Libertarians seem to have something of a branding problem. Many people confuse libertarianism with libertinism. The first is a political philosophy that insists on strong justification for any government intervention in our lives. The second is a lifestyle characterized by a total lack of self-control and indulgence of all pleasures. It's easy for someone who isn't thinking very clearly to slip from one to the other. That is, casual observers assume libertarians want drugs and prostitution to be legal because they assume we want to indulge these vices. A well crafted argument in favor of drug legalization can be simply derailed by some moron saying, "Huh huh, you sure do love drugs." (Literally, my first experience with the term "libertarians" was someone saying, "They're like insane Republicans who love drugs!")
Sometimes libertarians play along with this. It's usually humorous, done as an intentional joke. I do it, to. When someone makes a joke at the expense of libertarians, my response is usually, "I laughed so hard, I accidentally blew the rock out of my crack pipe and it scared the hooker!" (Sometimes followed up with, "She dropped the copy of Atlas Shrugged she was holding, which I was paying her to read to me.") There is a Facebook page I follow called Jo Jorgensen's Dank Meme Stash. Many of the posts there have the following theme: some impressive looking piece of military hardware (like a tank-copter) and a caption that says "Daddy Joe and Donald won't let me have one? Can I have one, Mama Jo Jo?" Occasionally this manages to still be funny. But I'm afraid it plays into people's dumb stereotypes about libertarianism.
There's basically zero chance of uniting libertarians around a brand (we are a fractious bunch), but serious libertarians in the public eye should at least be trying. We need to counter the perception that we think everyone should do whatever they want all the time. There certainly are some libertarians who just don't like following rules, any rules, no matter who promulgates them. This is "libertarianism as a cultural attitude." "Fuck it, I'll do what I want." This is distinct from "libertarianism as a political philosophy." The latter deals solely with what the government should be doing and is mostly silent on what kinds of private institutions people can (or should) form. Libertarianism as a political philosophy says you can form very restrictive, exclusive institutions, perhaps specifically designed to inhibit and constrain your behavior. A neighborhood association restricts who can leave their giant boat or camper parked on the goddamn street (also when they can park their giant obstruction to traffic and visibility), to the benefit of all. A church might place restrictions on your personal behavior, even when you're not attending church. It is a way for like-minded people to congregate, and perhaps a way for people to discipline their own behavior, a pre-commitment device. A martial arts school, like the one that I attend, actually allows us to relax rules that normally apply to people in polite society: I get to assault someone, who is simultaneously trying to assault me. But only under very specific rules and conditions. I do not get to assault those very same people if I see them on the street. A company employs workers and watches them work to monitor their productivity. Workers tolerate this because they wouldn't bother to be productive if nobody were monitoring them. (Under such "zero monitoring" conditions, everyone would slack, and there would be no revenue out of which to pay the workers. An implicit understanding of this dynamic underlies the worker-employer relationship.) People will voluntarily join institutions that discipline their behavior, and libertarianism is a philosophy that says we should have the broadest possible freedom to explore these institutional forms. It's not "Fuck it, I'll do whatever I want." It's more like, "I can form a strict religious commune that harshly disciplines its members and expels the non-compliant ones, and the government shouldn't be allowed to stop me."
In terms of government policy, libertarians are practically the only ones calling for a disciplined vetting of public policy. Laws that limit our personal choices, such as laws against drugs, prostitution, and (at one point) homosexuality, are often called "paternalistic". I think this is a misnomer, because it implies a wise parent setting restrictions on a child's behavior. No, the psychology of "paternalists" is more like the scolding of a sibling by a slightly older sibling. When my 9-year-old scolds my 6-year-old, or when my 6-year-old enforces rules against my 4-year-old, it is not out of altruistic concern for the younger sibling's well-being. I remember being a kid. I remember how awesome it feels to be "morally superior" to someone. Some people carry this attitude into adulthood, and it ends up infecting their politics. It takes real self-control to restrain the urge to "fix" someone else's dumb decisions. It's the paternalists, not the libertarians, who are indulging a childish impulse. I liken it to someone who lacks the self-control to resist scratching a mosquito bite. There are right-wing puritans, who don't want you to have the kind of drugs or sex you want. There are also left-wing puritans, who would not allow you to make your own decisions regarding pharmaceutical consumption or labor contracts. (It is interesting that both tribes agree that we shouldn't have free choice with respect to pharmacology or association. They only differ slightly on the details.) They are indulging in the childish scolding that a 6-year-old dishes out to a 4-year-old. We should call them out using this language and not let them get away with thinking they are the "adult in the room."
Libertarians are also the only ones calling for any kind of fiscal restraint. Neither party is serious about cutting the size of government, or even about paying or bills for the stuff the government buys. The stereotype is that Republicans run up massive deficits by cutting (or failing to increase) taxes, while Democrats create the need for higher taxes with massive spending programs. All this spending is hidden from the taxpayer. It is financed with borrowing rather than tax increases, which would more quickly alert the citizenship to the real cost of government. On top of that, the true burden of taxation is hidden from the taxpayer via tax withholding. It would be more honest to present the taxpayer with the full bill once a year. ("Tax return" is such a disgusting euphemism for this childish deception.) Governments also love to use pensions and other long-term liabilities to obfuscate the true level of spending from taxpayers. (A pension plan might use an out-of-date life table that overstates mortality, thus understating total liabilities. Or it might make an overly generous assumption about the discount rate, discounting at the market's average rate of return rather than the risk free rate. Obligations like these are eventually owed by the taxpayer, but they are foisted upon them with subterfuge and fraudulent accounting.) The libertarian take on all of this is that we should be much more honest about what we're spending. There should be almost no debt financing, unless it's a true emergency. The taxpayers should be confronted with the true cost of government. Government employees should be given real pay increases, funded by current tax increases, so the public has a chance to say, "No, it's not worth it." It takes real adult-grade discipline to say:
If I had my druthers, I would love to re-shape the world to match my grand designs. But alas, that would be unduly costly. We'll just have to live with the imperfect world we were given.
Or:
I think we should spend public money on Program X, because in my own estimation it passes a cost-benefit test. But if taxpayers saw the true cost reflected in their current taxes, they would balk. We need to rule with the consent of the governed, not trick them into doing what we think is best for them. Program X should be scrapped.
Self-discipline means not doing some of the things that you would like to do because of prudent consideration of the costs and consequences. I see almost no sign of this kind of restraint on the current American political stage. The right wing has been taken over by reactionary nationalists. They want to remold the nation to match their vision of "greatness." This is after decades of a right wing populated by "nation builders", who imagined they could re-shape the world with the surgical application of military force. (Much like a child playing with his toy soldiers, not at all like the "mature-adult-in-the-room" image that many chest-thumping militants wish to project.) The left wing has its own unconstrained vision of reality. They imagine they can simply dissolve and re-constitute long standing institutions, as if the application of sheer reason and good intentions would bend reality to their whims. Libertarians should be out in front pointing out the childishness of this naïve utopianism. We're not bong-smoking hippies doing whatever the fuck we want whenever the fuck we want to. We're actually the suit-and-tie-wearing-adult-in-the-room pointing out that we are already living beyond our means. The candy being promised by Uncle Joe has to be paid for, and we are already in serious debt. And contra Uncle Donald, we do have to pay for all the stuff we buy, even if he won't be here when the bills come due. Everything has a cost. Mama Jo Jo needs to be the voice of restraint on an undisciplined political stage. Other libertarians need to put on their serious face once in a while and swat away the ridiculous sneer that we're a bunch of self-indulgent libertines. Sometimes that means reminding other libertarians that they are in fact bound by certain rules, and would be so bound under any just system of government. (Including a system of no government; you are still bound by the rules of private institutions in such a world.) Once in a while, Mama Jojo needs to say,
No, you can't have a tank-copter, because it would make your property uninsurable. It would make you uninsurable! The sheer scale of the liability create by private ownership of military-grade firepower makes it cost-prohibitive, government or no government, 2nd Amendment or no 2nd Amendment.
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I wanted to say something about mask-wearing, more specifically the resistance to it, but it didn't quite fit into the flow of the post above. There is nothing libertarian about being mask non-compliant. If a private residence or business has a rule that insists on mask-wearing, you should agree to their rules prior to entering. Respect for private property is a very libertarian idea, at a basic level. Mask non-compliance may seem "libertarian" in a crude "fuck-it-I'll-do-what-I-want" sense, but by this standard so is theft. Protesting a government mandate to wear masks is a very different story.
I also wanted to say something about religious practices and codes of behavior. Do the most successful cults and communes say "Come on in and do whatever the fuck you like!"? No, they impose some sort of discipline on their members, based on a set of shared values. Some of this is instrumental, like control of one's alcohol consumption for the sake of healthy community life. But some of it is arbitrary. It's discipline for the sake of discipline, which is ultimately for the sake of community building. Physically or emotionally punishing ordeals create a shared experience, which binds community members together. (Two books I've recently read, Influence by Cialdini and The Mystery of the Kibbutz by Abramitzky, have long passages about the importance of initiation rites.) Not that anyone is trying to set up a libertarian commune, and we're too fractious a bunch to form much of a cult. But clearly "Join us and you can do whatever you want" is not a compelling message. It's not going to draw people in.
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