The blogosphere was abuzz last week with discussion about Brink Lindsey’s essay about “liberaltarianism”–the idea of a fusionist alliance between libertarians and liberals, modeled after the conservative-libertarian alliance that brought you Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan. Julian has a good roundup here. And see Ezra Klein, Julian Sanchez, myself, Matt Yglesias, Ramesh Ponuru, Will Wilkinson, and Todd Zywicki.
It seems to me that this blog is in some ways a good example of the potential for left-libertarian solidarity. Much of what we talk about on this blog is at least as congenial to the left as it is to the right. We’ve got Adam attacking the FCC for bowing to the whims of the Parents’ Television Council and criticizing Congress for restricting online gambling. We’ve got Jim Harper attacking the national ID card and mocking elected officials for hysteria over terrorism. We’ve got me criticizing the NSA for its illegal surveillance programs (and blasting the GOP Congress for whitewashing it) and states for using insecure voting machines.
And then there are copyright and patent issues, about which there is a healthy spectrum of opinion here on TLF. But I think it’s worth noting that it’s become fairly common for folks on the left to quote libertarian thinkers in making the case for liberalizing copyright or patent law. Here I discuss a paper by Tim Wu which attempts to apply Hayekian insights to the way that copyright and patent policies shape decision-making by technology firms. Here I discuss Yochai Benkler’s admission that the thesis of his book The Wealth of Networks (the title of which is obviously an homage to the work of a great classical liberal economist) is as much libertarian as liberal. And here is Benkler’s famous paper on peer production that extensively (and favorably) cites libertarian economist Ronald Coase. Folks on the left have clearly found libertarian ideas to be useful in understanding patent and copyright issues. That suggests to me that at the very least, there’s substantial room for common ground on those issues.
Of course, not everything we write about here are things lefties would endorse, with telecom policy and antitrust being conspicuous examples. But I think it’s pretty hard to argue that this blog is more right-wing than left-wing. I bet Adam’s push to have more nudity on broadcast TV offends conservatives at least as much as his advocacy of more liberal media ownership regulations alienates liberals.
The big obstacle to a left-libertarian alliance, I think, is that as an operational matter, we’re a lot better networked with the right than we are with the left. This blog is a good example of that too. By my count, we have at least three bloggers (James Gattuso, Andrew Grossman, and Adam Thierer) who either currently or formerly worked for the conservative Heritage Foundation. As far as I know, no one who contributes to TLF has ever worked for a left-of-center think tank like Brookings or the Center for American Progress. You see the same patterns in political affiliations: at least one of us (Hance Haney) is a former Republican staffer, and I don’t know that any of us have previously worked for Democrats.
Unfortunately, I think there’s a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem here. The fact that there’s so much cross-polinization between the conservative and libertarian movements reinforces the perception that they’re on the same “team.” That, in turn, tends to increase the degree of cross-polinization. If I got a job at Brookings, I would spend a lot of time explaining to my former colleagues that I had not, in fact, gone over to the dark side. In contrast, if I announced I had gotten a job at Heritage–which advocates all manner of anti-libertarian policies on social issues and foreign policy–very few of my libertarian colleagues would bat an eye. And they’re not totally crazy–Heritage is actually a decent place for a libertarian to work, because other libertarians are already valued members of the Heritage team.
In contrast, there seem to be very few left-of-center organizations that welcome libertarians with open arms. I don’t know of any libertarians who’ve gotten jobs at the ACLU, NARAL, or other left-leaning groups that work on issues congenial to libertarians (drug policy is an important exception to this trend). In contrast, there are dozens of conservatarian organizations that welcome both libertarians and conservatives. Indeed, my current employer is one of them, and many of our sister organizations in the State Policy Network are similar. We focus on the sorts of economic issues where libertarians or conservatives agree, and carefully avoid discussing social issues that would divide our libertarian and conservative supporters.
If we libertarians are serious about making left-libertarian ideas a serious force in American politics, I think this is the place to start. We need to build stronger ties between liberal-leaning libertarian organizations and libertarian-leaning liberal ones. And we need to work to create and nurture new left-libertarian organizations that can enjoy the enthusiastic support of both libertarians and liberals, in the same way that my current place of employment is a collaboration between conservatives and libertarians.
I want to highlight EFF as a model of what a left-libertarian organization ought to look like. EFF has carefully avoided tackling issues, such as network neutrality and antitrust, that would divide its lefty supporters from its libertarian ones. As a result, they’ve become an organization that both lefties and libertarians can wholeheartedly support. I think we need to do a better job of welcoming groups like EFF into the libertarian network. And I think we need to start building more organizations like EFF that can serve as bridges between libertarianism and the left-hand side of the political spectrum.
It will take years–perhaps decades–to overcome the skepticism that’s likely to initially greet such a project (from both sides) and to build new organizations that are genuinely ecumenical. But if the alternative is for libertarians to be chained to an increasingly corrupt and illiberal conservative movement, I think it will prove well worth the effort.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.