Libertarianism IS an Unfortunate Fad....but why?

Libertarians and those on the left today enjoy a happy camaraderie. We find ourselves in coalition in a long twilight struggle against right wing authoritarianism. We are usually in agreement on most of the big issues from torture, to hefty farm subsidies to big business, to useless pork, to obvious corruption, to a startlingly hawkish foreign policy, and, most importantly, to government sponsored intolerance. This makes it very tempting for leftists (note: I don't use the term “liberal” because it is a term that, depending on the context, can include both left wing politics and libertarianism) to acquiesce with libertarians, to simply nod and smile when they talk dreamily of an America with greater freedom, and to imagine that their concept of freedom is much the same as yours. After all, attacking libertarians in our troubled time feels a bit like Legolas criticizing Gondor for its lack of respect for nature just as Sauron is poised to crush Middle-Earth.

Then again, this attitude has made libertarianism one of the least attacked ideologies currently around in American politics. Leftists have the aforementioned attitude and also find it harder to attack than conservatism with all its bizarre excesses; meanwhile, conservatives usually decline to attack libertarians specifically, since they have a soft spot for their tax policies. In addition, Libertarians have not been in power for at least a hundred years (depending on your interpretation, maybe not since Thomas Jefferson...maybe never) so they've never have power worth attacking, and have never recently had to defend their ideas converted to actual policy, which is where most ideologies fail. Libertarians always have the luxury of accusing those in power of not being libertarian enough, and of corrupting their good ideas with shoddy execution.

Obviously I recognize that libertarianism is a respectable ideology in which an intelligent person could honestly believe, and I do know some passionate libertarians. However, I feel that a lot of young college students and recent college graduates are libertarians because of the things expressed in the preceding paragraph. That is, they can always be on offense and rarely have the bright light of criticism focused on them. They are socially liberal enough to not get their liberal activist friends furious at them, while also having economic views conservative enough to not get chortles from economics professors, lawyers, and the businessmen that interview them for jobs. When you're a libertarian you can be sophisticated, popular, give endless shit, and take absolutely none. It's a pretty tantalizing political viewpoint.

To me, this means that leftists need to focus their energy more on refuting libertarianism and less on making snide jokes about the Bush administration. True, our biggest quarrel is still with conservatives, but I think our future quarrel will be with libertarians. The future of the right isn't in the Southern-fried conservatism of George Bush, but with the selfish yet tolerant ideology of libertarianism. If the fad goes unchecked, it could well be more than a fad; it could become the accepted conventional wisdom of our generation

The Iraq Study Group Report

Christ! When are we getting out of Iraq? How many people have to die before we realize that our objectives can't be achieved by keeping more Americans around and getting them slaughtered?

I just don't understand what everyone is thinking. The Iraq Study Group talks about how we need to help the Iraqi government and train the Iraqi army, but neither even exists in any meaningful sense. Oh sure, there is a group which we call the government of Iraq and a guy the President can meet with called the Prime Minister of Iraq, and even a bunch of troops we can train called the Iraqi army. But, is a government really a government if it can't enforce some rule of law over any significant part of the country it represents? Is the Iraqi Army really a national army, a unifying force, if different troops in that army have different loyalties? Is a nation really a nation if people don't even identify with it?

I just can't help but feel the report is something for politicians to say they tried before, inevitably, we have to pull out of Iraq. Because I just don't see how engaging with an ineffective government to train a divided army to keep together a country whose residents think of themselves as members of an ethnic group rather than citizens of said country makes any sense at all. I especially don't see why it's worth another 1000 or 2000 lives, which is approximately the difference in casualties between starting to get out now and staying another year like the ISG wants to do.


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