“Libertarians are the New Communists.” And Anti-Libertarians Are Out of Ideas.

I’ve argued elsewhere that signs of the
emerging “libertarian era” are everywhere around us, both in the
voluminous and
ever-growing positive press
adherents of “Free Minds and Free
Markets” and
the increasingly shrill and misinformed attacks
 are
drawing.

The latest example of the latter is on glorious, semi-literate
display in the amazingly awful “Libertarians
Are the New Communists
,” by Nick Hanauer and Eric Liu and
posted at Bloomberg View.

It is less a fully formed op-ed and more the rough draft of a
freshman composition scratched out after a long night out on the
tiles.

The co-authors, who also penned a 2011 book called

The Gardens of Democracy
, assail a Dick Tracy-level
Rogues Gallery of “nihilist, anti-state libertarians” including the
Koch Brothers (natch), Sen. Ted Cruz (?), Grover Norquist, and Ron
and Rand Paul. Ayn Rand’s also part of the problem, of
course.

Radical libertarianism assumes that humans are wired only to be
selfish, when in fact cooperation is the height of human evolution.
It assumes that societies are efficient mechanisms requiring no
rules or enforcers, when, in fact, they are fragile ecosystems
prone to collapse and easily overwhelmed by free-riders. And it is
fanatically rigid in its insistence on a single solution to every
problem: Roll back the state!

Curiously, you’d expect Hanauer
and Liu to provide at least one quote – even taken out of context –
in which any of the people they vilify call for actual anarchy or
the total absence of government. Instead you get treated to such
remedial-writing gems as

The public record of extreme statements by the likes of Cruz,
Norquist and the Pauls speaks for itself. 

Back in the days when I taught college composition, that’s
exactly the sort of line I’d circle with a note asking, “Examples?”
But it’s not suprising that the authors wouldn’t bother quoting any
of their targets, since none of them (to my knowledge anyway)
espouse what is more commonly called anarchy. Indeed, it’s a
curious but little-appreciated fact that in the federal budget plan
Rand Paul submitted for consideration earlier this year,

he
proposed spending
about $38 trillion over the next 10
years (see page 96). What a odd thing for a nihilistic anarchist
who yearns for an America that’s more like Somalia – where
libertarianism finds its fullest actual expression” –
to propose.

In their hurry to create an ideological pinata to bat around,
Hanauer and Liu pause to acknowledge that “social libertarians” –
folks who “support same-sex marriage or decry government
surveillance” – aren’t the problem. After all,

Reasonable people debate how best to regulate or how
government can most effectively do its work – not whether to
regulate at all or whether government should even
exist….

It is one thing to oppose intrusive government
surveillance or the overreach of federal programs. It is another to
call for the evisceration of government itself.

Hmm, debating how government can most effectively
do its work? Opposing intrusive government surveillance or the
overreach of federal programs? That sounds like a pretty good
definition of exactly what the Koch Brothers and the others
mentioned above are doing.

Yes they want to “roll back the state” – Rand Paul’s budget
would lower federal spending as a percentage of GDP to around 16
percent over the next decade – but they seem to be pretty OK with
its continued existence.

And I suspect that they would also agree that “cooperation” is
central to human flourishing (what are markets if not crucibles of
voluntary exchange?). I don’t agree with every utterance by the
Kochs (one of whom, David, sits on the board of trustees of Reason
Foundation, the nonprofit that publishes this website), the Pauls,
Ted Cruz, or Ayn Rand. But to miscast them so flagrantly – and in
absentia – is not unfair, it’s unpersuasive in the extreme.

Hanauer and Liu’s mode of argument consists of repeating
negative statements (“Radical libertarians would be great at
destroying,” they are “fanatically rigid,” they are “economic
royalists” who are “mirror images” of communists, etc.) and writing
opponents out of serious discussion (libertarians are not
“reasonable people,” so there is no reason to actually represent
their viewpoint even while attacking it).

If this sort of ultra-crude and unconvincing style of argument
(communists=bad; libertarians=bad; thereore,
communists=libertarians) is the best that opponents of libertarian
influence and policy can do, our future is indeed bright.