Libertarianism is alive and dangerous

After I wrote a critical history of libertarian thought, I’ve sometimes been told that the book is of marginal interest because libertarianism is a marginal movement — it attracts scammers and cranks, but it doesn’t have much influence in policymaking. That is a dangerous delusion. The core notion of libertarianism, that we will be freer if we cripple the government, is alive and dangerous.

The narrow difference between the cranks and the people with actual influence was on display earlier this month at FreedomFest, an annual libertarian gathering that attracted thousands. I was invited to debate my book with Richard Epstein, one of the smartest libertarian thinkers.

Libertarians believe in freedom, but that’s not what’s distinctive about them. Their specific idea is that the way to promote freedom is to shrink government as much as possible. At FreedomFest, I saw a couple of striking manifestations of that idea, one of which shows that libertarianism is not at all marginal in contemporary American politics.

After my panel, I was approached by an author and blogger named Diane Weber Bederman, who asked me whether I was aware of the growing totalitarian control being exerted over us all by the investment companies BlackRock and Vanguard; she admonished me that I shouldn’t be speaking about politics unless I educated myself about these malefactors. I promised her I’d visit her website, and I did. It explains that the vast conspiracy includes the World Economic Forum, Bill Gates, George Soros and Anthony Fauci, each of whom is “attacking our Judeo/Christian ethic that underpins our culture.” Elsewhere she claims that our culture is endangered by the infiltration of Islam.

I spoke with a lot of people at the conference. I kept hearing this kind of paranoia, coupled with sentimental anarchism: If we just smash all existing centers of power, everything will be great.

As I said, Bederman is a blogger, struggling to be heard. But I also saw someone who is having more success.

In the biggest hall of the meeting, entrepreneur and GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy declared that, if elected, he would abolish the FBI, the IRS, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. By the end of his second term, “we will have reduced the federal employee headcount by over 75%.” It isn’t clear that he understands what all these workers do. He proposed an eight-year term limit for federal employees. He says, “the problem is there are people who have worked there for decades.”

Ramaswamy’s business success is part of the rationale for his candidacy, but would you invest in a business that mechanically fired every employee after eight years? He also declared his enthusiasm for burning coal, and elsewhere has proposed that we simply stop measuring carbon emissions. He would cut off all aid to Ukraine and let Russia keep all the land it has seized, bully NATO into accepting the deal and somehow prevent Russian President Vladimir Putin from advancing further. He promises he will withdraw all U.S. combat troops from Ukraine. There are no U.S. combat troops in Ukraine. The crowd loved him.

I happened to meet 89-year-old Richard Viguerie, whose innovations in direct-mail fundraising played a crucial role in electing Ronald Reagan in 1980. Viguerie told me that, in his professional opinion, the secret of Donald Trump’s 2016 success was brand differentiation: He stood out among the other candidates, as Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio did not. Ramaswamy, who is obviously smart, appears to get it. His positions are so recklessly irresponsible that it is unlikely that he really means any of them; rather, he is calculatedly seeking a distinctive niche in the Republican field.

The biggest difference between Bederman and Ramaswamy is that the latter is in third place for the GOP presidential nomination. His ditzy antigovernment ideas have traction. And they are entirely continuous with the ditzy philosophy of libertarianism.

Libertarians like to say that they are in favor of freedom. But “freedom” is a term that can be specified in many different ways. As the philosopher Gerald MacCallum pointed out, the term “freedom” necessarily denotes a relation between three terms: freedom is always “of something (an agent or agents), from something, to do, not do, become, or not become something.” 

Minimal-state libertarianism focuses on one set of constraints, those emanating from the state, while ignoring all others and paying no attention to the range of actions that persons are actually free to perform. Thus, it would declare a person “free” who has no power to direct her own life — for example, someone who is starving to death amid a prosperous society. Ramaswamy’s antigovernment blather is more of the same.

Libertarianism proposes to dismantle political institutions that are in fact now delivering freedom to millions. It is an infantile fantasy of godlike self-sufficiency. People in fact cannot be free in isolation. There can be no freedom without institutions. Structures of responsible regulation, and nonmarket transfers of income and wealth, are necessary preconditions of liberty.

Libertarianism matters. FreedomFest attracted thousands. That’s scary. My book aims to offer a kind of Narcan for the many who have consumed toxic levels of libertarian ideas.

Andrew Koppelman, John Paul Stevens Professor of Law at Northwestern University, is the author of “Burning Down the House: How Libertarian Philosophy Was Corrupted by Delusion and Greed” (St. Martin’s Press). Follow him on twitter @AndrewKoppelman.