For too long, Republicans promised smaller government and less intrusion in people’s lives. Yet with a government dominated top to bottom by Republicans, we’ve seen the exact opposite. No one will ever mistake a Democrat of just about any stripe for a doctrinaire libertarian. But we’ve seen that one party is now committed to subverting individual freedoms, while the other is growing increasingly comfortable with moving in a new direction, one in which restrained government, fiscal responsibility and—most important of all—individual freedoms are paramount.

This is Kos, at Cato, talking about libertarian democrats. Its an interesting read. The responses are, I think, more interesting. They fall into several categories:

1. The liberal hater: I hate Kos because he is a popular liberal blogger. Liberals are responsibile for everything that is wrong with the world.

2. The wannabe libertarian: I am a partisan Republican (often, a social conservative) who would vote for a Republican no matter what, but I tell my friends I'm a libertarian because I think it sounds cool, so Kos must be wrong because clearly I am a libertarian but I'd never vote for a Democrat.

3. The anarcho-capitalist: Kos fails to address the idea that the only reason corporations can be coercive is the power governments grant them, ergo, Kos is wrong.

(This one is confusing. Apparently these people are unaware that Republicans also regulate markets. Democrats might have traditionally regulated markets more than Republicans, but there is more to his point than this...)

4. The disillusioned libertarian.

This is the response that I think is interesting. The disillusioned libertarians get something that the anarcho-capitalists are missing:

The Republican Party has become corrupted by power.

I'm not talking about Jack Abramoff. I'm talking about NSA surveillance, unlawful enemy combatants, and national security letters.

Republicans have spent years arguing, rightly, that government is a dangerous, coercive thing that ought to be contained, and yet the moment they gain control of both houses of Congress, the Whitehouse, and the Court (whether they beleive it or not) they have decided, instead, that there is absolutely no problem with big government as long as they are running it.

There is absolutely no assumption of unchecked executive power which is so dangerous or far-reaching that today's Republicans won't embrace it and fight for it.

Their's is a fantasy land in which everyone accused of terrorism is guilty and government officials never commit crimes or abuse their authority. Perhaps some are not so stupid, but they don't care, because they figure they'll never personally be the victim of such abuse. Either way, they don't seem to beleive in checks and balances, nor do they seem to believe that there ought be a limit to their ever expanding coercive power.

The best I've seen conservatives muster is the idea that some day one of those damn liberals might be in power, and in power with the same precidents for unchecked executive authority that they are creating today.

Not, mind you, a general understanding that power corrupts and that power ought to be constrained, the general understanding upon which the foundations of this country were built, but a specific beleif that only other people's power ought to be constrained; only liberal power.

For a real libertarian, this unwinding of the system of checks and balances is a serious problem. An alliance with big government Democrats is no less disingenuous then an alliance with fundamentalists. Libertarians might reasonably trade some tax and spend programs for an end to the progress of the conservative christians and a reestablishment of the balance between the branches of our federal government. Furthermore, they would have the ability to constrain the spending of the Democrats just as they constrain the moralizing of the fundies, in fact, likely better, as the mainstream American left is not as anti-corporate as the social conservative movement is theocratic.

There is only one problem: Moderate Democratic leaders, like Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, aren't particularly socially liberal. They have their own brand of thought control. You don't reach out to libertarians by bashing video games and banning things like bayonettes, which are primarily used for historical reenactments.

The best answer, I think, for those who care about freedom, is to keep power in check, by fighting a strong majority government of either party. At this stage, however, supporting Democrats helps acheive that balance.

Cato Unbound » Blog Archive » The Case for the Libertarian Democrat