Principles should guide you, not chain you.

     My point is simple. Sometimes to get to the end of a desired path, you have to walk the entire length of the road. You can’t always skip right to the end. It’s a simple enough metaphor that many of the so-called “deep thinkers” within the liberty movement don’t seem to understand, and often ignore when you bring it up to them. Many Libertarians will go the insult route immediately if you dare to question the order of events necessary to get to the desired end state. Many of us were convinced of liberty when we read a book or listened to some videos and podcasts and had no good counter argument for many of the ideas. In fact once you consider liberty as the ultimate law, natural law, then it is easy to become just as much a zealot as AOC is with her chosen ideology. I try very hard to reject this approach. 

     Dave Smith has been killing it lately, bringing more and more people into the fold. He is very zealous with his belief in liberty, but what he doesn’t do is let his principles blind him to the truth created by externalities. The open borders wing of the Libertarian Party rarely stops to consider that without some other changes first, opening the borders is/could be/will be a detriment to many on the American side of the border. It doesn’t mean he doesn’t want open borders, it just means he’s living in reality. A reality too many Anarchists don’t live in. The government isn’t gone, we aren’t really free, the market and workforce are highly regulated, so why would we skip those steps and go straight to open borders? There are many tangible negatives that are obvious to anyone paying attention so long as we are extorted by the state to fund “the commons”. Failing to recognize this will only fail to serve our purpose, which is to spread the ideas of Liberty. 

     Another issue is abortion. This obviously splits the party down the middle because there are practical issues, and philosophical issues, and those who are zealots on either side of the argument are unable to understand how this fight also hurts the idea of spreading liberty. I can’t tell you how many libertarians celebrated using the force of government in Texas when the new abortion law was passed, but didn’t read one inch past the headlines. If you want more information on how I feel about this, read my blog here.

     Libertarians have been failing to grow the party with any real results, until Dave Smith came along. He isn’t some infallible angel or God child, he is just a man. A man that was put in the right place at the right time and thinks deeply about his decisions, strategy, and ideas. I obviously disagree with him on IP rights, as I have written about here, but I also very much agree with him that it’s not a government issue, but a moral one. No one should be thrown in a cage for copying a song or a piece of art. They should be sued though. The moment you begin to try to have that conversation the Mises and Rothbard libertarians can’t hear any point you make because they have already made up their mind that IP is bad, and any discussion on it makes you a bad person. This is destroying the movement’s ability to be seen as a substantive, cohesive ideology and not just an army of basement dwelling, hentai loving, incel wife-beater wearing mental midgets.

     In closing, my final thoughts are this: You can’t bake the pie filling before putting the crust down. Let’s not keep screeching about issues that are ideologically pure without paying attention to those whom it will cause detriment. Keep banging the "I'm right, you're wrong" drum to your own peril. Me, I'd rather build coalitions. I would rather be surrounded with people that have the 90% solution and know how to move left and right to avoid obstacles than pushing ahead in a purely straight line having to climb those walls instead of going around them. Michael Malice once said wisely on a podcast “I am not in favor of tearing down fences until I understand why they were put there, and what is behind them”. It makes sense if you zoom out for one minute and quit autistically screeching ideas you read, but didn’t put the mental work into understanding.

In Liberty