Squandering the libertarian moment

Anyone familiar with the typical behavior of capital-L Libertarians understands exactly what Foster meant, and why his comment was funny. For years, libertarians have been too cool for school. More precisely, they’ve been too cool to engage in real politics or anything related to what is politically possible. They’ve been especially loath to support electable candidates of any kind. Even Republicans who have seemed a bit libertarian at heart have usually been too impure to win their support.

Thus, Libertarians have remained intellectually consistent, but been obliged to sit proudly but rather ridiculously on the far fringes of politics.

Yet now, when libertarian ideas might stand a fair chance in a presidential race between two unattractive major-party candidates, libertarians have nominated a candidate who isn’t just not a purist; he isn’t much of a libertarian at all.

Many anti-Trump conservatives may cast a protest vote for former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson in November, for lack of a more attractive alternative. But the candidate seems intent on reducing his party’s platform to a sort of warmed-over liberal Republicanism with the eclectic add-on of support for drug legalization.

Last week, the Washington Examiner’s Tim Carney asked him about religious freedom. Will Libertarians support the personal freedom of people who for personal moral reasons don’t want to comply with government mandates to purchase contraception, or who don’t want to bake the cake for a same-sex wedding?

“You’ve narrowly defined this, Johnson said. “But if we allow for discrimination — if we pass a law that allows for discrimination on the basis of religion — literally, we’re gonna open up a can of worms when it come stop discrimination of all forms, starting with Muslims.”

Perhaps he misunderstood the question. No one is talking about discrimination against Muslims or against anyone of any religion. There is, in any case, no religion we are aware of that frowns on lawful business interactions with Muslims. Moreover, the catering of gay weddings may well fall afoul of Islamic law, and Muslims deserve the choice to live according to their own religious values, too.

Freedom of religion is simply about letting individuals choose to live by their own religious values, rather than have government dictate such choices. What could be more libertarian than that? The Libertarian candidate for president doesn’t get it.

Johnson could still win some voters on the Right. It’s true that he is pro-choice on abortion, but many pro-lifers would overlook that if the issue were at least allowed to be debated in legislatures, not enshrined by courts as constitutionally inviolable.

Most conservatives are somewhat ready for a genuinely anti-war, pro-criminal-justice reform, leave-us-alone type of ideology. The mess created by the Iraq and Libyan wars have made many on the Right rethink the wisdom or at least the extent of recent interventionist foreign policy.

One would think the Libertarian Party would be a natural second home for conservatives who feel beset by government-imposed pressure to accept and pay for what they believe immoral. The libertarian philosophy of “live-and-let-live” is, at least in theory, tolerant of alternative lifestyles, such as that of Christian parents who don’t want government propaganda on sexual morality forced on their children. Or those in the wedding industry who believe they should have a choice in service contracts based on their personal moral values, notwithstanding federal policy on same-sex marriage.

The Libertarian Party had a chance of outperforming during this election. But it is blowing its chances. It didn’t need to change but to stick to its principles, and quite a few disaffected conservatives would have found it an acceptable home. But, given what Johnson is offering, why would conservative Republicans defect? They already have a liberal Republican at the top of their own party.