Who is a LIbertarian?

Who gets to decide who is ideologically pure enough to be called a “libertarian”? Nobody and everybody. The meaning of the term is, like most words, contested. It, like many words, can be bandied about so indiscreetly that it loses its descriptive power. It can be an epithet on the one hand and a badge of honor on the other. I find myself thinking at times when someone claims to be a libertarian or describes someone else as such: “You keep using that word. I don’t think it means what you think it means.”

I have come to accept that the term “libertarian” can be used in a relative sense. You can be a Stalinist in every respect but if you also advocate decriminalization of marijuana, you are more “libertarian” than the Stalinist who supports the prohibition of weed. An outright fascist who advocates for the freedom to gamble is more “libertarian” than a fascist who supports the prohibition of gambling.

For me, one test of whether you are really a libertarian is a commitment to the principle of limited government. If you advocate decriminalization of marijuana but at the same time acknowledge that it is within the state’s legitimate police power to criminalize it, then that is rather different than claiming that the state has no legitimate business regulating pot in the first place. If you buy into the notion that the state can legitimately do as it pleases without any inherent limits, I don’t think you really qualify as a libertarian. There is a big difference between arguing that the state ought not to engage in an activity because it is not good policy to do so and arguing that the state cannot engage in it as a matter of principle.

A libertarian, in my view, has to accept that some undesirable situations may persist in the absence of regulation. I ask people to think about government by imagining whether the problem to be solved or the service to be offered is so important to you that you would be wiling to send goons over to your neighbor’s house to rough them up to make it happen. That is precisely what you are doing when you support a government program or regulation. You are resorting to violence, and many us have scruples about the use of violence. The trouble is that the violent nature of government is obscured, and many who would not dream of robbing their neighbors directly support taxation for their own pet projects and causes.

Libertarians can disagree on how much government is necessary and still be “libertarian” in the diluted sense that they support less government than someone else who is more statist than they are. If you support more government than I do, you are less libertarian than I am. At some point, you will cease to be a libertarian in my view and probably a lot sooner down the statist road than you might like.

I reckon it ultimately boils down to the non-aggression principle. For me, there are only extreme circumstances under which I would dispatch goons to my neighbor’s place. My religious principles dictate peacefulness and toleration in all but the most limited cases. I cannot love my neighbor and rob him or threaten or coerce him at the same time. I cannot love my neighbor and at the same time let my own cowardice induce me to rob him, restrict him, coerce him and send his children off on military adventures to address some minute risk to myself. If I support the so called “War on Terror”, that is precisely what I would be doing, using violence to mitigate a danger that is far less than the risk that I will be struck by lightning or killed in an auto accident. If I am a frightened bedwetter, that doesn’t give me license to infringe on the liberties of my neighbors to assuage my panic.

Let’s recap. If you advocate decriminalization of some activity as good public policy, for example because it will increase state revenues, you are probably not a libertarian in my book. If you deny the state’s legitimate authority to criminalize the activity in the first place, that’s libertarianism. I get to decide whom I think is a libertarian and who is not one. Maybe I will set myself up as the herald of the ideology and issue credentials.