The Case for Pragmatic Radicalism

Libertarians have long been pushed to the outside of politics. The last dominant period of America first, non interventionism, free markets and government independence gave way to the progressive era at the turn of the 19th century.

It wasn’t until the 1970’s (or really the last 20 years with the increasing dissolution of our media information monopoly) that Americans would begin to recover our founding tradition, redacted from our collective memory.

Early adopters of libertarian ideas began to lose patience, either giving up on the now comparatively radical vision for an attempt at mainstream acceptability with an establishment that loathes us, or nihilistically retreating into accelerationist collapsitarianism that’s less likely to bring about a libertarian order than Bill Weld calling Hillary Clinton a wonderful public servant.

With no meaningful pathway through mainstream politics and unsatiated by impotent assertions of individual sovereignty, many gave up on a principled or workable vision of libertarianism.

Ron Paul expanded millions of peoples horizons and brought a renewed glimmer of hope to electoral politics with his presidential runs 2008 and 2012. Although our failure to maintain the momentum afterwards brought people crashing back down, the campaign taught us and our elites something important.

A mainstream audience is receptive to our ideas. Especially when they hear them framed in a way that is unapologetic to the failed elite, while offering a positive vision of peace and prosperity.

As Ron Paul said, “I firmly believe now that our time is coming. The conditions are such that there is room now for the defense of liberty. The people know that the system we have is not working.”

Libertarians radically underestimate the size of our movement.

Although Ron Paul failed to take over the post Bush era GOP, when polled against Obama in the general he was competitive with Romney. That was 12 years ago, before most people realized inflation was a form of taxation, the Middle East doesn’t hate us for our freedom or that the FDA lies.

The failures of Bush destroyed the previous Republican Party. Obama failed as an agent of change. With the DNC suppressing any legitimate populist candidates, the husk of the GOP became a vacuum for populist sentiment.

This vacuum was filled by none other than Donald J Trump.

The Libertarian Party usually gets 1-3% of the vote. As Trump noticed, that is enough to impact tight elections. But the movement is much larger than 3% of the country, as most libertarians don’t vote for the party.

The GOP and DNC have avoided saying the word libertarian for as long as they could because our ideas are a threat to established interests.

Now that Trump is directly appealing to us as a voting block it has broken the prisoner’s dilemma stalemate, forcing the Democrats to reply in turn as we’ve seen from Tim Walz ‘pitiful attempt to impress libertarians with a Liz Cheney endorsement towards the end of the 2024 election.

The Democrats are too committed to protecting the establishment to effectively adopt the anti system ideology. Therefore most of the libertarian growth will be on the right where there is still some sanctity for our founding principles.

This is made easier by the media which widens our tent by labeling anyone who steps outside of their narrative and anti constitutional regime as being right wing. Whether that’s Joe Rogan, Tim Pool, Tulsi Gabbard or lifelong Democrat and environmental activist RFK Jr.

As I mentioned to the head of Trump’s campaign last November, ‘we need to assert libertarianism as the north star of the right in a similar way as the left elites have done with Marxism.

Instead of activists and technocrats aligned in their shared goals of growing the government, we can have revolutionaries and entrepreneurs teaming up to dismantle the government.

Without the successful implementation of libertarian ideas, populist sentiments will continue to grow. Without the successful alleviation of poverty and creation of hope/opportunity people will turn to increasingly negative forms of reactionary populism.’

We are in the middle of a political re-sorting and the first legitimate counter elite movement towards liberty in over 100 years. Wealthy people like Elon are taking real risks towards these ends.

Libertarians must work to influence and be a part of this counter elite formation, not shy away from coalitions because of an outdated vision of the two major parties as wings of the same bird.

Progressives controlled the Democrats and had Republicans driving the speed limit for decades. They infiltrated the entire culture and every political party including the Libertarian Party. There is no reason we cannot do the same.

Claiming your values can only exist in one party is partisan, not principled…or based on evidence. Libertarians should keep taking over the Republican Party and the Libertarian Party. That will force the minority woke progressive libertarians to infiltrate the dems; the only place they can do some good.

People respect leverage. The Libertarian Party can be a key tool in creating accountability for our ideas and pushing the GOP in a positive direction without being a purely oppositional force. RFK Jr demonstrated this with his campaign, as did Angela McArdle by getting commitments to free Ross Ulbricht and eliminate the Department of Education.

If we push those in power to make better choices, our popularity will increase. People prefer a hero and a fixer to a spoiler and a doomer. Libertarians and RFK coalitioning with Trump has made millions of people open their eyes to our respective and overlapping ideas.

Ideas like health and unconstitutional bureaucracy that had gone dormant for years are now bursting into the public consciousness.

This is how third parties operate in Europe. Securing political wins creates tangible progress for the organization to grow around. The only reason UKIP are replacing the Tories was their coalition efforts to advance Brexit created a tangible win they could build on, and the Tories failed to deliver on the mandate.

When we get politicians to adopt our ideas it creates accountability, if they don’t follow through the failure is framed on our terms.

Ron Paul said, “an idea whose time has come cannot be stopped by any army or any government” and that time is now.

Things happen gradually, then suddenly. It is easy to give up on the gradual part of an exponential curve, but it’s important to keep our eye on the ball so we are ready to seize our opportunity when the landscape is fertile for a counter movement.

It is a false dichotomy that we have to give up our principles in order to make incremental progress. We need our principles to guide our actions or we will drift off course.

The issue is the former pragmatists were looking for love in all the wrong places; watering down their message to the point that it became unconvincing apologetics for the regime.

Other libertarians fail to adopt governing responsibility. They prefer to act as counter productive chaos agents who tear down the existing hierarchy without fostering voluntary alternatives.

If you tell people we must abolish the system at once because taxation is theft, they will be forced to rationalize taxation as a moral necessity for self preservation. The key is to establish our values as an ideal destination, so abolishing taxation is seen as a positive moral end, while offering a tangible path towards progress – not shame and crush people under the weight of an impossible, moral quandary by demanding the immediate dissolution of the state.

It is not enough to abolish the state. Voluntary hierarchy can only be fostered by creating off ramps that reduce built up dependencies on the current system. Abolishing a coercive hierarchy without providing any alternatives only leads to further tyranny, or slaves wandering in the desert.

We cannot continue shouting at the sky; libertarians must learn to adopt governing responsibility in order for our ideas to be represented.

If you truly believe the government is coercive, the most principled action would be to reduce our dependence on the institution. Libertarians must coalition, influence, and be a part of some of the biggest wins in reversing progressive era managerial bureaucracy and exposing the deep state.

If we do not, our only relevance will be as a historical footnote of people who correctly predicted the future others eventually brought about, after a lot more pain and suffering than we need to experience.