A Critique of Beltway Libertarians

by Liberty and Power

Ilana Mercer offers an eloquent and passionate defense of Ron Paul from the attacks by some libertarians with special attention paid to Reason magazine. She correctly points out that virtually all of them have never had to live in a situation where they had no fundamental rights. Mercer ends her essay by asserting that, ”Paul's vision is as close to The Good Life as we could hope to come in the current ideological climate. Only tinny ideologues encased in worthless ideological armor – worthless because it exists in the arid arena of their minds, not on earth – would turn their noses up at the prospect of Paul.”

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Roderick T. Long - 1/22/2008

I’ve moved my question to the main page.

Roderick T. Long - 1/22/2008

4th day: still waiting.

Roderick T. Long - 1/21/2008

3rd day: still waiting.

Gene Callahan - 1/20/2008

"excrescences on the D.C. establishment both."

Eloquent -- that's a good one, Keith. Ilana just enjoys calling people names.

Roderick T. Long - 1/20/2008

Still waiting for an answer to my question: what is the basis for your claim that I am actively working against Paul's candidacy -- given that I argued in detail that there could be good libertarian reasons to support him?

Roderick T. Long - 1/19/2008

Your argument that the Paul candidacy works against a libertarian society is ridiculous.

Did you read the argument I linked to? If so, where does my argument go wrong?

Fourteen hundred meet-up groups with over 80,000 members being exposed to libertarian ideas, many for the first time, say so.

I already dealt with this point in the argument I linked to. If the argument I made there was wrong, what specifically was wrong with it?

your time preference is not to ignore Paul's effort because you do not think he can succeed, your time preference is to actively work against his success.

What is your evidence for that claim? In what way have I worked against his success? I'd say most of my discussion of Paul has been more favourable than not.

Keith Halderman - 1/19/2008

Your argument that the Paul candidacy works against a libertarian society is ridiculous. Fourteen hundred meet-up groups with over 80,000 members being exposed to libertarian ideas, many for the first time, say so. I doubt a tenth of those people ever heard of Austrian economics before but they have now, And, let us be clear about this, your time preference is not to ignore Paul's effort because you do not think he can succeed, your time preference is to actively work against his success.

Roderick T. Long - 1/19/2008

Mercer seems to be arguing as follows:

1. When the choice is between supporting the most libertarian candidate who can succeed, and working for the eventual triumph of a purer libertarianism, we should choose the former.
2. No candidate more libertarian than Ron Paul can succeed in the current political climate.
3. Therefore we should support Ron Paul’s candidacy.

About this, three points:

a) Premise 1 of this argument seems to confirm my claim that support for Ron Paul is a high-time-preference option. (As Mercer herself describes her position, “when the prospects of liberty loom, carpe diem.”) That by itself is not a criticism; there are (between the limits of wanton profligacy in one direction and psychotic self-denial in the other) a range of rationally permissible degrees of time-preference on various matters, and I’ve argued that there can be good reasons for an individual to adopt the higher-time-preference case for Ron Paul. But Mercer has not shown that a higher level of time-preference is rationally mandatory on this issue. (She does offer personal experience with severe oppression as an example of a reason for the higher time-preference; but since by her own admission those she is criticising mostly don’t have this reason, it doesn’t seem to apply.) It is true that not all of Ron Paul’s critics are obviously best described as holding out for a purer form of libertarianism (as opposed to, well, a differently impure form); but Mercer’s argument is directed inter alia against those who are, and against them at least the argument fails.

b) Even granting the truth of the premises, the conclusion doesn’t follow; the argument is logically invalid. In order for the argument to go through, we need an additional premise – namely that Ron Paul’s candidacy can succeed in the current political cliamte. But so far the evidence doesn’t support this. What the evidence thus far seems to show is not only that no candidate more libertarian than Ron Paul can succeed in the current political climate, but further, that no candidate as libertarian as Ron Paul can succeed in the current political climate. Shouldn’t we then spend our time and effort on altering the political climate rather than on working for a political candidate?

c) Mercer might resist my imputation to her of premise 1; at any rate many Ron Paul supporters will. They will say that we don’t need to choose between supporting the most libertarian candidate who can succeed, and working for the eventual triumph of a purer libertarianism, because the former is the most effective means to the latter. But to this I restate my earlier counter-argument for the conclusion that Paul’s political cadidacy competes with working toward the whole enchilada.