I came, I saw, and in the end, I didn’t like what I saw; such is my summation of the whole libertarian movement. This is not to say that I didn’t and don’t like many of the core truths to libertarianism, nor is it that I’ve embraced the inevitability of two sole parties. History says there will be more, sooner or later. But I’ve come to the conclusion that the libertarian movement may as well in fact be one that is indeed on some circular treadmill, forever grinding away on a set of ideas that are eternally incompatible and will never be resolved.
I was never a core committed member of the Libertarian party; however, I did come the closest ever to volunteering for political footwork for them in the early stages of the 2016 Johnson/Weld Libertarian Party candidacy for President. Of course, I was never a fan of the snide aloof nothingness that was the Obama administration and I regarded Trump as dangerous, a position I have since amended. My core instincts lead me toward fiscal conservatism, a smaller US footprint in the world, and more nuanced positions on individual freedoms. That in a nutshell, is why I’d still consider myself a libertarian, small ‘l’. And upon that hill, I met the end of my patience with the movement after now, five plus years of observation of the movement’s people and its flagship periodical, Reason Magazine.
The Johnson/Weld candidacy was the closest the party had ever come to ‘prime time’. The messaging was great, and Johnson made it to the debate table along with the Repubs & Dems, for the first time ever. Several months from the election, the needle on the polls even reflected enough movement to suggest that the party had a chance at brokering its outlook in broader public discussion. Then, Johnson cracked; his debate performance imploded, he blew a key interview in the limelight and ultimately, his seriousness as a candidate was meager. He was unprepared to be anything but a sideshow to the main election. In retrospect, I believe he was well aware of that shortcoming.
Libertarian individuals are likewise suspect. I’m sure there are quite a few just like myself, holding plain beliefs that have few champions in practicing governments. The troubles with libertarian people are rooted in an impossible spectrum of contradictory beliefs. Keep government out of private bedrooms and homes? Sure, easy. Gun rights? Ditto. Spend less across the board? Absolutely. Beyond this, it gets murky. Paying limited taxes is challenged by the la-la-la constituency that yells for no taxes whatsoever. Calling for restrained law enforcement is off-putting to the ones that want no law enforcement. Political theory bends itself into a complete circle to realize that one wing of ‘pure’ libertarianism is basically on the same page as much of antifa! My personal moment of enlightenment came in an online discussion thread with a gentleman about some tertiary topic on animal ownership that came up in a news story. This man’s ‘personal freedom’ ethic was so absolute that he reacted to anyone’s or my suggestion that he was not so ‘free’ that he could abuse his livestock, his ‘owned property’. The problem isn’t just that he was an aberrant man because in fact, he was just taking the libertarian construct to its logical, conclusion. I realized that instances like these were the face of sizeable subgroups under the libertarian tent, a tent that by definition would not and could not hold its yahoos accountable to any governable standard. It is in essence, one big playpen with too many incorrigible petulant iconoclasts.
The last death knell to contemporary libertarianism is its own preeminent – thinktank periodical, Reason Magazine. My first long exposure to this entity came second hand via its extensive quotation by a local radio broadcasting sage, the honorable late Ron Smith (WBAL). From that point stretching back to the 90’s and up to more recent free digital access on Facebook (a commendable practice), Reason was as its name implied, the missing third voice for independent thought on liberty. It has since lamentably fragmented and deteriorated. Caught up in contemporary politics, conspicuously in variance of their long roots, they’ve been sucked into partisan ideas with hardly any pretense of libertarian standard. They natter about every inconsequential little subplot of either candidate and seem oblivious that one party is rolling in the big guns to dismantle the entire American constitutional experience that allows them to opine on ever more arcane details, and replace it with a stifling putrid gaslit wokeocracy. This generation of their contributors seem to have lost their way, even with occasionally good articles. They have copy to make and, in the end, that seems to be all that they shoot for.
The Libertarian party is an academic and egotistical exercise and can never achieve any serious power to govern.