it is more authoritarian than liberal democracy: it seeks to establish, without public participation, the proper boundaries of public participation. In a liberal democracy, the unsettled nature of so many important questions creates space for contestation, maximizing the realm of political liberty.
The libertarian denial of the prospect of popular sovereignty is best seen in their obsession with coercion. Any state action is coercive, by their dogma. Actually, though, imposing state inaction is also coercive, denying the people the power to enjoy their political liberty, a liberty that includes establishing the political bases for economic and social organization. Reality simply requires balancing, hopefully informed by history and experience. The only question is who balances.
To repeat: if you like Friedman or Rand, Hayek or Mises, but want to advance their agenda through the normal political process, you're a liberal democrat. If you want it imposed through constitutional fiat, you're a libertarian.
That took more verbiage than I thought it would coming in, and I didn't really offer much on the liberal aspect of liberal democracy; maybe some day soon. Let me just drop a few marginally related thought balloons in conclusion.
Conceptual Problems with Libertarianism
It's anti-democratic. The people should have the power to participate in creating their economic, regulatory, and social systems.
Social liberty requires government action.
- A degree of economic equality is necessary for actual social liberty, both because of status/dignity considerations and because of the economic costs of social choices.
- Social choices impose externalities; leaving the people impotent to respond to those externalities through government infringes on their political liberty.
- Social choices cost government money, from a court system to resolve tensions that arise from individual choice to the subsidization of non-market preferred social activities.
Conventional Problems with Libertarianism
Their history tends to be horrible. While the intellectual exercise of wondering what someone like John Locke or Adam Smith might think about modern America, to treat clippings from their works as authoritative is anachronistic folly. If they're going to rely on these guys regardless, they should really do a better job of understanding them.
Their economics tends to be horrible. Economics is not a deductive theoretical exercise; it should be empirical, testable. Even if one wants to ignore heterodox economics (other than Chicago/Austrian variants), the assumptions of orthodox economics are constantly falling from within, as informational and behavioral observations are incorporated.