Americans? Libertarians did try to warn you

"[I]n light of how the past year has unfolded, consider cutting your friendly neighbourhood libertarian some slack. After all, we did try to warn you.

"On immigration, speech and trade, Americans are living in a libertarian’s nightmare. ... a terrifying pattern and an undeniable vindication of the long-held libertarian view that the steady growth in the size of the federal government and executive power would lead to precisely this kind of runaway authoritarianism.

"Libertarians have argued that the only way to prevent such abuses is to reduce the power of the federal government itself — abolishing unaccountable federal agencies, scaling back the administrative state, cutting spending — and to restore the balance of powers by reining in the executive. This path has generally been treated as hopelessly naïve at best, and morally suspect at worst. ... Yet it has never been more obvious that the grab-and-grow approach to power is a destructive and self-defeating way to conduct politics.

"To see why, consider how we got here.

"The Department of Homeland Security arose with very little opposition in the wake of Sept. 11 ... As the years went on, Homeland Security — and especially Immigration and Customs Enforcement, within it — got comfortable operating under a series of exceptions to the Constitution ... So it can be no surprise that ICE officers are roaming the streets of American cities today with an unclear mandate, overpowered military-style gear and a dire misunderstanding of the constitutional limits on their behaviour.  ...

"Trump 2.0 has made the libertarian case more obvious ... But it would be a mistake to treat President Trump as the origin of the ultra-powerful presidency. He is merely picking up the weapons that previous administrations left lying around and waltzing through the loopholes they opened.

"Mr. Trump has a record of threatening media and platforms under various statutory and emergency authorities. He recently mused that when '97 percent' of media coverage is negative, it ceases to be 'free speech.'  ...

"But the project of growing executive power has been bipartisan. On speech, officials in the Biden administration leaned on social-media platforms to take down what they deemed Covid and election misinformation without explicit action from the F.C.C. The Supreme Court disposed of a case, Murthy v. Missouri, challenging this “jawboning” ...

"And Mr. Trump’s tariffs — levelled and removed at will and without the participation of Congress, where the Constitution places the primary power — have disrupted and destabilised the global economy and undermined America’s role in it. ...

"Mr. Trump’s tariffs depend on a legally dubious claim that trade deficits and ordinary commerce constitute a national emergency, allowing him to bypass Congress under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. (Jimmy Carter once invoked it to freeze Iranian assets.) Mr. Trump’s tariffs are not an aberration so much as the latest example of how emergency powers, once normalized, become a standing invitation to rule by fiat.

"One thing immigration, speech and trade have in common is that in recent American history, the power to control each of them has settled into the hands of the executive. ... The Supreme Court is reviewing the limits of the president’s control over tariffs and executive agencies. ... The libertarian prescription, now and always, is to scale back the size and scope of the federal government. Devolve power to states and individuals. Cut spending. And rebalance power away from the executive branch. ...

"The good news is that Americans are increasingly waking up to the dark reality of [an] overbearing federal government. ... Similarly, Americans of all stripes have turned dramatically against Mr. Trump’s ICE enforcement actions. There could be — a libertarian can still dream — a grass-roots movement to shrink government that doesn’t end up co-opted by one of the major parties, as the Tea Party was. ...

"But this glimmer of hope is faint. ...

"Instead of a winner takes all approach to power, it’s time to consider working toward a system where there is much less power for the winner to take. No one wished events would prove libertarians wrong more than libertarians themselves. There’s nothing more annoying than an 'I told you so.' But if more Americans are now ready to limit power before it is abused again, they are welcome to join us."

~ Katherine Mangu-Ward from her New York Times free-access op-ed 'Libertarians: We Told You So'