Right Libertarianism: The Conservative Branch of the Liberty Tree

By R. Brownell

My journey into understanding the tenants of liberty began when I broke from GOP orthodoxy and put conservatism on trial. The issue at hand was not that I was becoming more “liberal” or “progressive”, but rather to evaluate today’s issues based on a very simple question- is a person’s decision, action, or lifestyle so offensive or aggressive, that it is worth enforcing at the barrel of a gun held by the state?

As I began to take on the label of “libertarian”, it became fast news that I was one small fish swimming in a direction contrary to the school. As the search for allies and sympathetic ears began, I had to learn whether my peers really understood liberty or not. In order to find other liberty lovers, I would discuss their views on the Five Principles of Liberty:

1. Peace
2. Tolerance
3. Individualism
4. Limited Government
5. Free Markets

Using these principles to find philosophical bed fellows, I quickly had a similar issue to TLR’s “resident liberal” Micah J. Fleck:

 Nothing has proven more simultaneously compelling and infuriating than my relationship with libertarians. As it stands today, the liberty movement seems to exist in two parts – the purists who fall in line with a predetermined ideology, and the more philosophical libertarians who came to this crowd through merely lining up with its principles by chance, yet pledging no dogmatic allegiance. I’m most certainly in the latter category, yet as a result find myself more and more admonished by the former.

Read more of Micah’s left-libertarian article here

Let me state for the record that I am a proud libertarian (and Libertarian Party member as well). My definition of the basic criteria to be considered part of the libertarian persuasion is to be socially tolerant and fiscally responsible. What gets me into confrontations with other self described libertarians is, like Fleck said as an example, that I “do not adopt libertarianism as a once-and-for all answer to every problem I might encounter, because I’m not a religious man and don’t approach any problem in such a way. I would argue this makes me no less a libertarian than any other, as long as one accepts that libertarianism can itself take the form of either a hard set of political positions or a looser philosophy on how to go about living one’s life.”

There’s the big difference between Micah and the more leftist libertarians, as well there is between myself and other libertarians of the more conservative wing. The issue at hand boils down to worldviews, in very much the same way people naturally drift towards party identification of either Democrats and Republicans,  left vs right libertarian begin to see the schism form on the lines of either holding a theistic or atheistic worldview.

The Atheist sees the world as something that came from nothing, therefore time and morality are relative, putting full responsibility onto man to use his purely objective mind to live in a world with no moral absolutes. The Theist sees the world as the creation of an intelligent designer, everything has a purpose; and because of our purpose, man and his fall from perfection, we have moral aptitude and undeniable truths which justify our existence on Earth.

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The clear difference between Micah on the left and I on the right becomes clearer once you understand a person’s worldview. Micah begins his manifesto by introducing a highly controversial topic- abortion- into the fray, which is incredibly important because it shows the difference in worldviews and style of libertarianism upfront. In the quote by prominent libertarian Murray Rothbard, Rothbard states:

The proper groundwork for analysis of abortion is in every man’s absolute right of self-ownership. This implies immediately that every woman has the absolute right to her own body, that she has absolute dominion over her body and everything within it. This includes the fetus. Most fetuses are in the mother’s womb because the mother consents to this situation, but the fetus is there by the mother’s freely-granted consent. But should the mother decide that she does not want the fetus there any longer, then the fetus becomes a parasitic “invader” of her person, and the mother has the perfect right to expel this invader from her domain. Abortion should be looked upon, not as “murder” of a living person, but as the expulsion of an unwanted invader from the mother’s body.  Any laws restricting or prohibiting abortion are therefore invasions of the rights of mothers.

Let’s take the crux of Fleck and Rothbard’s argument apart: Yes, self-ownership is key to individualism; but that’s the issue right there, individuals are born with natural rights by their Creator and therefore own that gift. Thus, a woman therefore does own her body, just as the fetus, her child, owns theirs. The relativist philosophy Fleck and Rothbard share removes the sacred bond between a mother and their child, but also devalues human life in the way they describe a child being snuffed away no different then a animal. Humans, regardless of how they were conceived or who conceived them, have intrinsic value beyond the grasp of man. Once we view life as something that can be taken out in order to make our lives more convenient, liberty no longer serves a purpose if we cannot even protect it for our posterity.

Moving onward to the soul of libertarianism, Fleck proceeds with a heftier claim:

Left-libertarianism has been around for a very long time. If you choose not to acknowledge the history of this rich philosophical tradition, then you’re entering tinfoil hat territory and even a hundred articles like this one won’t convince you otherwise. If you are willing to look at the evidence, then congratulations: you’ve just taken your first step into a larger world. Without the likes of Murray Rothbard, Sheldon Richman, Brian Doherty, Robert Nozick, Karl Hess, Carl Oglesby, J. Arthur Bloom, Kevin Carson, Charles Johnson, Roderick Long, and countless others, libertarianism wouldn’t be where it is today. Yet all of these minds, their brilliant ideas included, are often discarded or forgotten about completely in the modern liberty movement, which seems much more interested in falling in line with the strictly paleoconservative brand of libertarianism promulgated by the Paul family and their visible allies. There is nothing wrong with these men having their voices heard as well, but not at the expense of actual conversation and dissent within libertarianism today. Unfortunately, that seems to be exactly what the movement is currently suffering from.

Mr. Fleck is once again just as right in the same light as he is wrong. Yes, there does need to be a better conversation about the ideas behind libertarianism, but just like the theory of the universe orbiting around the Earth, just because someone said something convincing doesn’t mean they are right. The important thinkers and intelligencia listed by Fleck are indeed noted figures all libertarians should have an understanding of, but in doing so, should not take for face value immediately. The reason why more Americans flock to Ron Paul’s vision of the world instead of Ayn Rand’s is because one conforms to reality and the other doesn’t. As much as I love the Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, I wouldn’t want to live in Rand’s Objectivist utopia where love is fleeting, God is absent, external value is absolute, and humanity is cold. Besides Rand, the Minarchy of Nozick and the absolution of individual behavior craft the outline for a human existence contrary to our history and nature. Libertarians sometimes fall into the trap of thinking we live in a void where the individual is supreme, ignoring the fact that community and civil-social institutions exist because cohabitation is key to interaction.