I've had a bit of fun on various libertarian and Objectivist Facebook pages the last few days introducing somewhat unpopular opinions and watching the little piranhas tear at whatever I have to say despite the fact that it's largely in accordance with their views. I've been implicitly called a neocon, a fascist, an irrationalist, an altruist, and a mystic. All in all, it's been good fun.
What I've concluded is that many people have a little fetish of purism, and this is probably why libertarianism and Objectivism aren't very popular. To be frank, a lot of these people are overweight middle-aged jerks who spend their time arguing with teenagers on the Internet without actually accomplishing anything. But there's more than that.
The specific case I'd like to reference is the Libertarians and Rand Paul. Rand Paul got a lot of attention a few weeks back after his 13 hour filibuster. The media, being idiots, sometimes capitalized the 'l' in libertarian, to the consternation of some actual Libertarians. There are a fair number who actively despise him as a socially conservative neocon. Fascist gets thrown around surprisingly much, despite the fact that I think he's actually a conservatarian. (Right-Middle rather than Middle-Bottom on the Nolan Chart.)
My own views aside, I can say with certainty that this purism is not an asset to the Liberty Movement. Both Pauls have done a great deal to increase the popularity of libertarian ideas, such as non-interventionism, abolishing central banking, eliminating crony capitalism in favor of the real thing, and getting the federal government out of the economy. Now there are things that I disagree with both Pauls on, such as marriage freedom and abortion, but they think that those are state issues, and neither of them have served in state government, so really its irrelevant.
In summation, the Pauls are an integral part of the movement to reduce the size and scope of government. Many Libertarians, though, prefer to focus on the fact that the Pauls are social conservatives and that Rand is a proponent of Israeli militarism. While these are legitimate points, they entirely write off huge groups of supporters over relatively minor issues.
What does this mean? In effect, by alienating potential allies, they weaken their movement. These absolutist Libertarians refuse to do business with people that are working towards the same goal, and consequently, neither has the same kind of success that they would have together.
This is highly notable in leftist circles. The Leninists and Trotskyists are an immediate example, but in my own casual research I've been utterly amazed at the number of American socialist parties that have experienced schisms. There are literally dozens of the organizations and in many cases they hate each other over irrelevant or inconsequential differences. It's no wonder socialism never succeed in America: they were too busy biting each other in the back after Eugene V. Debs stopped running that the electorate completely forgot about them.
The same thing is happening today in the libertarians. Libertarianism is a coalition: there are Objectivists, Austians, cosmotarians, left-anarchists, minarchists, anti-corporatists, liberaltarians, anarchocapitalists, neohippies, paleoconservatives, and a dozen other groups involved in the movement. Many of these overlap; many of these have bones to pick with the others. But none of them have anywhere near an elective majority--the entire Liberty Movement doesn't have that. Sniping at each other will only reduce the Party's credibility to the electorate.
If electoral success is the goal, the Libertarians are going to have to accept the fact that they are a coalition party. The platform doesn't take a strong stand on the issues, because it can't. The Libertarians need all the voters they can get to put some cosmotarian like Gary Johnson in office, at which point they can actually go to work.
In short, the Libertarians need to focus on outreach, teaching the ideology. As a near Objectivist (Semi-Objectivist? Objectivoid? Galt, we need a word for that) myself, I think that Rand fans should be an important part of this. Didn't Rand smear libertarians by saying they just used her ideas with the teeth torn out? Aside from the fact that she ignored the possibility of parallel development, Objectivists are just the people to put the teeth in Libertarianism.
To the point, though: we should work together to spread the ideas of Liberty. Rand Paul advocates smaller government which respects our rights, even if he disagrees about the extent of those rights. Someday, the government will be in a situation that Rand Paul likes but we do not, and at that people, we will part ways. But until that day comes, there's no reason not to work together towards common goals.
And that's the critical issue with the Libertarians: they'll always be a coalition party. Small 'l' libertarianism is a broad political class with extreme and significant variations therein. Once the Libertarians have achieved repeated electoral success and begun implementing the generally accepted program, the party will tear itself apart. The Objectivists, Minarchists, and various capitalists will pull away from the the left-anarchists and anti-corporation strong government types, the anarchocapitalists will be trying to eliminate the government entirely, the various hippie-esque folks (usually left-libertarians) may or may not become a significant factor, and the cosmotarians will become the new "moderate" party.
I, myself, am making preparations even now to take advantage of the Objectivist-Minarchist wing post-separation. It's quite another post entirely, but my Capitalist Party of America is developing nicely. The thing about CapPAm, though: we're not running any candidates anytime soon. CapPAm will be strictly a Libertarian Party ally until the Libertarian program begins to take effect, after which we'll start to run our own candidates. In the interim, however, we'll forcefully campaign for capitalist causes--and tell people to vote LP.
That's what we need, people: Alliances. The purist impulse to excommunicate anyone who doesn't agree with you perfectly is electorally harmful. You can't hope to grow support by hating anyone that doesn't agree with you.
In the end, the answer isn't to love the enemy. It's to love those who don't know better--and tell them.
