Meanwhile, with the obsolescence of the anti-communist alliance with conservatives, many libertarians have sloughed off much of their previously tactically useful sympathy for socially conservative initiatives. Freed to be full-on social liberals, many libertarians are left sensing a much deeper cultural affinity for the left than the right. And this leads naturally to seeing more clearly their ideological affinities with welfare liberals.
Um, in a word, yeah...this articulates my thinking about modern libertarianism over the last couple of years about as well as anything I could ever hope to write*.
In practical terms, I'd say that for my part, given an electoral choice between two different flavors of government overreach, I'm certainly inclined to go with the one oriented towards the welfare of people (however ill-conceived and poorly executed the particulars tend to be) over the one that is oriented towards blowing them up.
Plugging your ears and denouncing statism in all its forms is fine and admirable, but only if you view ideology as an end rather than a means. It's just silly to pretend that universal health care is as great (or greater) a threat to your freedom and well-being as is funding a global empire.
Jim Henley also makes a great point that cuts to the heart of our age:
...this election season certainly reminds me how deranged and deranging the real political process is. It still makes powerful sense to me to minimize its sway over our lives. I agree with an awful lot of what Will says about the merits of what he doesn’t quite call Hayekian Social-Democracy, but by god we should still keep the whole thing as simple and circumscribed as possible. Because the people who come through this process are crazy, and the people who involve themselves deeply in it become so.*This is not true. It's actually much better.
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