Paul Staines wants to shine a light into the closet and see who is in there… no, not that one!
There are a lot of libertarians who are modest and in the closet. Often they just find it awkward to explain there views on politics, philosophy or economics if, for example, they work for the Inland Revenue. I can sympathise. Its hard for a libertarian to justify working as a civil servant of any kind, but such are the compromises of real life.
It can embarrassing to questioned as to your attitude to a number of issues in many situations, drugs, gun ownership, and the abolition of the National Health Service may not assist your job application to become the over-paid Chief Executive of the local Health Trust.
I disapproved of Tatchell’s ‘outing’ of closet gays so it would be hypocritical to advocate outing closet libertarians. It strikes me that it still might be beneficial to point out those people who have publicly identified themselves as libertarians. It would highlight that there are more of us about, that we are not all obsessed with arguments about lunar property rights and may even assist in networking.
So I’ll kick off with the first of what I suspect will be a huge number of self-identified but unrecognised right-wing libertarians with Tony Parsons, ex-husband of Julie Burchill and author of “Man and Boy”… and Hans Snook, Orange Telecom’s visionary CEO who is a Randian… and Microsoft bashing Scott McNealy, founder of Sun Microsystems is one of us.
Any more?
So, Snook’s a Randian is he? That explains why he’s so passionate about enemas.
Considering that Sun Microsystems encouraged the U.S. Dept. of Justice to sue Microsoft over anti-trust, I would not consider him a libertarian.
You might know this, but I was unaware that Dr. James Watson, the co-discoverer of DNA, is a libertarian. I found out when I saw his BBC HardTalk interview…at least he seemed to be very anti-state and pro-liberty. He was saying things like “I don’t want to give that much power to the state because I don’t trust the state”….and when the interviewer mentioned another geneticist who wants more state controls over genetic research, Watson called him an “old-fashioned socialist”. Asked about his saying “if scientists don’t play God, who will?”, he replied with a question: “Who? The Prime Minister?” He ended the interview by saying about technological progress: “You can criticize…but it’s a better world than it was under the first Elizabeth.” Seems libertarian to me.
there is a list of ‘out’ libertarians here
The film and tv list is as follows:
Orson Bean
Dean Cameron
Drew Carey
Dixie Carter
Tommy Chong
Clint Eastwood
Edward Herrmann
Kenny Kramer
Leah Lall
John Larroquette
Denis Leary
Sam Longoria
Russell Means
Sean Morley
Trey Parker
Penn & Teller
David Ruprecht
Aaron Russo
Kurt Russell
Tom Selleck
Howard Stern
Matt Stone
Tracy Torme
Jimmie “JJ” Walker
Wil Wheaton
Well, I have no problems at work saying housing benefit should be abolished and generally pointing out the idiocies of government, welfare, taxation, regulation, ‘initiatives,’ interference in the housing market and so on.
But I must out myself to the present company as someone who through inertia and lack of ambition works for a state-funded housing association…
Wil Wheaton? He may describe himself as one but anyone who can write:
…is not really a libertarian or much of anything coherent to be frank. Now call me quaint but it would seem to me that an ABSOLUTE pre-requisite for being a libertarian would be supporting personal rather than collective ownership of the means of production, i.e. you have to be a true personal-choice capitalist.
So if Wil cannot make his mind up between Libertarian Party (pure capitalist), the Democratic Party (regulatory statist) or Green (quasi-marxist), I would venture that Wil Wheaton’s political allegences are mostly to be found in the manifesto of the All Night Party. I rather doubt Wil has the slightest idea what libertarianism actually stands for if those mutually exclusive options are what he considers all to be viable choices.
Of course maybe his views have developed since he wrote that. Dunno.
Re Mark Holland’s list of film/tv industry libertarians (above), I don’t know whether to be relieved or worried that the only ones I’ve heard of are Clint Eastwood and Tom Selleck – any man who packs a 1911 can’t be all bad…
At least the USA has a Libertarian Party that actually fields candidates, but so far as I know, no-one has stood in the Libertarian interest in UK elections.
To my constant chagrin, lots of people are starting to describe themselves as ‘libertarians’ without having the faintest idea of what the word means or the principles involved.
Some people think of themselves as libertarians because, for example, they would decriminilise cannabis. So if they also campaign for socialist central planning there is no conflict in their minds. I suspect Mr.Wheaton falls into this category.
For God’s sake, even the Scottish Socialist Party, a marxist class-war outfit, describe themselves as ‘libertarians’ in their manifesto.
In the U.S., a lot of big “L” libertarians don’t like or admit it, but a substantial chunk of the Republicans are heavily small “L” libertarian influenced. Of course Hayek and Burke are perched on their shoulders, in a constant battle for their political soul…
Problem is, Bush is a statist conservative, rather than a libertarian one. He may actually have libertarian leanings, but even if he did, he couldn’t get far with the closely divided senate, pragmatic advisors and the 4 or 5 lefty “RINO” Republican senators with controlling votes. It’s not great, but much better than the alternative. The only problem is that the government infrastructure he builds will eventually be inherited by flaming statist Dems…
Yes, being a libertarian and working for the state is tough. I worked for the State of Connecticut as a manager in its program of health care for the poor. What made me a libertarian, I think, was daily actual visualisation of moral hazard at work.
Funding of health care provision by government and insurance companies benefits not so much the patients but the providers of care. These heath care professionals, who are supposed to have a scientific education, make up all kinds of dubious things to prove that their patients need ever more paid health care; and they do so with a straight face and without a touch of irony.
You guys should see what is going on now in the US. Claritin, a medication for the symptoms of allergies (used to be known as ‘hay fever’ to describe the common reaction to plant spores foating through the air in springtime), has lost its patent protection. Claritin was quite expensive and heavily advertised by its manufacturer. People rushed to their doctors to get a prescription for Claritin whenever they sneezed and insurance companies paid for the prescription. Now, access to this highly sought after medication is no longer guarded by the medical profession in the best interests of patients. Anyone can walk into a drug store or supermarket, pick up a package of Claritin, and pay for it at much less than the price the manufacturer charged when laws designed to protect consumers from “impure” medications gave the manufacturer a monopoly.
Only problem is that many health insurers do not pay for such “over the counter” medications. They only pay for stuff that must be prescribed by a physician. Result is that people are not buying Claritin any more. They are going to their doctors who are gladly writing prescriptions for other allergy medications that are still protected by patents. These scientifically trained professionals who earlier were guite willing to say that their patients had to have Claritin, are now quite willing to say that their patients must have something other than Claritin.
The Democrats, who would call themselves socialists if they had enough brains to think about their political philosophy, want government to pay for folks’ medications. The Republicans, who may be described as corporatists, want to extend the life of patents.
That’s why I’m a libertarian. Let me tell you, being a libertarian and working for the state makes you feel like a sham and a phoney. It is not a good feeling. Strictly speaking, though, given the state’s generous pay, benefits, and working conditions, it is quite rational to see state employment as a reasonable way to derive income, as long as you accept a certain dulling of the mind.
Libertarians must be doing something right. As much as people have tried to paint us as charter members of the “tinfoil hat brigade,” there has to be a certain amount of perhaps quixotic, populist “cool” associated with the word “libertarian,” if so many different people are now using it to describe themselves.
The problem with self-avowed “libertarians,” unfortunately, is that we have to assume they know what a libertarian is, and that they make an effort to live up to that ideal. On that assumption, those of us who have never met a libertarian or studied libertarianism engage in the process of averaging out politically relevant behavior of all the self-avowed “libertarians,” in order to to derive a definition of our own, by which we might recognize (or confirm) libertarians, regardless of what they say or don’t say about their personal brand of poltical philosophy.
Look at the list of “out libertarians,” which Mark Holland kindly posted above, and you may begin to see how difficult that “averaging” process is. How can people do anything else but give up in frustration, after trying to reconcile the statements and actions of such disparate celebrities Dixie Carter, Clint Eastwood, Howard Stern, and Wil Wheaton — not to mention Bill Clinton and Bill Maher, both of whom have used the term “libertarian” to describe their beliefs or themselves? Where’s the crisp, clean, obvious through-line that connects all of these people? Failing to discern one, most people I have observed seem to retreat to the lowest common denominator, which seems to be, “a libertarian has something to do with freedom and opposing the establishment and freedom is cool.” Or even worse, that a “libertarian” is just one of a group of people with NO especially discernable political philosophy, but perhaps a social or economic policy agenda, as also seems true of the Democrats and Republicans. In consequence, media reporters go on to apply the less-and-less precisely defined term to a wider-and-wider circle of people. I even saw Donald Rumsfeld described as a “libertarian” the other day by a wire service reporter. What’s up with THAT?
In some sense, the ever-more-numerous “outings” of “libertarians,” coupled with the failure of libertarians to repudiate the appropriation of that label by obvious non-libertarians, amounts to an assault on the word “libertarian.” As a result, the word seems to me to be in danger of either losing all power to distinguish political opinions and behavior; or coming to mean something quite different than what I believe most of us posting here think it means. There is precedent. Once, long ago, “liberal” meant pretty much what “libertarian” means today. But that shorter word was co-opted by, libertarian socialists, at first, and ultimately by leftist authoritarians. Now, the right casually tosses around “liberal” as one of their highest terms of insult, and the left applies the word to describe any number of policies or approaches (e.g., progressive taxation, or affirmative action) that are anything BUT “liberal” in its original sense.
So, to sum up, “libertarian” has achieved a positive cachet. This naturally prompts both the confused and the self-aggrandizing to say, “I’m one, too,” regardless of the meaning of “libertarian,” and whether they actually conform to it. Conformity to the definition is irrelevant, of course: The example provided the self-avowed “libertarians,” going forward, colors and reshaps the definition of “libertarian” in the minds of most people. And from here, it looks like the definition is on its way to being muddied, neutralized, and reissued, following much the same trajectory that “liberal” followed, turning from something good into a commonly used insult.
People often take the Libertarian Party to task for its insistence on ideological purity, leading to corrosive, internecine witch hunts that sap party strength and scare away newcomers. I’ve done so myself on numerous occasions. There is, however, something to be said for trying to protect the meaning of words — at least one word that is important to you. “Libertarian” is a word that is important to true libertarians, and they should find ways to keep its commonly-perceived meaning from shifting in the direction of “liberal” or other once noble political terms that now mean the opposite of what they once meant, or even nothing at all. I’d prefer that our efforts to preserve the meaning of “libertarian” serve to attract new libertarians rather than excommunicate and repel them. But even those less savory outcomes may be preferrable to losing the term altogether. What do you think?
James M –
I understand what you are saying. But if the “libertarian” tag is gaining cachet, great, even at the expense of some dilution. The more merrier.
We are not ever going to see a libertarian revolution, we are going to take micro-incremental steps forward. People identifying themselves as libertarian inclined is a step forward in the kulture-kampf. Half a libertarian is better than anti-libertarian.
Insisting on ideological purity will only marginalise us. Better to be in a broad front. Socialist ideals achieved near intellectual hegemony in the mid-twentieth century, we need to achieve the same kind of intellectual acceptance this century. Welcoming fellow travellers is part of the answer…
Paul Stains says, “Insisting on ideological purity will only marginalise us. … Welcoming fellow travellers is part of the answer… ”
If you are talking about whether libertarians should work and associate with non-libertarians to achieve common goals, I agree. If you are talking about the need for libertarians to welcome, as libertarians, those who actually oppose libertarianism in significant ways, they I must respectfully disagree.
When Bill Clinton says he is “sort of a libertarian,” and when a newspaper reporter describes Donald Rumsfeld as “libertarian” in viewpoint, that is not just “some dilution.” That is evidence of processes at work which will (fairly soon, it seems) suck all meaning and descriptive power from the word “libertarian.” We already have libertarians differing on “life and death” issues, such as abortion and war. We already have self-avowed “libertarians” supporting various aspects of the drug war, or the income tax, or national health/retirement plans. And so on.
Those libertarians who think they can achieve greater success in the “mainstream” are certainly free to call themselves anything else they want and join (or form) any other organizations they want. People who aren’t fully libertarian in philosophy or approach, on the other hand, are free (and welcome!) to join hands with libertarians and contribute to libertarian causes.
The word “libertarian” itself, however, out to be as useful and precise a tool for distinguishing political philosophy as possible. Any organizations using that word in their names ought to be fairly described by it, don’t you think? Or do you just consider it to be a meaningless trademark, to be owned by Coke one week and Pepsi the next?
Let me suggest to you that we will NOT achieve success when everyone declares himself or herself to be “a libertarian,” but rather when true libertarians are willing to work with non-libertarians, non-libertarians are willing to work with true libertarians, and there are enough true libertarians so that there is no danger of co-option nor dilution by non-libertarians. In other words: when we are an important force to be reckoned with, neither dominant (in danger of dilution) nor marginalized (in danger of disintegration or being consumed).
The important thing, it seems to be, is to get the largest mass of true libertarians we can, working together, to effect real libertarian reforms, and to guarantee the survival of truly libertarian aspects in the reform packages promoted by others. It is just as important to get non-libertarians to recognize the need for the things we promote, and to help us achieve our goals.
Let’s be friendly to non-libertarians, and welcome non-libertarians as “friends of liberty” or “honored allies of libertarians,” when they actually say or do things that advance the cause of liberty. But let’s not call someone “libertarian” who isn’t, and let’s not be shy about pointing out (or at least, making known) the significantly non-libertarian things that self-avowed “libertarians” say or do. I don’t think we really have much of a choice in that regard, unless you’re perfectly happy to be shopping for a new word to describe us in ten or twenty years, after “libertarian” joins “liberal” on the heap of hijacked and useless terms.
Oops. In my previous comment, I notice that I misspelled the name of Mr. Paul Staines right off the bat, which may have given the impression of disrespect for him or his opinion. Not so; it was simply a typographical error, which I regret. Is there a way of correcting our erroneous postings after the fact? If not, then I guess this apology will have to do.
Paul,
I can see your argument but what worries me is terminology-theft. For example, American socialists have purloined with word ‘liberal’ whilst not being the slightest bit liberal and, in fact, marching resolutely in the opposite direction.
We must guard against the term ‘libertarian’ suffering the same fate.