1. How does an essentially individualist enterprise attract new adherents?
2. If humans are as rational as libertarianism presupposes, why aren't more humans libertarians?
My questions are prompted by a series of posts over at Positive Liberty, where Timothy Sandefur and Alan Scott discuss John Sample on the future libertarian demographic--it's trending youthward.
Sandefur notes a "rising wave" of young people growing up post-Communism, post-Great Society, disenchanted by the futility of the War on Drugs, raised to be skeptical. He closes,
So I do think there’s something to the wave explanation. Certainly it’s gratifying to imagine. Of course, projecting personal experience onto broad trends is hopelessly speculative, but hopeless speculation is sweet to the delusionally optimistic.Scott responds,
I’m twenty-two. I grew up in the Clinton Administration. The first time I ever remember hearing of the Soviet Union is when someone told me it collapsed. I didn’t witness the belated failures of the Great Society–I saw the belated failures of Reaganomics. The authority figure from my TV isn’t Boss Hogg, It’s Commissioner Gordon from the Batman Animated Series. Not only was I not of age in 1994, I was only seventeen when Bush was first elected in 2000.... [I]f you’re right about the new wave, then shouldn’t those thirty and thirty-one-year-olds be just as libertarian as you?To which Sandefur replies,
The problem is that they aren’t.... I think a simpler phenomenon is to blame....
Those in the youngest demographics are overwhelmingly liberal and libertarian. But older people become less and less likely to be libertarian and liberal, while they become more and more likely to be conservative or populist. I think it’s pretty clear that the older demographics are abandoning their support for social freedoms, not their love of economic liberty.
And in fact, they aren’t really abandoning anything. They’re just remaining in place while the battle lines are being redrawn about them. Their parents were being silly when they claimed that Rock and Roll and Comic Books lead to juvenile deliquency, but Video Games and Hip-Hop clearly breed Sexism and Violence. Of course Black People and White people should be allowed to marry each other, but men marrying men goes against the natural order of things.
Interesting points, but I don’t think they do as much damage to my (admitted) hunches as it seems. For instance, my point isn’t that the 18-29 demographic remembers the fall of the Soviet Union; my point is that they’re the first generation to grow up without something that previous generations had: the constant misrepresentations of the Soviet economy in the west, whereby we were told that communism was just a different style of production, and perhaps even more efficient than capitalism, but in any case that nobody should cast aspersions. The 19-29 demographic certainly gets a lot of indoctrination on this head, no doubt—but it’s not the same as seeing Paul Samuelson come out with another edition of his textbook telling you that the U.S.S.R. will surpass us in twenty years. That’s what I mean....I'm not sure which version is accurate--the survey isn't longitudinal, so comparing statistics across different generations is unfair, a form of the ecological fallacy.
As far as liberalism is concerned, it’s very obvious to me that the younger generation is libertarian on many social issues. Marijuana legalization, for example, has resolved itself into a purely generational conflict, and the legalization of marijuana is only a matter of time now, in my view. It is to be hoped that that will spill over into economic matters, too. Many libertarians obviously hope so; Reason’s now flagrant in its courting of the left, for instance. This is probably a good thing, since I believe that cooperation with conservatives was almost always a doomed enterprise and is now almost entirely dead.
Even if the upcoming generation is trending libertarian in some ways, its surrounding culture is overwhelmingly "ambivalent." For instance, although marijuana might be legal in a decade or two, it'll switch places with tobacco. Today's youth are remarkably loose with their privacy, and perhaps unlikely to resent government intrusion into their conversations--as long as it doesn't interfere with music downloads.
If there truly is a disappearing-libertarian effect, it might also be explained by a lack of capital-L Libertarian wins at all levels. People vote for parties, not ideologies, and often against their interests. The Libertarian candidate is usually a protest vote.
I agree with Sandefur, though, that libertarians have reason for optimism. Since one third of Americans don't associate with either party, and at least half of the others are potentially dissatisfied with their own, the time for Libertarian surgence (can't be "resurgence" if you've never surged) is now. Which brings me back to my first question: How does an essentially individualist enterprise attract new adherents?
How does an essentially individualist enterprise attract new adherents?
ReplyDeleteBy refusing to institutionalize. The trouble with Democratic and Republican candidates is that they're all tied to their Parties-as-institutions and have to stay "on message." Pundits use enormous amounts of paper, ink, airtime, and electrons talking about how one or the other party will or will not prevail in whatever upcoming election because the party has no message, or its members are divided into factions, or whatever. Meanwhile, candidates from the Big Two parties do their campaigning mostly by reciting party lines, or by making creative turns on party lines.
(For instance, Steve Westly is running for governor in California with the annoyingly stupid slogan, "Steve Westly. Democrat Governor." Then he says things that are not so much creative approaches to problems as they are unexpected co-opting of the Republican party line, or inverting of the Democratic party line. Just a while ago I heard a radio ad where he said something like, "Taxes should be a last resort." Yeah, so?)
But I find that when I take the time to articulate a different position — one that I think tends toward the libertarian view — be it in person, in a letter to the local paper, or on my blog, people from both sides of the spectrum say things like, "Yes, that makes a lot of sense." However, what I try never to do is get up and say, "As a Libertarian . . . etc." I think that makes a difference. People like stuff that makes sense, but so often pronouncements from the Big Two are more like preaching to the choir, because they rely on a whole bunch of assumptions that the audience is expected to agree with.
For instance, when candidates use terms like "liberal," "conservative," "family values," "tax-and-spend," etc., they're calling on a vocabulary that means vastly different things to people of different political persuasions. It makes the discourse into something like a realm of magical incantations, where a candidate need only recite the right words in the right context and people will believe that orthodoxy is behind them.
The statement of platform that the California Libertarian Party has printed in our voter guide for the upcoming primary election is interesting. It doesn't say, "We stand for . . . etc." Rather, it says something like "If you think this, this, and this, then you're a libertarian." I think that's a smart idea, although it's implemented rather crudely, because it allows people to evaluate the terms and discover their political alignment, rather than being presented with a slate and asked for their allegiance.
Personally, I don't even like calling myself a "Libertarian," even though it's the closest approximation of my views. I think a Libertarian candidate could get some mileage out of that idea, especially considering how fractured our society seems to be. What's a libertarian? A human being. It's the one demographic that 100% of the voters can identify with. Then you build from there.
Go back to the Constitution, to Due Process and Equal Protection, but don't call it Due Process or Equal Protection. Put it in ordinary terms. Say it simply, say it clearly, say it directly. Work from basic, general principles, instead of specific policy issues — but be ready to address specific policy issues and give a clear, concise explanation of how the specific conclusion derives from the general principles. The Big Two drive people away because they focus obsessively on a few specific issues (e.g., abortion or health care) and you get people saying, "I like the general idea of the Democrats/Republicans, but I don't like their stand on such and such." So give people a general idea they can appreciate, and then make them realize that disagreement beyond that is acceptable.
Anyway, just some thoughts.