Many of us veteran Libertarians have come to realize that the Libertarian Party is not a viable choice to Mainstream America. This is precisely why we've created the Mainstream Libertarian movement, which is much more moderate and tempered in ideology.

There's a fun test you all can take to learn if you're a Mainstream Libertarian at www.politicalquiz.us. There's also a group which represents Mainstream Libertarian throught - the Republican Liberty Caucus, organized in over 30 states, including New York at www.rlc.org. Finally, there's the website www.mainstreamlibertarian.com

Eric Dondero, CEO
MainstreamLibertarian.com

Founder, Republican Liberty Caucus

Ari, you show a bit of an understanding of libertarian values, but not enough to be able to refute them. As soon as you held Lincoln up to support your argument, you lost many points.

Your position that there is no dispute resolution process in a libertarian system, regarding rights, is ludicrous. Libertarians believe in laws, laws that prevent harm from others. It is only when others invent rights that do not exist that a problem comes into play.

You try to make it sound like libertarians are opposed to life. I'm not sure where you are coming from with that canard, but it makes no sense.

The decentralization of power is an important concept for libertarians. The federal government has usurped and wields far too much influence on our lives. Under a decentralized system, individual communities and/or states would be free to enact laws that reflect their views. You could conceivably have some states that allow abortion and some that don't. The system we have now forces many people to live under conditions they do not support. If you don't like the laws in your particular area, you would be free to move to another area more suited to your needs.

The key is equal opportunity, not equality by force.

Before calling a principled and axiomatic belief in Liberty "ludicrous", maybe you should start with a Libertarianism 101 guide, to give you a basic understanding of where we sit on the Nolan chart. By no means are libertarians "centrists" in any sense of the word - far from it. We sit at the extreme edges of social liberalism and fiscal conservativism. Our "ludicrous" tenant is a respect for the rights and freedoms of others. Wow, call us crazy for having ethics.

How odd it is that you speak with sarcasm about the tyranny and oppression found in the other parties, when you've hit the nail on the head. The other parties believe in taking money by force to pay for things like schools and libraries, rather than respecting each individual's rights to donate his money to whatever charities he pleases. The other parties believe that if a "majority" (how complicated this gets if we bring in Condorcet) votes to impinge upon the rights of others, they are justified in doing it - so my sex life is now the government's business, and they can tell two consenting adults that they may not exchange money for sex. Well, how much more tyrannical and oppressive can you get? Adults no longer have the freedom to make their own choices about their own lives and bodies.

It is troubling that in order to bolster your "opinion" you invoke the names of such prominent historical figures as Abe Lincoln. While I have no qualms with ranking him right up there with FDR and GWB as being one of the most reprehensibly evil and corrupt presidents in our nation's history, that is besides the point. The problem is that you have the massive delusion that the opinion of a figure of authority has some impact over the rights of other people.

Now I want to respond line-by-line to some of the specifically most mind-numbingly pernicious segments of this piece.

polls and election results show that large majorities don’t actually want the sort of limited government that libertarians preach.

Polls also show that most robbers don't want their victims to have alarm systems. What's your point? What does the will of other people have to do with my rights?. If a huge majority in society wants a new school or library, or welfare office, so what? In a free society, they have the freedom to pay for those things if they want them. If they don't like the fact that I didn't donate to those charities, they have the right to deny me the use of them. End of story.

These majorities are not caused by ignorance or folly. Most people on both the right and the left really want services and benefits that big government provides, and they are prepared to make the requisite financial sacrifices.

Then let them make those sacrifices. Libertarians have no desire to stop them. You want to rent movies at Blockbuster, you pay for it. You want to rent books at a nice library, you pay for it. You want good education for your kids, you pay for it. You want good education for the kids of poor people, how noble of you - you pay for it. You don't get to steal from others to pay for the things you and the rest of your "majority" want.

Explaining to them that “freedom is good, and government is bad” — the usual libertarian approach — is insufficient to sway most citizens.

And telling a rapist to stop raping you is also not always so convincing. What's your point?

These citizens represent a powerful political force that cannot be simply ignored. Winning elections means compromising with public opinion, and libertarianism can only remain ideologically pure at the price of political impotency. Compromising with public opinion isn’t unprincipled, it is necessary.

That's like saying "compromising with an armed thug about how much of your jewelry to hand over isn't unprincipled, it's necessary." Well sure, maybe it's necessary to ensure you live to see another day, but it's certainly not principled. Being principled would entail something more along the lines of yanking out a revolver and shooting the thug dead. Of course there aren't enough pro-freedom people to fend off the little thuggish socialist bandits in this world.

The basic libertarian assumption that freedom is the highest good is questionable.

It is, by definition. Each person values his freedom above all else. Socialists just don't value the freedom of others.

The Declaration of Independence, after all, puts life before liberty in the list of unalienable rights.

1) The Declaration of Independence is not a part of the U.S. government - it is NOT legally binding, and is NOT part of our Constitution.
2) A document doesn't have an opinion, but only states the opinions of its authors.
3) To put "life" before "liberty" is a contradiction in terms, because deciding how much to value life, is an expression of one's liberty. If you value life, you can exercise your liberty to donate your money (or perhaps medical skills) to help the sick/hungry/etc. To steal money from someone else to do these charitable deeds is a crime, because it involves you asserting your decisions upon someone else. No one can tell someone else how to spend his
money. Doing so is called slavery.

For instance, the Libertarian Party opposes public health regulation and building codes, on the optimistic assumption that without them, individuals will behave responsibly.

Once again, you are utterly without a clue, in typical anti-libertarian fashion. Our stance on these issues has nothing to do with the assumption that people will behave responsibly. They may, or they may not. The point is, people have a choice to decide whether a building meets their definition of safety, and they do not have to go into any building they do not want to; so beyond the threat a building might pose to third parties (bystanders outside), building regulation enforcement is a crime. The same goes for health regulation, e.g. the FDA. The FDA is responsible for untold human deaths caused because they are often slow to approve new treatments and drugs. If you approve a drug too soon, and something goes awry, you are egregiously punished in some way or another. But if you hold out even longer than need be, no one can easily point the finger at you or blame you for someone's death. Hence FDA agents typically err on the side of waiting too long, rather than approving something too early. The FDA has no right to regulate a transaction between a pharmaceutical producer and consumer. If I the consumer choose to risk a potentially deadly reaction because I have done my research and I believe the benefits outweigh the risks, then I am within my rights to purchase said drug and ingest it. It is no place of the government's to interfere in this transaction. The point of being an adult is, you get to make your own decisions. You can even choose to engage in dangerous activities like skydiving, or smoking cigarettes, if you choose to. It's your life to risk. That's what being an adult is all about. And if you want to be certain a drug is safe before you take it, you can rely upon private certification and testing agencies, and look for their seal of approval on products you want to buy. Being an adult means having the freedom to choose.

This seems rather naïve.

For you to suggest that you know better how to run the lives of other adults than they do is what's naïve.

These regulations were instituted for a reason, and it wasn’t simply to make bureaucrats feel good.

And burglars rob homes for a reason. Having a reason for doing something doesn't make it right.

In both cases, individual choice can hurt bystanders caught in an epidemic or a building collapse.

1) What does an epidemic have to do with anything? You've discussed?! I don't know of any pharmaceutical that has made any epidemic worse. Even over-prescribing antibiotics just speeds up the rate at which microbes evolve resistance to those drugs, which were a luxury in the first place.
2) Libertarians are generally 100% in favor of regulations regarding third parties. A building must be safe enough that it will not likely fall on innocent bystanders. Those who choose to go into a building are accepting any associated risk. If they only want to go into buildings with the A+ certification from Acme Engineering Safety Certification, that's their choice. A smart business will want to attract employees and consumers, and will match safety to meet demands.

Suing for damages after is a poor substitute for having regular inspections to prevent the disaster.

If you feel that way, you are free not to enter buildings whose safety you do not trust. That is your choice. You are free to do that. You are an adult. But apparently that's too scary for you, so you want to violate the freedom of others. Well, I'd love to start telling you what to wear and what job you had to do, and then see how much you really care about freedom.

Most people, quite reasonably, would trade a little freedom for a longer and safer life.

If you want to trade in your freedom for a longer life, you are free too. You are NOT free to take my freedom to ensure a longer life for yourself. Do you get the difference between yourself and the rest of the world yet? The world doesn't revolve around you Mr. Socialist.

Libertarians routinely assert that government coercion is wrong, except to prevent harm to individuals.

We don't all even make that exception.

There is a catch: That little “except to prevent harm” clause hides the fact that “harm” is not so easy to define.

Violating the rights of another is pretty damned easy to define 99.99% of the time. Ambiguous situations will exist (e.g. abortion), and at those junctures we'll certainly have to make some sort of "democratic" (tyrannical) compromise. But if we limit democracy only to the bare minimum of uses, that is vastly better than what we have now, where a majority is free to loot and plunder from the rest of society, at will.

For instance, farm subsidies are rightly derided as among the least useful government programs. However, they were originally intended to protect farmers from real or imagined danger of debt peonage to the banks.

Once again, so what?!. Who cares what they were intended for? If farmers want insurance, they can purchase it from private companies. They don't have the right to steal money from the public. That is a crime.

Likewise, the elaborate financial regulations imposed by the SEC are there to prevent investors from being defrauded.

The only regulations needed in a financial transaction are those fairly negotiated in the agreement/contract. Regulating any business transaction beyond what the participants have agreed to is a criminal interference in their private personal affairs, that are NONE OF THE GOVERNMENT'S BUSINESS.

Campaign finance regulation is there to prevent the wealthy from buying elections, which would gravely reduce the rights of the less well off.

No, it wouldn't reduce the rights of the less well off. If you take away the government's ability to take away anyone's rights, then buying an election doesn't help very much to violate anyone's rights. There's nothing wrong with buying an election, so long as elections are used only for the bear minimum of issues, and the voters all have equal vote power (one ballot per voter) and are free to vote how they want. There's nothing wrong with winning by using a huge propaganda machine and running expensive ads. No voter is every forced one way or another by an ad. He has the choice to vote however he pleases. You can't violate the rights of a candidate to spend billions of dollars on an ad just to cause the result you want in society. Again, the world does not revolve around you - each individual can make up his mind to vote however he damned well pleases. If he wants to vote for John Edwards just because he's so handsome, that's his right. Voters do stupid things. It's not your place to violate the freedoms of a candidate to spend his money however he likes, and restrict freedom of speech just to have the world be the way you want it to be.

All these regulatory systems can be reasonably opposed, but to say, as the Libertarian Party does, that “the only purpose of government is to protect individual liberties” is to ignore conflicts between the rights of different individuals.

I don't even think government should be doing that much. Anything that is funded by taxation is wrong. Taxation is theft. Taxation is slavery. That's all there is to it.

The Right and the Left often disagree about which individual rights are most important. The abortion dispute, for instance, pits the right of the unborn child (or fetus) to life against the right of the mother to control her own body. There is no obvious answer to which set of rights is paramount, or even to whether both underlying rights exist. These disputes are inevitable, and there is no clean way to solve them. The Libertarian party, by intoning that it is “for freedom,” not only dodges the question, but shows itself oblivious to it.

You're talking about one of the only situations which exists in which there is ambiguity in rights, because we have one human inside the body of another, and we are also forced to define some arbitrary point at which a fetus is endowed with the rights of a person. Way to use the one and only really tough issue in the dialog to try to portray Libertarians in an ignorant light.

it’s easy to point to examples of the harm that nihilism or intolerance can cause. A large part of libertarianism is a willful disregard of this sort of long-term consequence.

Because that sort of consequence doesn't involve violating anyone's rights, you philosophical genius you.

This disregard seems to be derived either from the assumption that culture doesn’t matter, which is false

Well, false maybe to you - but then, we don't all have the same opinions. The world doesn't revolve around you.

or that government regulation cannot usefully shape it, which seems unlikely.

Of course government regulation can reshape it - but that's immoral.

Libertarianism, blind to long-term consequences, can often be very short-sighted.

We aren't blind to long-term consequences, we just don't believe in committing immoral acts to shape the future in our preferred way.

However, “freedom” is not the whole story, and is not a magic incantation that solves all political problems.

A wonderful straw man. No one said it solves all problems. It is simply a necessary fundamental basis for a moral society.

The Libertarian Party, unfortunately, is oblivious to many crucial issues.

Or they are just a lot smarter and more rigorous in their thinking then this amateurish fluff you're touting as journalism.

Doctrinaire libertarianism is not a viable governing ideology.

It's not your place to decide for other people whether they may or may not have their freedom. It's not your freedom to take. And of course it's not a "governing" ideology. We don't believe in governing. DUH!

It doesn’t deliver the government people want

No one wants to be governed. They want to govern others, which they don't have the right to do in the first place.

The things people want are meals, t-shirts, schools, libraries, museums, neighborhood security, etc. If they want those things, they can pay for them. That's what a free society allows. You work for the things you want, and you can have them. You can not force me to buy you the things you want. That's stealing. You might need a remedial trip through kindergarten.

it provides no insight into settling disputes about rights and it makes no provision for the sort of long-term consequences that policy makers ought to consider.

It doesn't surprise me that you'd say something so vapid and moronic, seeing as how you demonstrably know virtually nothing about Libertarian thought. Keep studying - you have a lot to learn, my clueless little friend.

Politics poses many hard questions, and “freedom is good” is seldom an adequate answer.

Freedom alone isn't adequate for much. It's necessary, not sufficient. But absolutely, freedom is good. Anyone who says it is bad is talking about the freedom of others.

Overall this piece is a yawn. Another newb thinks he's got Libertarian thought nailed, and doesn't think we've thought our beliefs out, when in fact we've typically methodically worked out virtually every conceivable angle of our world view, from both an economic and social perspective, to a far greater degree of axiomatic rigor than the proponents of any rival world view you could name.

Good luck, college boy. I hope you take some economics classes and get a clue about the disgraceful utility (in)efficiency of your beloved socialism.

“Free society requires consent of the governed, and polls and election results show that large majorities don’t actually want the sort of limited government that libertarians preach”

Maybe you should just come out with it and propose that we officially trash the U.S. Constitution, as well as the state constitution because what you want is unfettered democracy where “consent of the governed” means 51% of the people can infringe on the natural rights and property of the other 49%, mob rule where the enlightened majority can plunder their neighbors property to enrich themselves and pay for their social engineering experiments, their foreign interventions and their economic central planning.
The large majorities don’t have a clue about the concept of limited government because they don’t know that the U.S. Constitution carefully defined the limits of federal government power as to protect the sovereignty of the states and the natural rights of the people.
The state constitution as it was originally written likewise was there to define the limits of state power over of cities, towns and villages. Our whole American concept of government was based on decentralizing political power to the extreme as to protect against the tyranny of the majority.
But you share the same perverted ideals of the men and women at those centers of the tyranny and corruption, namely Washington DC and Albany where they conveniently dispense with the rule of law and run roughshod over the Constitution when the purpose served is to centralize political power into their hands and their outer ring of rent-seekers.
What you seek is the lawlessness that centralized government and majority rule creates, a far different concept than the libertarian principles this country was founded on.