Friendly Antagonism

Mark, via Robert Stacy McCain, provides an incredibly smart analysis of the relationship and current problems between liberals and libertarians. I am inclined to believe that Mark’s analysis is quite correct, but that if libertarians are smart they’ll ignore it and find a way of growing their relationship with liberals in the coming years.

What I think that Mark, and by extension Robert Stacy McCain, assumes is that any relationship between liberals and libertarians must be one of agreement and consensus on issues such that Ross Douthat cast between the two camps in the Clinton years. Allowing a slightly more vituperative tone than I generally assume, it doesn’t wholly surprise me to see McCain assuming that agreement is the only basis for productive political relationship given his entrenched Palin support. While it is perhaps not true of all Palin supporters, it is true of enough that divergence from party line (full-throated support) became grounds in the ideological litmus test for dismissal. In other words, for Palin supporting movement conservatives it seemed as though the watch word in political relationship became obedience.

That unwillingness to find room for, house, or actively encourage dissent and debate in favour of purely partisan posturing sadly seems to have leeched into the way in which House and Senat conservatives see their role unfolding over the next 2-4 four years. By declaring a pre-emptive war on Obama based on their need to see his administration and liberals generally fail, even if that involves an ever greater decline of the country itself, Republicans have essentially abdicated their role in providing a thoughtful opposition to the liberal majority thereby placing a good deal of their rhetoric in question by at least a sizable proportion of the country (though not all by any means). As Andrew Sullivan suggests, the calling card of movement conservatism seems to have become party, not country, first.

That oppositional void stands to be effectively filled by libertarians as the watchdog against the very real liberal overreach to which Mark points. Not only is such watchdogism a role that libertarians are uniquely positioned to fulfill at this point in time, it also happens to be a badly needed element to the intelligent functioning of a republic like America. Mark writes,

Rather than consider ways of achieving liberal ends (which are usually shared by liberals and libertarians alike) that may have incorporated libertarian thinking or were at the very least highly targeted, progressive politicians have been choosing extraordinarily broad and intrusive means of achieving those ends.  This is not to say that those politicians ever really cared what libertarians thought; only that this route of action has undermined any possibility of a significant percentage of libertarians (again broadly defined as fiscally conservative and socially liberal) becoming intermediate-to-long-term members of the Dem coaltion.

Contra to Mark’s suggestion, I think the only real way for libertarians to effectively exert a cautionary force is to flood the Democratic party and drive the internal debate on the best way forward. The continued corruption of the Republican brand has effectively shuttered routes through the GOP as a means of applying pushback and the libertarians to which Mark refers are likely to be conflicted about such routes at the best of times. Third party routes have consistently resulted in rhetorical laryngitus and romantic as the notion may strike many, libertarians who are serious about assuming control of a meaningful political lever will have to accept the bitter balance of strategy and principle.

What remains then, at least to my mind, is a relationship of “friendly antagonism” with liberals and progressives within the Democratic Party itself. Thouhg perhaps deeply counter intutitive, this route provides the best overall outcome for everyone involved, save perhaps Republicans. Libertarians are able to assume an influential position in American politics that may eventually provide them with the kind of critical legitimacy to make a future third party run anything more than a flight of fancy. Liberals and Democrats, though they might not be inclined to see it this way, benefit from an overall strengthening of their Party and the options they present to the country through the only factor that has ever strengthenedpolitical parties: principled dissent. And the country benefits from ideological juxtaposition and discussion that is grounded in sincerity and first principles, rather than partisan jockeying and power politics.

Of course, few sane betting men would lay money down on my wager and I don’t fool myself into beliveing that the above is an even remotely likely outcome. But here at the League I’m tend to be in the business of beneficial possibilities, as much as predictive pronouncements — and all wagers are of a gentlemanly nature.

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Tags | Democrats, dissent, liberal overreach, liberals, liberaltarians, libertarians, opposition, Republicans