Nicely put. As a liberal who leans libertarian, and who has of late been frustrated with the so-called liberal movement, I have a slightly different diagnosis (or perhaps a diagnosis that builds upon your observations.)

Politics in the US has become a kind of trench warfare, where each side has forgotten what they originally stood for in the tussle over the presidency and congress. This is true for conservatives and for liberals. In order to appeal to the increasingly niche markets of the electorate (where one person feels most strongly about abortion, another about gun rights, a third about the environment), both sides have cobbled together a kind of Frankenstein’s monster of beliefs. So what passes for liberalism or conservatism in the US is nothing more than what is most palatable to that percentage of people who are most likely to vote one into office as a Democrat, or Republican. I realize this is a pretty obvious observation, but it has disfigured both left and right in our country.

Libertarianism as a movement is attempting to go back to first principles and ask how the notion of liberty can be re-applied to a contemporary situation. I think you’d find that most “liberals” agree with this ideal, if it were put to them in the right way. Many of us are frustrated (and frankly, sick) that there isn’t a strong statement of belief, based on ideas of liberty but also equality, that we can gather around.

That said, for most liberals the notion that one person would use their own freedom to abridge the freedom of another person is abhorrent. Because in that situation, someone’s liberty is always being infringed. (This is what racism boils down to: abridging one person’s liberty in favor of another’s.)

Becky above describes this as a “sincere desire to uplift humanity generally.” I’d argue that it’s a sincere desire to preserve the integrity of the individual against more powerful individuals (or corporations.) Libertarianism, for many liberals, implies powerful individuals/corporations having the freedom to exploit weaker people, who would have no recourse.

But this is a luxury, because for most libertarians governance and re-election are not issues that disfigure idealism. I think you would find that many “liberals” have an interest in doing exactly that, too. But they’ve been on the ropes for so long that they’re just thinking about the next punch, not the underlying belief system.

The reason libertarians are better able to work with social conservatives, is that historically and traditionally they do share a commitment to individual liberty. The areas in which social conservatives inconsistently advocate a neo-theocracy are, though troubling, fairly limited and relatively new. But Liberty is a motivating core belief for both. I recall how the liberal press was stunned that the Alliance Defense Fund was actively supporting the “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” kid in the Supreme Court. The reason was they feared if high school administrators could silence smart ass stoners then they would start doing the same to Christian kids.

But, Progressives/liberals are not generally motivated by such overriding commitments to liberty in general. Indeed, it is astounding how progressives spent years railing against George Bush’s general constitutional vandalism and the Patriot Act in particular. But, once the progressives were in power it turned out they only wanted to do a little tinkering with the Patriot Act–it did not deeply disturb liberals to the core–as it did libertarians.

Frankly, libertarians, to their distress, find Barack Obama to be less sensitive to liberty issues than George Bush. Liberals can not even believe that an intelligent person could sincerly feel that way–it simply doesn’t register with them. So, like the president, they assume the opposition is just engaged inmore of the “old partisan politics” (and been bought off or bamboozled by the “special interests”).

So in the end I have to agree with your friend–the netroots and modern liberals do not really care about individual liberty. Libertarians can have political coalitions with the left to a limited extent on certain things– e.g. immigration, gay rights. But they can never really be political allies–because they are motivated by two antagonistic ideas–libertarians above all else value the freedom of the individual. Modern liberals are motivated by a sincere desire to uplift humanity generally and believe this can best be done through a strong central government with an enlightened technocracy–a collectivist idea that libertarians not only reject as false–but makes them sick.

“On balance, the most recent statistical analysis shows zero effect of Prohibition on homicide rates.”

Hmm, I’d like to see that — can you link that study? I’d always seen a big spike in homicide rates from 1920-33, similar to: http://www.druglibrary.org/special/friedman/mf1-03a1.gif

I just randomly searched the above graph (it could be wrong), and obviously correlation doesn’t mean causation, but I’m interested to see your #’s.

Out of curiosity, what is your opinion on drug legalization and the drug war? Radley’s post above says you’re (correct me if wrong) pro-pot legalization, anti-other drug legalization and anti-militaristic drug war. Since I’ll assume you also think we should keep tobacco and alcohol legal (again, correct me if wrong) how do you feel about legalizing the drugs to the left/below of pot/alch/tobac on the following graph: http://tinyurl.com/25jpcjx

If you don’t want to, what features of them do you feel makes them unsuitable for legalization? (or if you disagree with the chart)

I’m certainly a strong liberal, but our colleague on the panel, Jonathan Caulkins of Carnegie Mellon – whose name you’d remember if you bothered to read any of the actual research on drug policy, as he’s one of the country’s handful of leading experts – is an equally strong conservative. Jon and I can collaborate despite our profound disagreements because we’re both willing to defer to facts and analysis even when they lead us to conclusions we that don’t match our prejudices.

Are you really certain you want to support the idea that if something someone chooses to do is unhealthy to themselves only, the government should be able to ban it? Is that really a liberal viewpoint? Do you really not see any possible way that this might be used extensively against certain pillars of liberalism?

You’re explicitly focusing on the features of libertarianism that you find silly, instead of focusing on the far greater number of areas in which you agree. Does your statement about the “perplexing infatuation libertarians have with the so-called rising tide of tyranny” mean that you don’t consider knocking down people’s doors at 3am with blackclad, automatic weapons wielding government agents in order to confiscate ounces of pot doesn’t constitute a form of tyranny we should oppose? I am not going to assume that you do, because I assume that you agree with me that we should.

To take your main point; that climate change should trump all other issues — then take Tim’s advice and look up what Ron Bailey has to say.

It’s this intense disdain for science, public health, and common sense that make libertarians gravitate to conservatives rather than liberals. We live (at least some of us) in the real world where worrying about particular chemicals is better left to experts than a bunch of Homer Simpsons staking their principles of political liberty on nonsense issues.

Whether this world even survives climate catastrophe ought to concentrate our minds a bit more fiercely where the need is. We’re not going to address what really matters unless we free up the discourse from conversation enders like trans fats.

Again, I’m all in favor of taking the gospel of liberty to anyone who will listen, and in this regard, I would point to Murray Rothbard’s period in the late 60 working with the radical antiwar left on the Peace & Freedom party. But, as Radley’s suggesting, I think these alliances will form, if at all, around specific, compelling issues–like opposition to the endless wars of American Empire. Adam Thierer and I practice this already on a small scale, working with left-of-center groups on First Amendment issues. And I’d love to see others do the same, including at events like NetRoots, on issues where such common ground can be found.

But again, I don’t see any grand liberaltarian coalition developing (in the way, say, that European parties end up having to work together to achieve parliamentary majorities) anytime soon. Why? Because the American Left has, for the most part, become so deeply illiberal that it is a gross abuse of language to all them “liberals.” The Left has just had three chances to redeem itself: on Kelo, on recognizing gun rights as civil rights, and on understanding that campaign donations are an exercise of speech and association rights, and each time, the Left has failed. It will be a long time before I forgive the ACLU for abandoning its once solitary position on the Left opposing “campaign finance reform” on First Amendment grounds. I’ve let my membership lapse and don’t plan to renew it anytime soon.

Two final examples of the Left’s illiberalism: The Administration has essentially continued the Bush administration’s neoconservative, Wilsonian delusions about remaking the world through force of arms–the one area where I had most hoped they would advance a truly liberal agenda of peace and non-intervention abroad. Second, the Left has been largely silent in speaking out against the socialist totalitarianism of Hugo Chavez but, even worse, actually defended Zalaya’s attempt to hold onto power forever in Honduras in the model of Chavez. What kind of liberal, or liberaltarian, could see another Chavez being born and defend his ouster when his country’s legislature and Supreme Court united in blocking his attempt to extend his reign?

This litany of grievances may seem eclectic and even disconnected, but these are the things that make it difficult for libertarians to break bread with the Left. I would actually find it easier to get along with a conservative who objects, for example, to the government redefining “marriage” to allow me to marry my domestic partner because I don’t think government should be in that business either. In other words, many of the social issues the Right pushes are policy issues only because the policy issue has been socialized. If government said nothing at all about marriage and did nothing more than grant equal treatment to gay and straight couples for, say, taxes, we wouldn’t need to fight over “gay marriage” any more than we would need to fit over “Mormon marriages” or “Baptist marriages.” To each, his own in his own church/context! If parents could send their children to schools of their choosing (which the illiberal Left opposes), we wouldn’t need to fight over, say, “intelligent design.” In other words, libertarians and conservatives can potentially agree to disagree in what Robert Nozick called a <"utopia of utopias," where each utopianism is free to pursue its own conceptions of justice and the good life. I fear this is far less true of the Left, whose utopianisms are what Nozick called “imperialistic” (those that “countenance[] the forcing of everyone into one pattern of community”), where as the utopianisms of the Right tend to be more “missionary” (those “which hope[] to persuade or convince everyone to live in one particular kind of community”). There are plenty of imperialistic “conservative” utopianisms, of course (think abortion) but I think the Left is generally far more imperialistic. Libertarians, of course, want nothing more than for a framework to exist in which missionary utopianisms can flourish alongside, and compete with, existential utopianisms (“which hope[] that a particular pattern of community will exist (will be viable), though not necessarily universally, so that those who wish to do so may live in accordance with it”).