A Closer Look at the Libertarian Party Platform

The Good News

That said, there's an awful lot in the platform of the Libertarian Party that does make sense. Examples include:

• Open (but surveilled) borders, with an end to immigration quotas ;
• Full and robust support of Second Amendment rights ;
• An end to the war on drugs ; and
• An end to all victimless crimes.

During the 18th century, the British parliamentarian Edmund Burke had a very public disagreement with American pamphleteer Thomas Paine. Paine held that natural rights, in principle, were worth a bloody revolution to protect; Burke said that they were not. As it happened, the American Revolution was relatively short and relatively low-casualty so Paine won the argument. But had it been a long-term, high-casualty war, then Paine would be remembered today as a fanatic who had the right philosophical ideas but advocated that they be implemented in a completely senseless way.

I feel similarly about the Libertarian Party platform. Where it succeeds, it succeeds because it looks good on paper; where it fails, it fails because it looks good on paper. It represents a commitment to a perfect small-government ideology, but moral blindness to the human cost that would be involved in shifting over to such a system.

As someone who hopes that one day private corporations will take over the work of government, I am in sympathy with the Libertarian Party's general objectives. But if the concept of civil liberties is to mean anything in the real world, then we need to guarantee that everyone's rights are truly protected, that everyone truly has the opportunity to make the sorts of decisions that the Libertarian Party would protect, and that the basic human rights of the American people to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are not subjugated to a model of government that is excessively small and excessively focused on laissez-faire economics. There are ways to reconcile fiscal and social libertarianism, but the current Libertarian Party platform simply doesn't do the job.