The Editors wants to know what it is that libertarians really believe? That’s a fine question and one I’ve never really I’ve never able to wrap my head around. So many twisty bits, sudden shifts, unexplained exceptions and yet they move like a school of fish, always turning at the same time. From time to time, when I’m feeling exceptionally bitter about the prospect of Grover Norquist drowning the United States government in his bathtub, I’ve proposed that they’re either exceptionally stupid or remarkably cruel. But this can’t be the end of the story, can it? As The Editors points out, the problems with self reporting play a large roll in why it’s so hard to know what libertarians believe.
How do we know that people really believe what they say they believe, rather than just say they believe what they wish people to believe they believe? There are also potential problems in situations where when two or more principles contradict each other: how to know which principle is more deeply held? There is a lot of ambiguity, and many opportunities for error.
Fortunately for us, The Editors set up an experiment in 2002, wherein he transferred all federal power to a single party. For the purposes of the experiment, that party increased the size of the federal budget by record amounts and ceded nearly unprecedented powers to the executive, at the expense of already docile legislative and judiciary branches. That executive expanded his endless war on a tactic to a place where that tactic was largely absent, justifying it to the public with a nearly endless stream of falsehoods. For the purposes of the experiment, the executive authorized the use of torture, indefinite detainment without trial, secret prisons and warrantless wiretaps among other massive expansions of the police and military powers of the state, all justified by a poorly defined war on a tactic. All the while, the party’s voter base demanded more and more power for the government and branded any press coverage of the government’s policies, not loaded with accolades and stripped of detail, as an act of treason.
The question is, what will the small government libertarians do in the 2006 midterm elections? It should be an interesting conclusion to the experiment. I’m just glad The Editors are on the case, and doubly glad that the last four years have been part of a well thought out clinical experiment, rather than the gut wrenching madness I’d assumed.
Now do yourselves a favor and read the whole post, as it’s lovely through and through. My little summary here can’t even begin to do it justice and I may well be too thick to understand it fully, so feel free to make rude comments about me. Regardless of my own comprehension, some time in the next two weeks, I’ll be testing each and every one of you at length and without notes, just to be sure that you’ve done exactly as I’ve asked.
