Topic: Presidential Campaign 2008
Pragmatism or Purity? Inside the Great Libertarian Debate.by RS Davis
(Libertarian)
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
For thirty-seven years now, the Libertarian Party has been going through a massive identity crisis, focused around the central proposition - What are we trying to do here, anyway?
The debate can really come down to two distinct camps - the ideologically pure and the political pragmatists. If you are ideologically pure, it's really quite easy. You get to sit on the sidelines and bemusedly shake your head at all the people arguing over what flavor of evil they want.
You get to take the high road and make bold pronouncements - while people argue over the best way to save Social Security, you can stand back and proclaim, "End Social Security altogether!"
As the problem gets worse, you get to then go and say "I told you so!" to all the idiots who didn't listen to you in the first place.
The only problem is, they're still not listening.
As Richard Thaler (left), father of the behavioral-economics movement and author of Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness, rightly noted, this has the effect of taking the pure libertarian right out of the debate and leaving the henhouse to the foxes:
....libertarians, I think, are unfairly viewed as, you know, somewhere to the right of Donald Rumsfeld. And as we know, this administration has probably been the least libertarian administration in the history of the country. And so, the Republicans have no claim whatsoever to libertarian values. So I think what we're trying to offer libertarians in this book is a way to stop being irrelevant and start being relevant. And, you know, sure you might rather have no prescription drug program and no Medicare, but that's not where we are right now.
And it's a question of what sort of Medicare program are we going to have, and what sort of Social Security are we going to have, and what sort of regulation are we going to have for mortgages? Saying the government should just get out is just making yourself irrelevant.
The purists are okay with this. They may point out that while the Libertarian Party hasn't had much electoral success, libertarians have managed to guide the debate. Libertarian ideas that are subject to ridicule one day have moved their way into mainstream political debate the next - ideas like Medical Savings Accounts, Sunset Provisions, ending the Drug War, privatization, etc.
But for the political pragmatists, this situation is untenable. For them, it isn't enough to be right - they want success for the party, to gain a larger voice, and to move the country incrementally back toward a more libertarian society.
And they have a point. Last time around, the Libertarian Candidate was the ideologically pure Michael Badnarik (right), and the results were dismal, the fallout being that "an estimated 2,000 people left the LP then, and activism dropped off substantially."
Running a largely purist campaign for thirty years has left the Libertarian Party with underwhelming results, with no candidate ever getting more than 2% of the popular vote.
This has a lot to do with why at the last Libertarian Party Convention, the Libertarian Reform Caucus was able to shave the official party platform from 61 planks all the way down to 15, saying "The platform and message of the Libertarian Party is extreme, sacrificing practicality and political appeal in favor of philosophical consistency with a single axiom. As such, the party currently appeals only to a tiny fraction of the voting public."
This launched a great schizm in the Libertarian Party, and even led my buddy Tom Knapp (who is still a registered Libertarian) to launch The Boston Tea Party website.
The second step in this reform came by way of the candidacy of Bob Barr (left). The pragmatists like Barr, because they can see him getting the Libertarian Party more national exposure, playing a Nader-like spoiler in this election by siphoning off 5% of John McCain's votes.
When this year's Libertarian Party Convention started, the purists and the pragmatists were ready for a war. In the voting, Mary Ruwart, author of the popular Short Answers to ToughQuestions, ran neck and neck with Barr for most of the convention. It was a classical purist vs pragmatist cage match, with no clear winner coming.
Enter Wayne Allen Root. Or, more appropriately, exit Wayne Allen Root, Barr's closest intellectual competition. Root dropped out of the race, all his votes went to Barr, and now Root is the VP candidate.
In fairness to Barr, his positions have evolved over the years, his anti-drug stance softening to support at least decriminilization, and at this year's convention, he actually apologized for at least part of DOMA.
But it is in his support for PATRIOT that we can truly see what kind of results we get when we place pragmatism in front of principle. As Thaler noted above, taking a hard-line stance against PATRIOT, as did Ron Paul, takes us completely out of the debate.
As fellow Nolan Chart author George Dance points out, Bob Barr was against PATRIOT before he was for it. Why the change?
When different versions of a bill are passed by the two houses of Congress, a "conference committee" is the joint committee of both houses that decides on the final ("reconciled") wording of the Act the President signs into law. As Jansen puts it, "The conference committee is where the real evil takes place."
As previously reported, Barr was offered a deal: if he voted for the Act, sunset provisions would be inserted into the sections he was questioning in the version before the House of Representatives; meaning that those sections of the law would automatically expire in 2005. However, no such provisions were added to the version that passed the Senate.
That meant that Barr (or someone else) had to be on the Patriot Act conference committee to push for the sunset provisions to go into the reconciled version; and that someone (as Jansen notes) had to be someone who voted for the Act.
A pragmatist might say, "Yes, this is good. As Thayler pointed out, any other tactic would have removed us from the debate entirely, but Barr's engaging allowed us to craft a more libertarian bill."
Then again, a purist would respond, "But how did that work out for us? Are you happy with the USA PATRIOT Act?"
I must say, I'm in the middle on this. I support Ron Paul in his quest for the Republican nomination, and he is far from a strict libertarian. But he's running for the GOP, so I can absolve myself of the conflict, telling myself that he's the closest thing to a libertarian candidate in a mainstream, electable party.
But when you want to put the libertarian brand on someone, is Barr (or Gravel, for that matter) the wisest choice? I can even get behind paring down the official platform to the most important and marketable issues, as long as we don't abandon the core principles upon which those issues are founded.
There are many pro-liberty arguments on both sides of several issues, but when the essential debate in the party is between two groups with entirely different goals, is compromise possible? Is compromise even good?
I guess we'll see, won't we?
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2008 RS Davis, all rights reserved.
Published: Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Last modified: Tuesday, May 27, 2008
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I don't altogether reject your point. But I believe that the LP by consistently choosing right libertarians as candidates is not being pragmatic, since it is driving away many supporters of liberty who are concerned with non-economic liberties. And you must remember that choosing pragmatism over principle is what has made the Repblican Party the enemy rather than the supporter of liberty. The Republican Party wins elections by rejecting principle for pragmatism. Libertarians, even most right libertarians did not leave the Repblican Party so they could do the same thing to the Libertarian Party. But they are.
I don't really know where I stand in this debate, but I would say somewhere in the middle. I think the pragmatists and the purists both make valid points.
I would've voted for Ruwart, though, so I guess that makes me a purist.
Oh please, I would've voted for Ruwart as well (at least as VP), while still advocating the reformed platform as well. It 's not so simple. In fact, I am of the opinion that the purists are the real glue in this part.
But despite my respect for their arguments, my choice falls on the side of the reformists. No matter how you slice it, the purist campaign has failed to produce desireable results. The past 37 years of the party prove it. Even if you have decided that the Libertarian Party is not even a political party at all, and should be literally more than a think tank, our issues are marginalized time and time again.
On the rare occurance that our views do make it to the mainstream, they are villified as being elitist and true to the point- anarchic. There's no real compassion on the surface to Joe Voter, who refuses to get down and dirty with the details.
The problem is every faction is the same- if they don't get their way, they pack up and head home. It doesn't help that each side is equally vehement to each other. There are signs though that this is about to change, as we've seen through the rEVOLution's persistence in the GOP a guarantee until the Convention. The purists, despite Christine Smith's damage, managed to grab the At Large and Judicial committee's at this year's convention, and there were no walk-outs (other than the ones on the main floor that cost Kubby the VP).
Overall, what the LP really needs to realize is that it does not speak for all libertarians, and should stop trying to. I have to ponder whether the charge that Libertarians really are arrogant as a whole is true or not, because what damages the Purist argument most is that everyone must accept THEIR freedom of speech.
And by the way, the reason the Republicans ended up the way they did was because before the 1930's, we didn't have the current alignment of constituencies we did now. But as long as we maintain the purist base of the party in the right capacity, we shall avoid their fate.
I completely agree. If the LP can present a candidate who is more socially liberal and economically conservative than the Dems or Reps, then that is good enough, and we should vote for them and support them. Insisting on purists is a way to maintain irrelevance. Change can be done successfully in an incremental fashion, and if you refuse that concept, and want to destroy every federal agency tomorrow (and say so in your platform), then you will never make any change for anyone because no one will ever vote for you, and only the purists will even listen to you.
This is a very tricky tightrope the LP is walking. Corruption in the LP will now become very easy to manifest. To hold a desired goal of baby steps into Libertarianism could spell suicide if the purity is not kept a primary focus. It can also spell suicide if the image of the LP becomes even more distorted than it has been.
This is an area I can only be absolutely sure of when it becomes hindsight. I can't say I'll be onboard with support for Barr. I never vote on electability. It's always based on who I feel is best for the job.
Curious indeed that the drop in membership is blamed on Badnarik's 2004 campaign rather than on the 2006 evisceration of the party's platform and principles.
Posted By: James Maynard
Date: 2008-05-28 18:30:45
I am an unapologetic pragmatist. I believe that Ruwart was (and is) an intelligent, well-spoken, engaging individual - who would have gotten the same 360,000 votes that Badnarik, Browne, et al. have received the last few elections. Barr does not have the consistent voting record of Ron Paul, but Paul is in the wrong party. Barr doesn't have the philosophical purity of Ruwart/Kubby, but if you can only preach to the same 360,000 people, we're not going to get anywhere as a party. I was delighted when Barr lost his seat in Congress, but times, and the man, have changed. Politics, like war, causes defections and conversions; and there are few more ardent supporters of issues and causes than the converted. Did I like the old Barr? Not at all, except for some of his civil liberties work. Do I agree with Barr on everything? No. But I will tell you this - I am supporting Barr and Root wholeheartedly, because they are - far and away - they best choice on this November's ballot.
I don't have a problem with putting forward candidates that run as pragmatists. I have the problem that the platform was gutted... it meant my being a Libertarian. Now, I am just libertarian.
The new platform could have been slightly better, and not as neutral as it is now, I agree. But I have to say, it did a much better job than the bloated principle, solution, transitional action bullcrap. And I initially was skeptical. I won't stop looking to the '04 edition when I need clarification on a subject or to look for solutions, but overall, I believe this new platform to be more realistic and plausible overall, and welcoming to a broader range of libertarians. Remember- anarchists are just one type of libertarian.
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As Richard Thaler (left), father of the behavioral-economics movement and author of 
And they have a point. Last time around, the Libertarian Candidate was the ideologically pure Michael Badnarik (right), and the 
The second step in this reform came by way of the candidacy of Bob Barr (left). The pragmatists like Barr, because they can see him getting the Libertarian Party more national exposure, playing a Nader-like spoiler in this election by siphoning off 5% of John McCain's votes.
2008 RS Davis, all rights reserved.