With midterm elections imminent and a national electorate split almost exactly between Democrats and Republicans, it’s time to acknowledge a basic political reality again. Libertarian candidates cannibalize votes from Republicans. In close elections, this hands victory to Democrats. A notable example would be 2020, when the libertarian candidate for the U.S. Senate in Georgia received 2.3 percent of the vote in the general election. The Republican, David Perdue, needed only 0.3 percent more votes to avoid a runoff, which he lost. That loss handed control of the U.S. Senate to Democrats.
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It may even be the case, notwithstanding the many other corrupting factors at play in 2020, that the libertarian candidate for President, Jo Jorgensen, handed the presidential election to Joe Biden. In three battleground states—Georgia, Arizona, and Wisconsin—the sum of Trump’s votes plus Jorgensen’s votes exceeded 50 percent.
Libertarians often claim they pull votes from Democrat candidates as much as they pull from Republicans. This is ridiculous. The core value of libertarian ideology is small government, whereas the core ideology of Democrats is big government. No matter what else libertarians favor, as they pathetically attempt to find “common ground” with the Left, they will never overcome that fundamental schism.
It is naive for libertarians to think their principles can appeal to anyone on the left. They are being used, and the impact of libertarian influence—not enough to govern, but enough to tip the balance—is felt, unfortunately, not only in critical close elections, but throughout the world of policy.
Libertarian adherence to principled fantasy over practical outcomes helps explain the otherwise paradoxical alliance between the Left and most corporate elites in America. When Democrats advocate a policy where there is libertarian agreement “on principle,” the winners are leftist pressure groups and businesses big enough to withstand a regulatory environment that kills off smaller competitors.
An example of this is how libertarians wield decisive influence on densifying America’s cities through “infill” but are ineffective when it comes to preventing taxpayer-supported subsidies for the new construction or enabling development via urban expansion onto open land. In San Jose, in the heart of Silicon Valley, city zoning now permits the development of up to 16 units of housing on a 9,000-square-foot lot in neighborhoods previously zoned for, and filled up with, single-family homes. Libertarians applaud this as a validation of property rights, and perhaps it is. But meanwhile, the progressives in charge of that city prohibit housing development on any open land outside of an arbitrarily determined “urban service boundary.” As a result, thousands of square miles of foothills and ranches on the perimeter of this crowded city are untouched by development. What about those property rights?
Development in California is so constrained that the state now has the highest urban density of any state in America, nearly 5,000 people per square mile. The urban footprint in California covers only 5 percent of the land, and that’s where 95 percent of the population resides. On the other 95 percent of the land in California, the population density is only 16 people per square mile. Sixteen people. Per square mile. This is a monstrous crime against property rights, but libertarians promote “infill” as a housing solution, tacitly accepting the end result.
If you ask a libertarian if they support developing open land, they’ll agree, but then they will successfully help oppose government-funded infrastructure projects that are a necessary corollary to suburban expansion. They’ll oppose these infrastructure projects “on principle,” but while their opposition offers critical mass to the progressive coalition that stops new freeways from being built, libertarians lack the clout to stop the progressive favorites from getting subsidized, such as light rail and high-speed rail. The libertarian helps stop construction of new dams and desalination plants but lacks the political clout to stop water rationing and mandatory purchases of new “water-conserving” appliances that cost a lot, don’t work very well, and become useless junk in years instead of decades.
This is naïveté. It is living in a fantasy world. Libertarians are being manipulated, and they don’t even know it.
Citing a fantasy level of adherence to civil rights, libertarians successfully oppose laws that might get drug addicts, psychopaths, and vagrants off American streets. But they lack the political clout to dismantle a Homeless Industrial Complex of hideously corrupt NGOs, politically connected developers of “permanent supportive housing,” and bloated government bureaucrats and service workers. Squandering billions to only make the problem worse, this corrupt machine gains legitimacy from libertarian “principles.”
Immigration is another example of how libertarians are being used. In a recent essay on the topic, the libertarian Cato Institute promoted what they call the “market-based position on immigration reform.” They want to throw open the doors to immigrants as long as “we limit welfare and require work.” This, again, is fantasy. It would be interesting to see what, if any, sort of program Cato might recommend to repatriate immigrants who are unemployed or welfare recipients. How does Cato propose to “limit” welfare and “require work”?
Cato also opposes restrictions on countries or cultures of origin that might be considered problematic for continued mass migration to the United States. Does Cato support the concept of assimilation? Is there any criterion that might govern who may live in the United States apart from Cato’s evident economic preferences for immigrants, that is, those who can perform highly skilled jobs or those who will take unskilled jobs? Libertarians support “free movement of peoples” on principle but have no impact whatsoever on the growing welfare state that is a magnet for tens of millions of economic migrants to come to the United States.
Finally, libertarians support “free trade.” What does this even mean? If China subsidizes an entire industry, dumping its production onto world markets, shall that be tolerated in adherence to the principle of free trade? Shall entire industries in America disappear because they can’t compete with Chinese mercantilism? For example, is it desirable that China has become the only source of precision magnets that are vital components in everything from an iPhone to a hypersonic missile? We are in an existential fight with China to determine whose system will govern the world fifty years from now. That’s just a fact. So why do libertarians fail to appreciate that the tariff scuffle with Canada these days is because Canada is importing subsidized Chinese goods, slapping a Canadian label on them, and dumping them in U.S. markets?
This is reality. Not libertarian ideology. Not free-market principles. Reality. To ignore these realities is more than stupid. It’s suicide.
Protecting American tradition is an ideology, too. Prioritizing the interests of American citizens is a principle, too. Libertarian fantasies do not work in the real world. They only empower progressives at home and expansionist empires abroad. To the extent libertarians benefit anyone within these borders, they are multinational corporations, international banks, billionaire investors, government bureaucrats, parasitic “nonprofits,” and progressives who themselves are motivated either by equally out-of-touch ideological fantasies or, just as often, a hatred of this country and everyone in it.
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Libertarians get one big thing right. Limited government. But details matter.