The Atlantic: Libertarians Can Be a Significant Force for Good in U.S. Politics

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There are a lot of people, including commenters on this site, who laugh at Fox News' absurd characterizations of liberals, yet somehow cling to similarly cartoonish notions of what libertarians are. The danger libertarians pose to America is like the danger that sharks pose to humans: wildly exaggerated by a media that reports on extreme events as if they're typical and reacts to Atlas Shrugged in the same way shark-phobics reacted to Jaws.

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[T]he abject failure of Democrats and Republicans, including politicians enthusiastically supported by [anti-libertarians like NYT's] Krugman, [New York's] Chait, and [The Atlantic's] Frum—as well as the ambivalence people like them display to grave, widespread civil liberties violations, lawbreaking by government officials, and the power of the national-security state—has created an opening for libertarian-leaning independents to make gains with the public

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Actually, 40 years [after the Libertarian Party was formed], a lot has changed! Men are no longer arrested for having gay sex. There hasn't been another military draft. Public-housing projects and price controls were dismantled. Ron Paul literally did change the terms of nationally televised debates. . . Important libertarian victories are happening right now. Consider drug prohibition, which is being challenged in multiple states, as are draconian sentencing rules. Like gay marriage, criminal-justice reform seems poised to sweep the nation within a generation. . . The war on drugs has done as much as any policy in modern U.S. history to erode the Bill of Rights, particularly the 4th Amendment, to squander taxpayer dollars, to militarize the police, and to empower murderous cartels abroad. The reforms we're witnessing constitute significant expansions of liberty.

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If fewer people are caged for inhaling the smoke of a plant, that's a libertarian victory. If fewer people's doors are kicked in late at night by police officers dressed in combat fatigues, that's a libertarian victory. If more cancer patients can legally obtain a substance that alleviates their suffering, that's a libertarian victory. If fewer assets are seized by police without proof of guilt, that's a libertarian victory.

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A commitment to liberty and freedom precludes loyalty to either political party. Both perpetrate awful abuses.

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To defend the principle of due process [as Rand Paul did with his filibuster re: drone strikes] against a president who asserts the power to kill in secret without charges or trial is not to present government as "alien and malign." It is to critique the fallibility of men who inhabit government, not government itself. It is an impulse shared by the framers of the Constitution, not the impulse of an anarchist.

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George W. Bush-style conservatives and Barack Obama-style progressives have both been given opportunities to exercise power. The former launched a catastrophic war of choice that many libertarians opposed. The latter continued egregious abuses of civil liberties, from mass surveillance on Americans to indefinite detention without trial. They've both waged a ruinous war on drugs with no hope of success, made themselves beholden to crony capitalists, persecuted whistleblowers, and presided over civil-rights violations against one of America's most vulnerable minorities, Muslim Americans.

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On issues where libertarians have a somewhat realistic chance of winning over their fellow citizens—reining in the NSA, eliminating the most inane professional licensing laws, insisting on due process in the War on Terrorism, avoiding foolish wars of choice, ending the war on drugs, reducing the prison population and the militarization of the police—a "libertarian moment" would have a salutary effect on American life.

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