It's because no one else really cares about issues that don't affect them personally.
Our old friend and occasional sparring partner The Delaware Libertarian has decided to endorse a Libertarian candidate for Congress despite the issues they disagree upon:
When I first mentioned Eric Schansberg, Libertarian candidate for Congress in Indiana's 9th Congressional District, I didn't feel like I could give him a whole-hearted endorsement (and, damn it, I can't find the post right now to link to) because he is socially considerably more conservative than I am.
Yet I really found myself wanting to like him, even if we differ on abortion rights or (I suspect) gay marriage.
After all, we're both academics (he's an economist; I'm a historian), both built our families in part through adoption, and both share a commitment to civility in political campaigning (although I suspect I'd be a bit more in-your-face than he is).
But it has been the experience of reading Eric's personal blog that has convinced me that I unconditionally support his bid for a seat in Congress, even if I'm a pro-abortion rights Catholic (don't tell the bishop) and Eric is an anti-abortion rights Evangelical.
Because Eric is a thinking man who takes both his commitment to Christianity and Libertarianism quite seriously.
I read Schansberg's personal blog- as if, somehow, he can compartmentalize his thinking between what he believes as a citizen and what he peddles to the public on his congressional blog. He's a mainstream homophobe. Not a right-wing nutjob like Fred Phelps or Tony Perkins or Gary Bauer or Pat Buchanan. Just the sort who throws up gay rights as a straw man argument to knock down in the course of his larger theme- that God intends the United States of America to be a white, Christian nation in which you get extra points for adopting the occasional black child.
If one of the Schansberg boys sits Mom and Congressman down one day in the future and says, "I'm gay," we can imagine what the reaction will be from the member of the Core Leadership Team for the Men’s Ministry at Southeast Christian Church in Louisville- and it won't be a Libertarian response.
Schansberg Libertarians are just a greedier version of everyday Libertarians. The everyday variety preach a vague sort of live and let live doctrine; the Schansbergers- like Dr. Paul- want maximum liberty for themselves. As for everyone else, the devil take the hindmost. If you weren't landed gentry who could write yourself into the Constitution in 1787, well fuck all.
Desperate to get back up to one percent of the vote in the presidential elections, the Libertarian Party- aided by a right-wing numbers runner from Las Vegas- hocked their presidential nomination to a Georgia cracker transplant who's white, male, patriarchal, homophobic and not in any manner a Libertarian. The Libertarian Party ran ads against his congressional campaign in 2002. The Delaware Libertarian rightly notes that neither he nor the LP HQ give a tinker's damn about down- ticket races. Neither, it appears, do some of its down ticket candidates give a tinker's damn about Libertarianism, except as it appears to be a Schansbergian construct malleable enough to embrace just about any point of view that wants to run under the banner- in other words, to be just like the other big parties.
The Libertarians are at a crossroads: they need to decide if they want to be a party that truly values individual freedom, or a party that peddles itself to the highest bidder for a chunk of the Republican Party nut vote.
Gay rights is the Libertarian canary in the mineshaft. Without a serious commitment to that, they're just a fringe-y interstate rest stop for voters who find the GOP pick too soft on hard issues. In that world, anybody who polls credible numbers is someone to be treated seriously. Thus the evangelical Dr. Schansberg.
Were he alive today, Thomas Paine might well brand as summer soldiers and sunshine patriots those for whom support of gay rights is a luxury item- something to think about when it costs you nothing- a bauble to show off in the right circles.
Which is why there are annoying gay rights activists in the world. When your rights as an American are whittled away every two years by ballot measures peddled by one party and timorously resisted by the other, a third party saying, "Come to us, we'll treat you as crappy as the other two parties do, just with more ringing declarations of what we don't believe" rings pretty hollowly.
We look out for our own.
Schansberg Libertarians are just a greedier version of everyday Libertarians. The everyday variety preach a vague sort of live and let live doctrine; the Schansbergers- like Dr. Paul- want maximum liberty for themselves. As for everyone else, the devil take the hindmost. If you weren't landed gentry who could write yourself into the Constitution in 1787, well fuck all.
Desperate to get back up to one percent of the vote in the presidential elections, the Libertarian Party- aided by a right-wing numbers runner from Las Vegas- hocked their presidential nomination to a Georgia cracker transplant who's white, male, patriarchal, homophobic and not in any manner a Libertarian. The Libertarian Party ran ads against his congressional campaign in 2002. The Delaware Libertarian rightly notes that neither he nor the LP HQ give a tinker's damn about down- ticket races. Neither, it appears, do some of its down ticket candidates give a tinker's damn about Libertarianism, except as it appears to be a Schansbergian construct malleable enough to embrace just about any point of view that wants to run under the banner- in other words, to be just like the other big parties.
The Libertarians are at a crossroads: they need to decide if they want to be a party that truly values individual freedom, or a party that peddles itself to the highest bidder for a chunk of the Republican Party nut vote.
Gay rights is the Libertarian canary in the mineshaft. Without a serious commitment to that, they're just a fringe-y interstate rest stop for voters who find the GOP pick too soft on hard issues. In that world, anybody who polls credible numbers is someone to be treated seriously. Thus the evangelical Dr. Schansberg.
Were he alive today, Thomas Paine might well brand as summer soldiers and sunshine patriots those for whom support of gay rights is a luxury item- something to think about when it costs you nothing- a bauble to show off in the right circles.
Which is why there are annoying gay rights activists in the world. When your rights as an American are whittled away every two years by ballot measures peddled by one party and timorously resisted by the other, a third party saying, "Come to us, we'll treat you as crappy as the other two parties do, just with more ringing declarations of what we don't believe" rings pretty hollowly.
We look out for our own.
Because Libertarians support individual rights, not special rights that most Gays endorse. Affirmative action for minorities and gays/lesbians, is nothing less than reverse discrimination. Until Gays accept truly equal rights, instead of more rights than other Americans have, than Libertarians won't be much interested in reaching out to them.
ReplyDeleteWaldo,
ReplyDeleteNone of us can compartmentalize our thinking in that way. The vital question, however, is the extent to which all of us compartmentalize what we (dis)approve of-- and what we bring into law.
I'm not sure how a states-rights approach to civil unions-- and recognizing a state's right to do what it wants-- can be seen as incompatible with Libertarianism.
If you spend much time on my campaign website and my blog, you'll see that my overarching emphasis is on defending the rights of others, rather than extending my personal freedoms. In fact, I have argued at length that Libs have not emphasized the former nearly enough. (At least for secular Libs, this is not particularly surprising, but that's a topic for a different day.)
If it matters, we have two "black kids". I'm not sure how many extra points that gets us, but I'm glad to hear about another blessing of transracial adoption. (I think I read about getting extra points in an email from a Nigerian prince.) In any case, it was odd-- and probably ironic-- to see you describing my family in that way.
I suppose one could "imagine" what would happen if one of my sons tells me "he's gay". But I'm not sure why that's a constructive exercise. If you're curious-- and if I had to reduce it to a nutshell-- I'd rely on the two key principles in John 8:3-11.
Grace and peace to you...eric