Greetings to the readers of the Art of the Possible. Some of you may know me from the blog Freedom Democrats, an online community occupying the niche of libertarianism within the Democratic Party. For those readers who are encountering me for the first time, I have been an amateur activist in libertarianism, the Democratic Party, and blogging off and on for several years now. I am very thankful for the opportunity to blog here at the Art of the Possible and wanted to take advantage of the timing of Mona’s most recent blog post on this site’s purpose to introduce myself, and my views, more fully.

The common ground between liberals and libertarians may seem narrow and potentially non-existent in the abstract. But I believe that the Art of the Possible’s about page presents a sharp line in the sand between authoritarians on the one side and liberals and libertarians on the other.

Reasonable people can have intellectually honest disagreements regarding some issues; for example, to what extent and when should the government regulate the economy? There are other issues, however, where all reasonable people stand on one side; for instance, should the government torture people?

There was someone else, long ago, who wrote similarly of nonnegotiable issues:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed . . .

Torture is nonnegotiable. Sacrifice of our civil liberties is nonnegotiable. Intruding into the freedom of the press is nonnegotiable. For most of American history, even the conservatives joined in generally agreeing that there were certain lines that government should not cross. Yes, I say generally because there are obvious exceptions, ranging from Abraham Lincoln to Franklin Delano Roosevelt. But there is a sense among today’s libertarians and liberals that the present violations of our most sacred civil liberties are not a temporary measure, but a permanent revolution in our system of government. And the established conservatives, the neo-conservatives, seem to agree that this is a permanent revolution . . . for the better.

While it is clear that some economic issues can transcend mere dollars and cents into becoming a fundamental question of one’s civil liberties, there is also a gray area where taxation and government spending are issues of degrees, not absolutes. An activist like Brad Spangler can bemoan the rise of minarchism and the decline of anarchism among the libertarian movement, but such a claim all the more supports the observation, “Reasonable people can have intellectually honest disagreements regarding some issues; for example, to what extent and when should the government regulate the economy?”

If libertarianism is increasingly tied to minarchism, not anarchism, and conservatism is increasingly alienated to any support of the rule of law, what is standing in the way of libertarians and liberals sitting down to find common ground?

Over at Freedom Democrats, blogger ka1igu1a notes that Congressmen Ron Paul and Barney Frank, despite their ideological and partisan differences, have started to work together on the issues where they share a common ground. If they can do it, why not others?

One of the primary divides between libertarians and liberals was identified by thoreau in a comment to Mona’s post:

But, well, you’ve gotta understand that a big portion of the libertarian movement spent a long time in bed with the right in part because they wedded themselves to a particular vision of a utopian future: A world with a completely unrestrained business sector. They persuaded themselves that this was an ethical imperative, and they invented hacktacular economic arguments for why it would work out beautifully for everyone in society.

As a “veteran” of Daily Kos, I can say from first hand experience that not only did a big portion of the libertarian movement linger in a relationship with conservatism because they adopted a particular vision of a libertarian world as a corporatist world, with shallow economic arguments for why it would be utopian and perfect, but liberals have also avoided a relationship with libertarianism because they firmly believe that libertarianism advocates a corporatist world and that the result of any free market policies would be bigger and badder corporations. Mark this down as the biggest challenge for libertarians wanting to work with liberals.

I come from an obviously biased perspective by self-identifying as a libertarian Democrat, but it would be very dangerous for the Democratic Party to ignore libertarian-leaning voters. They cannot be taken for granted. First, not all libertarians are ready to give up on the Republican Party. The presidential campaign of Ron Paul has done a lot to reignite some passion for the GOP among libertarian activists and is producing a bumper year of libertarian Republican congressional candidates, like BJ Lawson in North Carolina. It seems very likely that attempts to prolong the Ron Paul Revolution will continue, much like Pat Robertson’s 1988 campaign continued to impact politics throughout the 1990s.

Secondly, not all Republicans are ready to give up on libertarians. On the more conservative end of the separated libertarian-conservative relationship, a new venture by Jon Henke, Patrick Ruffini, and Soren Dayton called “The Next Right” is promising to “give conservatives and libertarians a fertile space.”

If the marriage of libertarians and conservatives is to be saved, the conservatives have “some explaining to do.” And it must go beyond a shallow glossing over of the social intolerance and authoritarianism of the past eight years that some economic conservatives display, such as Grover Norquist in his latest book “Leave Us Alone.” The abysmal record of the GOP on gay rights is covered in a mere two pages, the blame resting on extremist groups that are pushing for “special privileges” while the Republican Party is more than happy to just sit back and let gays be “left alone.”

If, on the other hand, a new marriage between liberals and libertarians is to be established (consummated even?), there is work to be done. It will not just happen, people will have to make it happen. And that is why I am pleased to be joining with the other bloggers at the Art of the Possible.

Tags: conservatism, liberalism, libertarianism