Rand Paul’s campaign collapses:
The libertarian moment in American politics—foretold just last year in the New York Times magazine—is like the horizon; always retreating as we advance upon it.
The political events of 2015 are a brutal reminder about how far this country is from embracing libertarianism and how alien those ideas are even to the purported shock troops of the freedom movement. While libertarianism’s opponents can take heart, its champions are setting their cause back by pretending that all is well.
The collapse of the Rand Paul campaign speaks volumes. In a 15-person field, Paul is the only candidate who looks even remotely libertarian (social tolerance, foreign policy restraint, and limited government). He started the campaign with decent name recognition, a seat in the United States Senate, lavish media attention, a serious will to win, and a battle-tested, national political operation inherited from his father, Ron.
If there were any significant support for Libertarian ideas in the GOP—any at all—Rand Paul would be near the top of an otherwise crowded, fragmented field that is fighting over every non-libertarian voter in the party.
Yet he’s polling at a mere 1 percent among Republican voters nationwide and has a higher unfavorability rating than anyone else in the GOP race
If politics was intellectual and logical, surely libertarianism would be what everyone could agree on. Lets all leave each other alone. But politics isn’t logical. These are reproductive strategies. They are burned in as deeply as any instinct.
In areas where humans are densely packed and resources are overabundant, you get the conflict and competition-averse r-selected reproductive strategy of liberalism. Where humans are densely packed enough to routinely encounter other humans, but resources are scarce, you get the competitive K-selected strategy of conservatism. Where humans adopt an r or K-strategy they seek to use government to make the world around them either r or K, so the world they live in will be congruent with what they are designed to encounter.
Libertarianism is what you see in animals like Grizzly Bears that are so spread out they rarely encounter others of their species. For that reason, it will only emerge in humans rarely, and most often where they are spread out away from each other like Alaska or the western states.
All the logic and reason in the world will not make K-strategists and r-strategists ignore their instincts. Compromise is impossible.
Understanding where politics comes from is invaluable to strategizing. Rand wasn’t perfect, but he might have done better recognizing the facts of r/K, and downplaying his libertarianism in favor of appealing to K-strategists by emphasizing where he would agree with them.
Until r/K takes over the field of political science, everyone is just guessing.
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Paul’s problem is that he sold out to the NeoCons. If he had continued to put America’s interests first, instead of bowing down to Israel he would be in Trump’s spot.
Could be, but if you look historically, libertarians who run as libertarians never do that well, either in the general or the primary. It is only libertarians who run as social conservatives who win, like Reagan.
Rhetoric is not the same as principles. Ronald Reagan was always a social conservative, never a libertarian. So i fail to see the point you’re trying to make here.
I considered myself rather libertarian when I was younger. But in recent years I’ve become far less socially tolerant. I think it started when radical gay-rights activists started harassing innocent Chick-Fil-A employees regarding the money the company was donating to anti gay-marriage causes, and threatening a boycott. Then it backfired, and all the normal people organized a counter-boycott which resulted in the most profitable day in the company’s history. I remember reading an objectivist blogger fret about how horrible this all was, and that all these people would make it so that it would be harder in the future for young gays to come out of the closet.
At the time I didn’t want to help anti-gay activism so I (quietly) didn’t go to chick-fil-a for a while. But I didn’t see the counter-boycotters as bad people; they were just pissed off about the bullying tactics of radical gay activists, which was understandable. We just needed to check the behavior of the out-of-control radicals and leave things to the more reasonable people.
Unfortunately, I’ve come to realize that most people aren’t reasonable. If you had told me five years ago that the SJWs fighting for gay marriage would be normalizing trans-sexuals and pedophilia, I would have laughed at you. Now I am just surprised they aren’t already pushing for normalization of bestiality. I simply couldn’t conceive at the time that these SJWs would go so far.
This is tangentially related, and I’m curious how you see it fitting the r/K theory.
Explain early European colonization of America. Early English, so 1600 onward as r/K theory. Here is where I’m stumped. Europe of 1600 had reached capacity on resources given the tech base. The North American continent seemed like a place of easy resources (rabbits welcome). Only most of the people of England in 1600 should have been wolves. If rabbit/dogs* were the ones to settle initially, the settlers had to become wolves shortly after arrival -less than about a year – as they were foolish and ended up in scarcity situations (see Plymouth 1620 or Jamestown 1607).
Since the Libertarians are claiming These United States were founded by those who were proto Libertarians, Could you address the period of the American Revolution in and how r/K theory relates.
I see these as two possible blog posts, or one longer reply. One last point, I don’t see one thing as solely responsible. Rather I see that many factors drive events, and I’m curious how you see r/K theory contributing to the events I’ve listed.
*dogs is my short hand for those who are genetically wolves, but live in a rabbit culture, like now, or have not had their amygdala sufficiently stimulated to be wolf yet. Basically a domesticated wolf.
I don’t think europe reached any limit as far as resources were concerned. people just didn’t have any opportunity or hope of escaping the lot they were born into.
basically they weren’t free or had the means to become free in the system of the time ..serfdom.
You had a previous post where you hypothesized libertarian strategies might come from hyper inbreeding, do you know of that link and the evidence for it? One of the things I really like about your post is that 1) it explains why libertarians seem to have more common ground with conservatives despite in theory being neutral toward the left and right (e.g. the Nolan chart implies you can have a lot of freedom while being neutral, not liberal or conservative). And 2) a friend of mine who is a hardcore libertarian living in Wyoming recommended to me a movie called “Grizzly Man”. 🙂
I am not clear on inbreeding being a cause of Libertarianism. You might be thinking of HBDChick whose brilliant HBDblog does a lot of research on inbreeding and out-breeding. The idea she examines often is the theory that inbreeding built up a desire to promote the interests of family members, and the church’s imposition of out-breeding by banning cousin marriage caused that benevolence to extend more towards outsiders, allowing broader alliances to form extending past family bounds.
That said neanderthals did show evidence of in-breeding, likely because they existed in small spread out groups in glacial Europe that didn’t intermingle often, perhaps due to reduced population densities spreading them out. But I see that as a consequence more than a cause.
I think you will find many libertarians had childhoods spent away from other kids, where they didn’t adapt to exist in a social structure, and where they got accustomed to doing whatever they wanted without anyone else interfering. For that reason I think it will be more common in rural areas than in cities.
In some ways it is often conditioning, but it exists because it worked in nature.
I think you might be right on the childhood aspect on Libertarians, I would like to add that many of the more famous Libertarians came from Conservative side. Also many of the main points in the Libertarian philosophy have came from traditional Conservatives and Classical Liberals thought and values. Not to mention many of the idea also comes from the Western European, American and Christian thoughts, traditions and values.
The main leader in the Libertarian camp were once or still stay in the right wing party’s such as Ron Paul, Murray Rothbard, Ayn Rand, Lysander Spooner. I myself was on the right for the longest time until I read books such as Meltdown by Tom Woods (Also a former Conservative) and A Century of War by John V Denson and listening to people such as Stefan Molyneux, the Mises Institute and Lew Rockwell. Maybe it was my childhood that made the information more attractive.
I have to say that the philosophy side of Libertarianism and the economic arguments of the Austrians economist only appeal to the K selected people. This is since the philosophy it is about limiting government involvement or riding it all together and letting the clips fall where they are. The economic side (especially in the Austrians economy theory) is only attractive to the K due to the real fear of the consequences of bad government policies in the economy and making it more likely to causes problems in the future such as the National debate, Depressions and Hyperinflation. The Left likes the ideas of the anti War and anti Drug war but many do not get that the philosophy and think it is about acceptation of their life style choices. It is not, discrimination is ok in Liberty and not wanting to hang out with people is ok. Many also don’t get that Libertarians want to limit government in their lives, that includes Welfare.
Leftist that call themselves Libertarians are the real problem.
The philosophy does not say that we would get rid of property rights in the absence of government or that we would not discriminate but Leftist in the movement want that to be the final conclusion.
That the biggest arguments going on in the Liberty movement is open borders. The philosophy comes down to property rights in that the owner has the right to decide who they want to discriminate. Leftist don’t like people discriminating and want to open borders with no concern of the impact.
This is causing a spit in the Liberty movement which I think is good.
The other thing I feel I must point out is that Libertarians want to rid of things such drug war in part for the force aspect. Many in the Liberty movement do not like drugs and don’t used themselves but to them it is little different that forcing or banning things they don’t like or product that may know have a negative outcomes for people such as juke food or alcohol is not up to them.
This is not to say that a person can then have the right to take as much drugs or other things with no consequence (in a Libertarian world you have to live with the consequences of your actions) but it is so that people in society have the freedom to workout how best to live their own lives, to deal with problems and problem people.
How do problems get solve well for example telling someone to leave your house is not aggressive force and if they don’t leave you have the right to use force or get someone else to use force for you to make them leave (such as police, security …ect). Not paying for another person or persons habit, life style or their treatment is not aggressive force. In Libertarian philosophy if a person wishes to help then they have the right to help but they can not be force to and can not force others to help. If someone life goes down due to bad life style choices then they become an example to others (especially the young) on what can happen if they make similar choices in life (ie become fat due to eating too much bad food and drinking a lot). Same with people who do well are an example to others on what they could achieve.
The anti war part of the Liberty is not anti defense but anti aggressive force. Wasting lives of mostly young men, resources and money into a war that we should not be in is part of the problem that Libertarians have. Some of the other problems is the unknown result of such wars. This might be for examples losing the war and having it come to the homeland, it could be backlash by the world community, a larger government and a debt for the future generations. Defensive war is alright and paying for defense is also ok. It should be fourth to finish as soon as possible (since long wars risk losing more lives and wasting more resources) and the threat be either eliminated or neutralize.
I hope this was helpful and not a waste of your time. I love your work, have a nice day.
Thank you. Having strong libertarian instincts, I agree with it all.
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Why r for liberals and K for cons? Urban sophisticate liberals have fewer kids, social conservatives tend to have more kids, no? Or is r describing reproductively prolific wards of the state vs K for self sufficient families?
Oh duh, you have a whole book about it. Sorry, I’m new here.
There are other good reasons too.
1) Winning elections takes resources. Being the winner gets you resources (by directing spending, making laws with differential benefits, etc.). A strategy that says “If you give me resources to try to win, I will give you/your group some resources later” will always beat a strategy that says “give me resources now and I will not use my winning to benefit anyone except the general populace”.
2) Political views are partially genetic; and libertarian views are a minority in our gene pool. Whether this is an evolved equilibrium or not, at a minimum it is the case now.
In general think it’s important to separate the aspirational aspects of libertarianism (“freedom is good”) from the efficiency aspects (“there are strong general arguments that regulation usually causes economic harm”) from the public choice aspects (“state power is almost exclusively used to benefit concentrated interest groups at the expense of dispersed ones”) from the activist aspects: “So let’s elect a libertarian!”
The aspirational is important but not the sole dominant factor libertarians think; the efficiency aspects are largely correct, the public choice aspects are largely correct, and the activist aspect is utter futility (partly because of the public choice aspect). Unfortunately the utter lack of any practical prescription renders the other observations largely useless; it doesn’t matter if we know why government sucks and drags on the economy if we have no idea how, in the real world, given public choice, to fix it.
The same is largely true of neoreactionaries, but at least they make the dynamics and culture of political power an important study area rather than pretending it doesn’t exist, so they have a chance at actually finding a realistic strategy to achieve their desired society.
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[…] simply, the real problem with libertarians is that there are so few of them out there. Yet, in hopes of gaining ground for themselves or their causes, they have carelessly allowed the […]
[…] simply, the real problem with libertarians is that there are so few of them out there. Yet, in hopes of gaining ground for themselves or their causes, they have carelessly allowed the […]