Guest post by Jeffrey Tucker
I just returned from a historic event, the nominating convention of the Libertarian Party. (I spoke but was not a delegate and declared no support for any particular candidate.) It was a thrilling, raucous, contentious, fun, serious, and, ultimately, an ebullient event filled with high drama and intense argument.
I had keynoted the last convention in 2014, and the difference between that event and this one was palpable. What made this one historic where the other was not? The remarkable events of this year within the two major parties have created an unprecedented opportunity. The sense of this was easily discernable. This was not a civic club. This was not a social gathering. This was not a liberty-themed meetup: it was a meeting to nominate a serious candidate for the world’s highest political office.
What struck me, however, is how the big-picture significance of all of this was largely lost on most commentators and delegates at the LP convention. Despite the ominous sense of responsibilities, they argued ad infinitum about ideology, theory, personality, and strategy. But I found few people who understood the full meaning of what is taking place.
What we have developing here is a new epoch in American politics: an authentically liberal (in the classical sense) political movement in the US is being born as an alternative to a deeply corrupt and ideologically dangerous mainstream dominated by two parties that have trended inexorably socialist and fascist.
In terms of mainstream politics, it’s the interwar period all over again: brown shirts versus reds—one wing of statist thugs arguing with the other over the political carve-up. Except there is a way out this time. This new movement has a message that is clean and clear: Enough is enough; let us be free. Freedom works; government power does not. The emergence of a national political party that stands for liberty might be necessary but it is surely not sufficient. It is a sign of the rise of a broader and potentially transformative social, cultural, and intellectual movement that offers a third way beyond left and right.
Labour, Tory, and Liberal
Consider the way politics has fleshed itself out in most developed democracies over the last 150 years. There have been three broad camps (or parties), which we can call Labour, Tory, and Liberal. The names of the first two have changed (left, right, socialist, fascist, Democrat, Republican, Conservative, fake “Liberal”) but the themes have remained the same. The third force is known in most parts of the world as liberal except in the U.S. where it is called libertarian today.
Labour was born in opposition to free markets, from the conviction that wealth was being wrongly distributed toward “capital” and at the expense of labour. This party has included labor unions, welfare statists, social democrats, socialists and even communists. It generally favours higher taxes, more regulatory control, and restrictions on commerce. Over time it came to represent the public sector bureaucracies and, finally, to embody every resentment against free enterprise you can dream up.
What the Tories and Labour have always shared was a common desire to curb laissez faire based on their conviction that society needs some plan emanating from the top, imposed by wise and public spirited people with the power to rule. In U.S. history, these parties have had different names, but everyone knows them today as Democrats and Republicans. They have traded places many times but always moved toward the same general goal: an ever-bigger state and ever-less liberty.
The Liberal Party
And who are the Liberals? The liberal idea was born in the high middle ages and Renaissance, with the rise of commercial freedom and the prosperity that followed. It grew further with the realisation that religious freedom is possible and need not send society reeling into chaos. (Thus did liberalism in its infancy chastise both political and religious powerbases, earning their eternal emnity.)
The idea of freedom extended out during the Enlightenment to include speech, press, property rights, and foreign trade. By the 18th century, it came to include a love of peace and an aspiration for universal human rights.
Liberalism came of age in the 19th century, and its achievements were legion: social mobility for the whole population, new technologies of liberation, the end of slavery, the advance of women’s rights, the explosion of population, and the vast and wholy unprecedented expansion of income and living standards. Its economic form was capitalism, the greatest generator of wealth for the masses of people ever discovered. The message of Liberalism was clear and exhilarating: all humans have rights that cannot be violated by the state, and, so long as this is the case, society can manage itself without authoritarian control.
Even before the Great Depression kicked off unprecedented experiments in central planning and economic control, Liberalism had nearly vanished from politics, academia, and popular culture.
Ludwig von Mises was writing in Vienna at the time and attempted one last explanation of the Liberal philosophy. His brilliant 1927 book on the topic remains a statement for the ages. He pointed out that at this stage of history, all existing political parties represented a lobbying force for some segment of the population. Only liberalism, which had no party, represents the common interest of everyone. But given the size and scope of government, even he doubted that liberalism would return in his lifetime, and sadly he was right.
The Liberal Diaspora
Given this situation, where did the liberals to go? They were homeless by the time World War Two broke out. In the U.S., following the war, they had been largely driven out of national politics. They were excluded from legislative priorities and media culture, not to mention academia. So the handful that existed turned to writing, publishing, independent educational ventures, civic organisations, and think tanks.
A beautiful example of this was the establishment of the Foundation for Economic Education in 1946 by Leonard E. Reed. He saw a need for liberalism to have a voice and made FEE its home. He preferred the term liberalism but, sadly, the term had been taken over by Labour and the left.
Reed was the first in the postwar period to suggest the substitute term “libertarian” and, later, came to reject all labels in favour of what he called the “freedom philosophy.”
By the early 1970s, the movement had grown to the point that it attempted its own political party. It was obvious that with Richard Nixon in control of the Republican Party, liberalism was without any American political voice. The preferred name of Liberal was still taken, so a new party was named the Libertarian Party. Despite some small victories, it has never really taken hold as a viable competitor to the two major parties. (You can read a good timeline of the party here.)
The Union of Tory and Liberal
Still, the Liberal movement grew, under the influence of FEE and the Mont Pelerin Society, among many new upstarts. The names of their intellectual leaders are now household names among libertarians: Mises, Hayek, Rothbard, Rand, Lane, among many others.
In the 1980s, in the United States and the UK, the Tories were led by two individuals who adopted liberal rhetoric: Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. In both their platforms, we saw a fusion of concerns for individual freedom (focussed on economic freedom) together with traditional Tory concerns for national security and restrictions on civil liberties.
Within living memory, the party of Liberalism came to be stuck with this partnership. It has generally been beneficial, though muddy. The message of freedom became mixed up with other concerns central to Tory ideology: war, corporate monopoly, financial manipulation, prohibitionism, and social control. To this day, this is a serious problem for the Liberal party. We get stuck with the bad reputation of Tory policies, though we technically bear no responsibility for them.
The 21st Century Tory-Liberal Divorce
It was a long time coming but tensions finally boiled over in 2015 and finally with the apparent nomination of Trump in the spring 2016. Trump, representing an old Tory ideology devoid of the virtues of Liberalism, reasserted the raw statism of interwar politics. His central pillars are familiar to anyone of a certain generation: nationalism,mercantilism, migration restriction, military belligerence, censorship, prohibition, even to the point of praising internments and recalling a pre-Enlightenment view of religion and society.
The shattering of this coalition is the single most significant political event of our times. It is done. It is a fact. It is decisive. And it will change everything for the foreseeable future.
Liberalism Defines Itself
Just when everything seems lost, you look around and see something beautiful. For 45 years, activists have been struggling to keep the awkwardly named party alive. And it does live! It is on the ballot in every state. It has a full and well-developed platform. It is ready for action.
In the last six months, some awesome people stepped up, ready for the nomination at the top of the ticket. The results were not to every taste but still extraordinary in broad terms. The party rejected the extremes at all ends and voted to nominate two former governors as standard bearers, two men who speak plainly and clearly about freedom in all its forms.
People can complain about this particular issue or that one. But no one can dispute that both Gary Johnson and William Weld represent the Liberal spirit that is now called libertarian. The difference with the Republicans and Democrats is unmistakable. The LP is neither left nor right, neither Labour nor Tory, but a third choice: Liberalism as traditionally understood. That is the ethos of the party and the message of its candidates to the American people and the world at large.
It is a breathe of fresh air.
And please remember: it's not just about politics. In fact, politics is the least of it. The LP (and I wish it were called the Liberal Party) is finally positioned to be the political voice of a cultural, social, and entrepreneurial resistance movement to the left (Labour, Democrat) and the right (Tory, Republican). The takeover of the GOP by illiberal nativists/protectionists/authoritarians is what finally pushed it over the edge.
No, history does not end with this election. One could say that it is just now beginning, now that we finally have a choice, for the first time in our lives.
People often say that America has a two-party system. People always believe that the status quo will last forever. The truth is that the status quo always lasts until, suddenly, it doesn’t.
Times are changing. Liberalism is back.
His post first appeared at FEE.
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