There has been a lot of talk on Twitter and blogs recently about "Me Libertarianism" - some good observations from the Storey Institute bog here. This was picked up by Sam Bowman from the Adam Smith Institute, who ran a competition about a hypothetical renaming of libertarianism, the results of which are here under the delightful title of "Making Libertarianism Relevant". Hayek Humanitarian did some excellent work addressing a lot of this here, which I'm not going to try and repeat, but rather to answer the personal question for myself.
As a openly gay, committed libertarian, I am often asked by friends (gay and straight) how I could possibly support libertarians who seem to want to abandon the campaigns for equality and don't care about gays, or about blacks, or about the poor et cetera, et cetera.
I think one of the key things about libertarianism that appeals to me is precisely that it doesn't care - unlike the vast machines of the state which want to file us each in to our own little boxes, were I am "white, 20-something, gay, middle income, university graduate". To a libertarian I am "John" - and I will be judged and treated according to my actions.
It is, as Hayek Humanitarian points out, very easy to falling in to the trap of thinking the state can fix short term inequalities - forcing people to trade with those they may not want to; telling religious organisations that they must close down or go against their faith.
One of the issues I oft debated at the time was that of the couple turned away from a Bed and Breakfast for wanting, as two men, to share a bed. We could all agree on one very important thing - we thought it was outrageous treatment that shouldn't be tolerated. But that's where the similarities end. Most others would say that it simply shouldn't be allowed. When pressed on why, they say because it's wrong. Is it wrong to deny business to someone? I would say never. It might be foolish, as your business may suffer. As was demonstrated by the more recent example of the couple kicked out of the John Snow pub in Soho, the resulting protest closed the pub down for a night - no government intervention required.
The other obvious example is the issue of gay marriage. I personally don't really see what business the state has in deciding who can marry at all; a marriage is a religious ceremony. We now have the state recognising that straight people can have one type of contract, while gay people can have another type. A meaningless distinction between two groups is apparently some form of equality. If a church wants to not let me marry my boyfriend, that's it's choice - religious teachings are clear on this, after all. The state should recognise a contract between two people - be they straight, gay, relatives. Ideally the whole thing shouldn't matter at all as the state would stay out of contracts all together and not interfere with benefits and tax breaks, but that's another matter for another day. I don't want special treatment, I want to be treated the same as everyone else - which is an important and distinct difference.
The flip side is a number of libertarians seem to delight in deriding equality, in a way that can often come across as homophobic, racist and worse. The state of the "flagship" libertarian organisations, the UK Libertarian Party, and the Libertarian Alliance, are full of infighting and guilty of this "me" libertarianism. Though neither is an organisation any libertarian I know is associated with.
So yes, libertarianism does have an image issue. All is not lost though - it was my pleasure to attend the UK Liberty League Freedom Forum a few weeks ago, which was a group of students and young professionals all interested in liberty and freedom. Maybe, along with all the other things our generation will have to fix, the image of libertarianism can clean up a bit too.
The other obvious example is the issue of gay marriage. I personally don't really see what business the state has in deciding who can marry at all; a marriage is a religious ceremony. We now have the state recognising that straight people can have one type of contract, while gay people can have another type. A meaningless distinction between two groups is apparently some form of equality. If a church wants to not let me marry my boyfriend, that's it's choice - religious teachings are clear on this, after all. The state should recognise a contract between two people - be they straight, gay, relatives. Ideally the whole thing shouldn't matter at all as the state would stay out of contracts all together and not interfere with benefits and tax breaks, but that's another matter for another day. I don't want special treatment, I want to be treated the same as everyone else - which is an important and distinct difference.
The flip side is a number of libertarians seem to delight in deriding equality, in a way that can often come across as homophobic, racist and worse. The state of the "flagship" libertarian organisations, the UK Libertarian Party, and the Libertarian Alliance, are full of infighting and guilty of this "me" libertarianism. Though neither is an organisation any libertarian I know is associated with.
So yes, libertarianism does have an image issue. All is not lost though - it was my pleasure to attend the UK Liberty League Freedom Forum a few weeks ago, which was a group of students and young professionals all interested in liberty and freedom. Maybe, along with all the other things our generation will have to fix, the image of libertarianism can clean up a bit too.
