What It Means to Be A Libertarian: An Indictment of the Liberty Movement

What does it mean to be a libertarian?

For several years, I have experienced what could be described as a political crisis of faith. I have often characterized myself as a conservative who values small government, fiscal responsibility, and a strong foreign policy that would see my country stand strong, tall, and proud. I dislike abortion and prostitution, and I take offence to the concept of a biological male staking claims to womanhood after half a lifetime socialized a man. Associating myself politically with conservatism never felt right, however — despite more recent efforts to soften the label by including a “socially liberal” prefix. Of course, by all accounts it would seem criticism of abortion and the transgender movement would characterize me as a solid social conservative, but holding negative opinions is not automatically synonymous with a belief in government regulation, nor is expressing those opinions an attempt to instruct others how to think. This false dichotomy was largely on display in reaction to Julie Borowski‘s recent piece, “A Response to ‘Stop Using Your Boobs to Sell Liberty'”:

“If she is truly libertarian, then won’t the free market be the determining factor of whether these calendars, or ideology sells? Seriously, what’s her bitch?”

“I think a lot of the “libertarians,” bothered by this are confused conservatives. Using attractiveness to spread a message is way better than fear and lies, which is how the D’s & R’s put themselves out there.”

“Someone needs to check the definition of liberty again.”

“Isn’t the suggestion (to stop) contrary to a free market?”

“So first a ‘libertarian’ is telling people what they should think about abortion, now she is telling people what they should and should not do with their bodies ... Libertarianism is about respecting the rights of the individual.“

Borowski merely expressed her personal views, not demanded government bureaucrats swoop in and ban utilizing sex as a marketing tool. If suggestions were enforced upon people, years of my mother’s would have succeeded in convincing me to wear appropriate winter attire. And while Borowski made references to specific individuals that were perhaps neither necessary nor kind, freedom of speech, thought, and expression is one of the major fundamental tenets on which the foundation of libertarianism is built. One can respect the rights of the individual while exercising their right to freedom of speech. The problem here, of course, is confusing the idea that one has the right to not be offended with the reality that feelings are not protected by the Constitution.

The same reaction occurred when I wrote about the societal double standard surrounding obesity. Despite presenting an entirely reasonable argument, I was shouted down as “not a libertarian” and derided accordingly. My number one crime, it appeared, was having the audacity to criticize obesity. Regardless of having made no calls for legal or social regulation of obesity, obese modeling, or food, I did not fit the criteria for libertarianism because I used my inalienable right to free speech to criticize individuals and social values.

To be clear: it is my view that women should have full access to abortion procedures, banning prostitution and other forms of sex work creates more problems than it solves while directly employing state control over women, obese women can model all they want, and adults are free to pay for elective surgery to alter their gender. Government has no place legislating what people can and cannot do with their own lives when their actions pose zero threat to the physical safety of others.

The inevitable and personally desired outcome of publicly expressing opinions is debate, which is a healthy and essential part of any free society. Whether or not the majority come to an agreed upon conclusion is entirely up to the majority. Whether or not individuals agree with one another is entirely up to the individuals involved. Expressing one’s personal criticisms surrounding sex in the liberty movement, therefore, is not “contrary to the free market” anymore than it makes Borowski in need of a dictionary.

So what does it mean to be a libertarian?

David Boaz, executive vice president of the Cato Institute, defines libertarianism in his 1997 work Libertarianism: A Primer, as,

“…the view that each person has the right to live his life in any way he chooses so long as he respects the equal rights of others. Libertarians defend each person’s right to life, liberty, and property-rights that people have naturally, before governments are created. In the libertarian view, all human relationships should be voluntary; the only actions that should be forbidden by law are those that involve the initiation of force against those who have not themselves used force-actions like murder, rape, robbery, kidnapping, and fraud.“

Moral opposition is not equivalent to legal or social enforcement, nor does it preclude one from upholding the right to life, liberty, and property of those one might be morally opposed to.

Initially, I believed Boaz’s description accurately aligned with who I am, despite my conservative leanings: a small government, free market, liberty loving enthusiast who’s wholly in contempt of bureaucratic ineptitude, and that’s still true.

However, libertarianism is rife with “purists” — people who adopt a specific individual concept of an ideology and stomp their feet whenever someone in their camp espouses an alternate point of view. They exist within liberalism and conservatism too, but over the course of several years’ worth of observation in the three political arenas, I have often noted libertarians to be the worst offenders. The disparity, I believe, relates to libertarianism’s lack of consistency. While the registered party may have a coherent platform, citizen proponents of the ideology tend to espouse drastically different ideas about what constitutes a libertarian, whereas proponents of liberalism and conservatism tend to be more uniform in their ideas and tolerant of peer dissent. The most likely explanation for this phenomenon is that libertarianism is often stumbled upon by people such as myself, politically confused and unable to find a suitable base camp, who adopt and conform it to their own idea of what the ideology stands for. Consequently, infighting occurs between several people each convinced their version of libertarianism is the correct one in a fashion vaguely theistic in nature.

This is not an argument for collectivism. However, any ideology hoping to achieve political success must be built on a clear set of core values. You cannot believe in big government, restrictions on speech, and state-controlled economies, for example, and call yourself a libertarian because those values are entirely at odds with those agreed upon to be the core values of libertarianism. That does not mean each subscriber to libertarianism must adhere to precisely the same beliefs on every issue — nor should they — but it does mean one should try to uphold the basic principles of their own ideology. When your ideology thrives upon upholding individual rights, attacking someone’s credibility as a libertarian because they utilized their rights to espouse a point of view you personally disagreed with is probably not the best way to achieve that end.

Libertarians put me off fully embracing their movement through incoherencies and petty hypocrisies. Perhaps there will come a time when libertarians embrace this and seek to change it. When and if that happens, I’ll be happy to join in the movement. Just show me where to sign up.