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Liberals and libertarians on common ground… and otherwise
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?
The Bush administration has been extreme enough in its authoritarianism, flagrant law breaking, and flouting of basic human rights norms to cause fractures in the old GOP coalition. There is now the possibility of new political alliances forming. Speaking broadly, it may be that many of the factions in the Democratic Party, and some of the factions that call themselves “libertarian,” collectively represent a kind of loose anti-authoritarian coalition, or rather, the possibility of one. This site aims to facilitate conversation among those factions.
We bring together liberal and libertarian writers who agree on certain politically and morally enlightened essentials. Their discussions here serve to delineate the reasons why basic human rights must always be defended. Their disagreements, by contrast, will illustrate why forming new alliances is hard, and perhaps serve as a reminder as to why new alliances are so rare.
If, during the Cold War-era, libertarians could abide, in sometimes severe tension, with the conservatives in the same Republican Party, at least some libertarians now seem to be moving in the direction of the practical alternative, namely, liberals and the Democratic Party. This site will be a crucible in which that phenomenon is played out.
(To reach an editor of this site, send email to “editor at theartofthepossible.net”, but replace the “at” with a “@” symbol.)