The Republican party is normally presented by the media and academia as the anti Welfare State party – the ‘liberal’ (i.e. statist) establishment denounce the Republicans as the party of cuts in government spending and wicked deregulation.
And yet when the Republicans win an election, most libertarians are not very pleased. Of course we are happy to see the media people upset or the academics in despair, but we do not really expect the Republicans to roll back the entitlement programs or slash and burn the mass of regulations. The reason for this, many libertarians tell themselves, is that Republicans are no good – they talk the language of freedom, but when put to the test they fail the voters who supported them.
However, there is another point of view and this is that most voters (including many people who vote Republican) just do not support liberty and would turn against the Republicans if they ever seriously tried to roll back government. Take the example of the most recent election. Florida voted Republican for President and sent a new Republican to the United States Senate. And yet, at the same time, the great majority of voters in Florida supported a new State minimum wage law.
Is this because the Republicans did not oppose this minimum wage law? No they did oppose it (if you wish check, look at the web site of the Florida Republicans), but the people voted for it anyway.
People do not tend to support deregulation – when they think a regulation will (by magic) give them something they want (higher wages, cheaper medical care, whatever).
And people may vote for lower taxes, but they are not in the habit of voting for less government spending.
Deep down most Americans are not much different from the people in my own country (Britain), they do not care about the traditions of liberty – at least they do not care enough to give up some nice government program they think would benefit them.
Have we yet to understand the lessons of 1936? The Constitution of the United States was never perfectly enforced, but it was only really with F.D.R.’s administration (1933 onwards) that it was treated as a bit of toilet paper, with Welfare State programs, the voiding of private gold contracts, massive regulation…… and all the rest of modern statism.
In 1936 the Republicans put up the moderate Governor of Kansas (Alfred Landon) as their candidate for President and such organizations as the Liberty League, whilst unhappy with Alf Landon’s moderation, supported him as a way of getting the statist monster out of office.
In November 1936 F.D.R. destroyed Landon 60% to 40%. Landon did not even take Kansas (just Maine and Vermont – every other State went for Roosevelt).
Would if be different today? I doubt that someone standing against the basic structure of statism would do any better (although, I admit, a Republican candidate would do better than the 1% or so that libertarians tend to get).
So when we grind our teeth that President Bush (or some other Republican) is not fighting the programs of the New Deal and Great Society we should ask ourselves “and would the people support him if he did fight these programs”?
My guess is that they would not.
You’re probably right. Look at the Health white paper in the UK – it has popular support despite it being a meddler’s charter. I don’t think the US and UK populace are so very different here.
How many times do people say that government shoud “do something” when the real answer is “government should damn well butt out”?
Paul has just discovered that most people are idiots 🙂 Seriously, I don’t think the average voter really cares that much about policy. The only people who know and care about the actual platforms of the parties are the 1% who make up the world of punditry. The rest just vote based on whatever outrageous lies they found most convincing. So to get a libertarian into office we just need a good PR company.
>Amongst our many crimes is… the intermittent use of British spelling.
It’s the thought police here, in the form of D-I Pedant.
The headline should be “too much from the Republicans”, not “to much from the Republicans”. The “Or” should have a comma after it. And I’m not at all sure about the use of that colon.
That’s been the problem facing democratic societies from the beginning. How would you ensure that the majority makes the ‘right’ choice as opposed to the ‘most popular’ choice?
You can’t. The majority of voters don’t understand economics. They don’t understand taxation. They don’t understand the basis of liberty and the ethics involved in a system, let alone the consequences of certain actions. Ask them why laws exist, and many of them won’t be able to articulate the key values that the existence of laws promote. Hell, ask them what their key values are, and they might even have difficulty with that.
A psychologist once estimated that only a small number of people attain what is described as post-conventional morality(Kohlberg’s taxonomy), the last and most advanced stage of morality where their view of the world is guided by an explicit understanding of the principles and processes of the values they support.
Beyond knowing what values an individual supports, the individual must also be aware of how those values might be best promoted. That’s where knowledge about economics, history, politics, and sociology(sorry!), etc come in. The smart leftists/rightists are often capable to identifying the values they want, but they just keep ignoring the methods that best promote thoe values.
The concept of extropy is so attractive for the very reason that it states outright the values it promotes, and then uses a variety of data, historical precedent, and common sense to arrive at a general framework to promote those values. Unfortunately, like libertarianism, probably 95% of the population will never understand it.
TWG
I think this explanation is right, in that the Republicans are usually a disappointment to small government types more because of the need to appeal to voters than owing to any personal lack of belief or will. There is a more optimistic flip-side to this, though, in that when good policies are implemented and they can be seen to have improved things, people usually don’t want them reversed. An obvious example would be the privatisations of the Thatcher years.
I would also warn strongly against the line some are taking above. The attitude that people are too ill-informed and ignorant of their interests to know what’s best for them is an attitude on which ‘statists’ rely day in, day out. The more this becomes accepted, the greater the benefits would be to the Left, not the Right.
It’s sad but true. Political parties are inevitably constrained by the current public “agenda” and a four year (maximum) horizon. The Republicans / Conservatives can’t advocate serious inroads into the state until the voters are ready for it. That is the value of pundits/thinkers/groups like the LA, who can push the agenda in the right direction without having to contend with the millstone of electibility. We politicians are the infantry, Brian M and friends are the pathfinders, the advance reconnisance and the resistance.
That’s too much.
hmm, for people who say that ordinary people do not need the state to make desicions for them (and are by extension not totally stupid), this has been a rather interesting display of contempt for the masses. it seems that many of you are falling into the same trap as the democrats have:- if people arent willing to vote for you, this is your own fault, because you have not been sufficiently persuasive, not the fault of the public for being idiots. i do admit that it is tough for libertarians in a situation where the whole of society seems to be going the other way to us, but it basically makes it even more our job to go out and persuade people even more vigarously. radical change in the way politics is going has happened before (our old friends the bolsheviks in russia went from nothing to government in a little under 30 years). im not advocating forming a vanguard of the proletariat or anything like that, just that it is counterproductive to carp about how people dont like you.
It’s entirely logical that career politicians, both ‘left’ and ‘right’, should support the expansion of state bureaucracies, since it’s much easier to blunder about achieving very little at the taxpayer’s expense than it is to please shareholders or others who demand actual results.
“The attitude that people are too ill-informed and ignorant of their interests to know what’s best for them is an attitude on which ‘statists’ rely day in, day out.” True, only the word “attitude” should be replaced with the word “fact”. The real difference between the statists and those who oppose them is what they make of that fact. Unfortunately, those who oppose big nanny government have to learn to live with a possibility that people, when left to themsleves, will not always make the wisest decisions.
As I have said several times before, the electorate will not knowingly vote for libertarian policy. They never have.
People en masse do NOT behave the way textbook theory (of right and left) says they ought to. This baffles social scientists and even economists, but there it is. People are generally not particularly enlightened, noble, generous or selfless. To a large extent, they are selfish, thuggish, ignorant, lazy and venal, and furthermore they are frequently so in surprising and inventive ways.
Any political philosophy which does not take this into account will fail. Communism ignores it, and fails (if humans were all noble, decent, equitable, hard-working and caring folks then communism would work and capitalism wouldn’t). Libertarianism, to the extent you can actually nail it down for more than 10 seconds to a given viewpoint, seems to ignore it too, and will therefore fail.
Of course, further reasons why libertarianism never gets anywhere electorally are: that it doesn’t have a coherent and unified party platform to which candidates subscribe (can you actually have a political platform of selfish individuals? isn’t it oxymoronic?); that many libertarians are seen as single issue monomaniacs, socially maladjusted loonies or both; that the oft-stated desire to make a profit out of everything conceivable is frankly off-putting to a very large proportion of the electorate; that in the UK anyway libertarians = gun nuts; that contrary to all the stuff here about taxation is theft, people don’t actually mind paying tax in return for equitable public services. These are perceptions, and politics is all about perceptions.
People don’t want anarchy. They don’t seem to have any desire to have to pay directly for everything (in the words of the Russian joke, under communism there was nothing to buy, under capitalism now we have to buy everything). They are selfish, yet they want something or someone to make them a little bit less selfish. They want to be left alone, but want rules to make this happen.
It has been said here before that I have an unflattering and cynical, even contemptuous view of humanity. Maybe so, but it’s accurate – and it explains why people vote Republican for President but also for a minimum wage. For that matter, it explains why other people vote Democrat but oppose abortion or homosexual marriage.
EG
See Sean Gabb’s Annual Reflections on the Quisling Right
And neither do most of the people who are self-described libertarians. In fact most libertaroans think their way will actually result in more order, not less. All you betray is your complete lack of understanding of what you are trying to criticize.
And how does having your money taken under threat by other people make you “less selfish”? Euan, you write a great deal but you are not nearly as clever as you think. If my house is burgled, does that make me less selfish? You are not “cynical”, you are just not very insightful.
People don’t want anarchy.
And neither do most of the people who are self-described libertarians. In fact most libertaroans think their way will actually result in more order, not less.
Anarchy is being used in its technical sense – the Rothbard/Friedman ideal – as opposed to “chaos”.
I think the presumption of this article – that Republicans really are small-government types sadly constrained by the vicious public – is wrong. I don’t think the Republicans are supporters of smaller government, and I think the past 4 years with a Republican Congress, President, and Supreme Court are pretty damning evidence.
– Josh
In my college economics class the professor said that ninty five percent of the American people are economically illiterate.
The problem, as always, is the education system. The goal, for long-term change must be to destroy the state education system or at least privatize most of it so that it becomes more responsible/responsive to the people.
As I have metioned before, I was not educated in the US government schools but by my parents and grandparents at home. I would suggest that education reform is more likely under Republicans because of the animosity between republicans and the NEA.
If the Republicans can crack the education system, then on may see real electoral change. Hopefully any change would include a comprehensive, Hyekian, economics education.
I am aware of the difference between disorder and anarchy, in the sense that the word “anarchy” is normally used on this blog. People don’t want disorder, but I’m quite certain they don’t want anarchy either. Propose it in an election or referendum, and see how far you get. If it gets accepted, I’ll eat any hat you want.
Ask the people who are willing to pay taxes in return for public services. It makes them feel less selfish because they feel they are contributing something to the less fortunate in society. Yes, this could be done by charitable donation, but not everyone would contribute. Many people feel better about it if everyone is compelled to give a little to help others. Basically it’s the feeling of giving to charity but with the added benefit that so is everyone else.
I’m not defending or justifying it, just explaining why it works in answer to your question.
But I notice you haven’t actually answered any of the points I raised…
Personal comments are all very well, but don’t advance understanding. Now, if you explain why you think I’m wrong then we might get somewhere.
EG
This page gives an alternative view of why Republican candidates often disappoint Libertarians once in office.
Interesting. I’ve always suspected a certain political orientation with regards to the Meyer-Briggs temperament scale developed from Jung’s ideas, which Kiersey further classifies(refines?) into simpler terms, but the article does put it well.
As a matter of fact, I’m a rational, with strongly expressed Intuition and Thinking, and slightly expressed Extrovert and Judging. INTJ. Or as the vernacular goes, the Mastermind.
Few years back, I was ENTP, the Inventor. Ouch.
But haven’t there been Repub presidents who’re Rationals? Like Eisenhower?
TWG
The great irony for libertarians is that at the heart of their philosophy they believe that people have the intelligence and sense to deal with their own problems without a need for great oragnization above them forcing them in one unified direction or the other. Indeed, if I understand Hayek’s Information Theory, people can only act in the limited sphere in which they have clear and timely information, but at the larger population level control and even true understanding is impossible. There is no universal top-down organization that can control the collective actions of the population as a whole.
The irony lies in the fact that by voting only on issues that are of immediate concern to them and ignoring both the larger picture and seeming not to care about the contradictions (like one party who favors the death penalty but is against abortion, and vice versa) it is the un-washed masses who are true to libertarian philosophy and the intellectual libertarains trying to solve the world’s problems from the top down who are actually violating its fundamental principles.
Funny how that works out.
Good post. A new study in ‘Liberty’ exposes the mistaken idea that Republicans spend more restrainedly in government than Democrats:
http://www.libertyunbound.com/archive/2004_11/bradford-spending.html
All this and the USA Patriot Act too!
Whether people are idiots or malinformed is really just a label for the fundamental issue that people voluntarily disassociate cause and effect.
The clinical definition of disassociation with cause and effect is superstition (assuming an otherwise rational mind, obviously disassociation many times is due to organic defect). For example, pigeons pecking on a button, or flapping a wing or some other behavior, when it has no bearing on the food pellets dropped (which is controlled by a random firing mechanism). It seems that the vast majority of people (here in the US) truly think there is a cause and effect between their vote and a certain outcome. It’s a fallacy (partially touches on the references to Hayek above).
People always have been superstitious, and to an extent they are welcome to it, the issue is when it is combined with Force and become public policy. Unfortunately, until people can be convinced to set aside their superstitions (not necessarily have them driven from them) and view the world in terms of a factual known, and meld their behaviors to it, and become perfectly disinterested in everything else, it will only continue.
I think we all have a degree of superstition (not everything can be scientifically studied especially in a highly complex society (or even intuitively dissected with a ‘sub-scientific’, yet critical, analysis)) but we need to accept that our fears are mental constructs and we have to live with them instead of unleashing laws and regulations on a scale never seen before in the hopes of slaying them. This is where the pigeon and the button analogy fits, people keep banging on the button because they think it controls the food supply – people invest faith and hope grand institutions (theocratic or quasi-theocratic) in hopes of keeping the boogey-man away. They balm their fears with smoke and mirrors. IMO we are in as dark an age as medieval days.
Even then, as now, there are a few who try to be perfectly rational, but they were few and far between (and they were likely persecuted). There seemed to be a possible break in the timeline with the advent of the Enlightenment and Classical Liberalism, but with mass media and technology, we seem to have not advanced the cause, and actually seem to have back-slid as people gain fragments of information (or a meme) from far flung sources and try and deduce a global behavior model (of course foisted on the mass via Force). It in fact has stimulated collectivism and all it fallaciousness. Meanwhile actual human contact, and one on one behavioral interaction is becoming more and more unnecessary – a bad combination in my opinion.
Problem is, most people like their government. They like their health insurance, roads, schools, and all the rest, too. They don’t love any of them, but they like them enough to look with great skepticism toward anyone who suggests any sorts of steps toward taking them away.
Government is something everyone complains about, but accepts. Economic illiteracy isn’t the heart of the matter, but it’s somewhere close. For libertarians to propose changes that will result in actions, they need to go with rational approaches, not calls for liberty. When it’s “their” favorite government programs, those losing them isn’t always seen as liberty. “Freedom” is a good selling point, but people need to know what’s in it for them.
And the biggest problem selling a cutback in government in the United States is that a cutback in the Federal Government will result in cutbacks to the state governments. When that happens, people don’t like it. Take away Department of Education funding? Sounds great in theory, but when it reaches the local school district it becomes a crisis. The governments are reliant on each other to an unhealthy, almost incestuous, degree. By design.
Two comments:
The idea that communism rewards “noble, decent, hard-working” etc. people, or is even compatible with those virtues is so backwards as to bring tears to my eyes. Marxism failed because it was wrong at its very core—its definition of what humans were and how they were formed.
Whenever one encounters a belief system whose legacy is death on the scale of communism, the reason is NOT that people weren’t good enough for it, as the commenter implies. The reason is that the basic priciples of the system were antithetical to life as human beings, requiring the destruction of any who attempted to actually behave as human beings.
Second, the myth that the ordinary citizen is a fool who doesn’t know anything about important ideas is not only elitist snobbery, but dangerous as well.
It is easy for people obsessed with some aspect of life to fall victim to the erroneous belief that others who do not share their interests are somehow deficient. This is demonstrably false.
If this was a blog devoted to quantum physics, how many of the people now lamenting the ignorance of the rest of the citizenry would be qualified to offer opinions? How about the minutiae of hog farming? Making better oil filters for cars? Aerodynamics? Mixing paint to achieve special colors or effects?
Political blogs draw those for whom politics is important. For most people, whose lives revolve around work, family, and a few hobbies, the arcane writings of some long dead political theorist are not on the top of their list of concerns. They have other things to think about, and would laugh at most of you if you tried to engage in a conversation about one of their specialities which you knew little about.
The emergence of modern collectivist theory in the mid-19th century has permeated political thought for a century and a half. It may take that long to displace it with a more rational, classically liberal set of axioms. I don’t think it will require that much time, but the emotional factor of much of statist theory is hard to judge.
Libertarianism, as a belief system or as a political movement, is much more the victim of its adherents ineptitude than the ignorance of the electorate. The fault lies not in the stars, but….
Well my spelling is terrible (although I do know the to, too rule) and my writing and typing are worse – I often actually leave words out without knowing that I have done it (“if the word exist in my head I must have written it” – that level of stupidity).
As for the Republicans: Well want happened to Governor Benson in New Hampshire should give anyone food for thought.
He really did try and limit government spending – and he got voted out.
I can not make up my mind about the United States, I find my opinions changing from day to day – sometimes hope, sometimes despair.
It is much the same with my view of the Republican party. Just as I am convinced that they are useless I see something like the website of the Tennessee State Republican party and I think a little better of them.
Things are much less complicated in Britain.
This country is a statist dump, and it gets worse every year – which is just what the great majority of people here want.
As for the Conservative party (of which I have been an active member for the last 24 years). Most Conservative members of Parliament are lower than dirt. With their John Kerry for President badges, and their support for “Ken” Clarke (that proud representative of the Belgium empire – E.U.) as the leader of the Conservative party (easy, just deny ordinary members a vote), they are just so horrible that I find it difficult to think about them without going into deep depression.
Still as a last point showing a possible between Britain and the United States. In the United States Ron Paul is a member of Congress, in Britain a man of his opinions would not even be allowed to clear the toilets in the House of Commons.
“Still as a last point showing a possible between Britain and the United States.”
A possible what? Did you leave a word out here?
Then you have misread what I said. I said nothing about it rewarding people like this. I said that IF people in general had all of these attributes THEN Communism would be workable. Indeed, it could only work if the vast majority of people share these attributes. They don’t, so it can’t.
Also, I suspect you confuse the theory of Communism with the practice of the state imperialism of the USSR. The USSR did briefly flirt with trying to put Communist theory into practice – the War Communism from 1918. It was a disaster, for well enough known reasons, and the reversion to regulated capitalism under the New Economic Policy more or less rescued the economy. However, the Party had become nothing more than a self-perpetuating dictatorial oligarchy, and would remain thus until the dissolution of the USSR. This has little to do with the theory of Communism per se, but everything to do with human nature.
Go and read the commenter’s remarks again, then, and you will see that he did not actually imply this. What he states is that Communism fails, not because the people aren’t good enough for it, but because it does not take account of the reality of human nature. This is a different implication altogether.
EG
I didn’t misunderstand what you were saying. You repeated the assertion that communism is tailored to the virtues you listed. That is so bizarrely false as to reveal an impenetrable set of misapprehensions about the way reality operates.
You need a couple weeks at the Pyongyang Towers in order to get a grip on how things really work.
I did not. I could not in any case repeat an assertion that I didn’t make in the first place.
You’re seeing this through the wrong end of the telescope, as it were. It is not that Communism is tailored to these virtues, it is that Communism can be a workable theory when these virtues (and some other factors) are present, but since the mass of people do not generally possess these qualities it is not a generally workable theory.
Communism can work, albeit only on a small scale and only in rather specific circumstances. There is no doubt about this – there are sufficient examples of successful communes, kibbutzim, etc to demonstrate the fact. There are also sufficient examples of unsuccessful communes and societies to show that it will not always work. There are even Communist aspects to marriage – the sacrifice of self to the common good, the common ownership of property, and so on – but that doesn’t mean marriage is a Communist institution.
The theory of Communism is not predicated on the universal existence of these virtues, but the practical success of Communism is. This is why it generally fails on all but the smallest scales.
Communism is not synonymous with the state policy of the USSR (or North Korea), by the way.
EG
Libertarians were HUGE losers in the Bush election, based on three positions: pro-War, pro-Tax Cuts, pro-God.
Most Libs are anti-War (health of the state!), though we have an important case here of communal self-defense. Which I strongly favor, for instance, but the LP came out against. On “social issues”, abortion & gay marriage (& prayer in school & 10 Commandments etc.), I call Bush’s position pro-God. But most Libs are against the gov’t imposing Christian values on others.
So only the pro-Cuts issue is a big Lib issue that Bush pushes. And it IS big, but as noted above, spending booms under the Reps.
Please note tha Libber Hawks: pro-War, pro-Cuts, anti-God are a small group. Leftist Hawks (like Hitchens) are more: pro-War, anti-Cuts, antii-God.
But the big group for Bush is Catholics: anti-War, anti-Cuts, pro-God. Don’t expect much reduced spending from the pro-lifers, per se — though many homeschoolers ARE interested in the ownership society.
And the Reps, or Libbers, need to suggest an alternative way to reduce the problems to be effective. The Bush “ownership society” might, indeed, be a fantastic direction, though only a first step.
It might not. I hope it is.
Any politician will eventually be seduced by the allure of power. Such power comes from dispensing money, public monies. So anyone who believes that politicians will cut spending, thus reducing their power, or their stafffs which depend on the public tit, will suddenly become aware of what ruinous spending will eventually do is in for a major surprise.
Worse, the American political system is corrupted by a taxation system that allows 50% of the population to pay 10% of the government’s levies, while the top 10% pays about 40%. This structurally guarantees that a major number of voters have little interest in reducing anny state policies or even in the effectiveness or efficiency of such programs.
Over 160 billion was spent on this election. Given the size of the government’s budget one should be aware of what is at stake and why the nation is divided. Its all about money. If the US government’s budget was 10% of what it today you can bet elections would be more civilized and the nation less divided.
Any politician will eventually be seduced by the allure of power. Such power comes from dispensing money, public monies. So anyone who believes that politicians will cut spending, thus reducing their power, or their stafffs which depend on the public tit, will suddenly become aware of what ruinous spending will eventually do is in for a major surprise.
Worse, the American political system is corrupted by a taxation system that allows 50% of the population to pay 10% of the government’s levies, while the top 10% pays about 40%. This structurally guarantees that a major number of voters have little interest in reducing anny state policies or even in the effectiveness or efficiency of such programs.
Over 160 billion was spent on this election. Given the size of the government’s budget one should be aware of what is at stake and why the nation is divided. Its all about money. If the US government’s budget was 10% of what it today you can bet elections would be more civilized and the nation less divided.
Yes I did leave a word out (amongst many other mistakes).
I meant to write “a possible difference between and the United States” and then point to Ron Paul being in Congress – whereas someone of his opinions would not be allowed to clean the toilets in the British Parliament.
I am interested that, as far as I have noticed, no one has mentioned the fact that Senator Kerry promised another welfare program – more government financed health care. Indeed he made one of the central features of his campaign.
When we denounce President Bush for the Medicare extention we should rember that the powers-that-be (the media and academia) denouce him for not extending government health care finance to the X million uninsured.
Well I remembered the word “difference” but forgot the word “Britain”.
Are you quite sure you’ve got it all right now, Paul?
Well somehow I fired off one e.mail three times without knowing it – and doubtless I have made other mistakes. But I have to draw a line somewhere.
I do notice that noone has produced any reasons for Craig Benson’s defeat.
If the people really do want to limit government spending why was Governor Benson voted out?