Ordinarily I would rise to the bait provided by Professor Bainbridge in his post Those Annoying Libertarians. But I have learned that blogging requires not only the time it takes to compose a post. It also involves the time it takes to read email responses, responses by other bloggers, and then to reply. Because I am spending the weekend preparing for my first moot court on Ashcroft v. Raich next week at Georgetown (which is closed to the public), I cannot take the time to start something here that I cannot finish. I look forward to returning to blogging in December.
But let me offer a brief word of advice to social conservatives AND libertarians. In a 2-party, winner-take-all, first-past-the-post electoral system, a winning “major” party represents a coalition of voters needed to get past 50%. The marginal voters needed for that goal are important, as are the inframarginal voters. (In proportionate representation, parliamentary systems, winning coalitions are formed among factionalized parties rather than among voters in the electorate.)
Social conservatives are most certainly a part of the winning Republican majority and their interests and concerns must be respected and operationalized consistently with preserving the coalition. So are libertarians. The very fact that the Libertarian Party drew so few votes is evidence that libertarians who vote largely voted for the major party candidates.
I believe that libertarians were in both camps this time around. Of those who did not vote Libertarian, anti-war libertarians who believed that divided government was better to control federal power and spending supported Kerry. They also may have preferred Kerry as better for protecting civil liberties. Those libertarians who support the administration’s strategy for fighting the war against radical islamicists, including the battle for Iraq, and perhaps also its proposals for private social security accounts, Medical savings accounts voted Bush. They may also prefer Bush’s prospective judicial nominations to Kerry’s (or not). Be this as it may, many thousands, if not millions of libertarian-leaning voters supported the President as part of his winning coalition.
It ill-behooves one constituent of a winning coalition to gratuitously insult another member. Disagree with, even passionately, yes. Belittle and ridicule, no. Doing so is a recipe from reducing a winning coalition into a losing one. All coalitions are subjected to this internal tension. Successful ones find ways to resist it by stressing what all coalition members have in common, as compared with their political opponents.
My advice goes to libertarians (a misquotation of one of whom provoked Professor Bainbridge) who want to be a part of this coalition, as well as conservatives, social or otherwise. The Federalist Society, which is itself a coalition of conservatives and libertarians understands this strategy well.
My own view on how to maintain the winning coalition is Grover Norquist’s: the “leave-us-alone” strategy, which happens to fit our original Constitution (as amended). This entails leaving gay marriage (which I support) to the states, and the substance of public school curriculum (including moments of silence and pledges of allegiance) to locally-elected school boards. (My only exception would be for when the liberty of adults is at stake as in Lawrence v. Texas, but we have debated this before and I won’t be drawn into another debate over this issue right now. I am just identifying this area of disagreement I have with some conservatives.)
With that, I have already spent more time composing this post than I intended and said more than I can back up in the next few days. I leave further comments on this issue in the capable hands of my fellow bloggers here and elsewhere.
PS: AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: As a seventh grader, I debated on behalf of Barry Goldwater in front of my entire junior high school student body in the heavily Democratic town of Calumet City. And, like David, I came to libertarianism first through Rothbard, not Rand.
Update: I am happy to post this email from the reporter who wrote the story in which David was quoted:
You seem to be accusing me of misquoting David Bernstein.
That would be news to him. In his recent e-mail to me he affirmed the quote about the separation of everything and state and in fact seemed justifiably proud of it.
As for the paraphrase that follows, that was an accurate summation of his phone discussion with me about the abandonment by the Bush administraion of the limited-government reforms embodied in the Contract with America.
The paraphrase preceding the quote was not attibuted and was my own view.
Paul Mulshine
Correction noted. Another reader writes:
Yes, leave gay marriage to the states. But what about the notion that getting married in one state transfers the full rights, benefits, etc. to another state when the newlyweds decide to move? Isn’t that the legal reason for a federal marriage amendment?
I agree which is why I would support a constitutional amendment that upholds the Defense of Marriage Act that leaves the decisions to the states, while opposing a constitutional amendment that adopts a national constitutional definition of marriage.
PS: The time-consuming nature of this sort of healthy and constructive exchange is exactly why I have not been blogging lately and probably should not have blogged today.
Update: Excellent post by Infidel Cowboy on This Whole Reaching Out Business.
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