Posted August 5, 2002
On the face of it, the answer is simple: Of course libertarianism is extremist!
Why else, in a society dedicated to centrist compromise, are libertarian ideas marginalized? And why, when a libertarian notion is adopted, do the politicians carefully avoid the label along with most of its related ideas?
Perhaps you can enumerate many alternative reasons. But, no matter how long your list, the charge remains easy to prove. Look at the infamous Nolan
chart of political opinion:
This chart expands the usual one-dimensional representation of "left vs. right." Instead of an unimaginative graph with communism at left and fascism at right — and with liberals
and conservatives
positioning as close to the center as possible — this two-dimensional chart registers political opinion on issues of government interference in markets (y-axis) and government interference in personal affairs and non-market relations (x-axis).
Looked at this way, left and right may still make some sense. But the central, focal perspective becomes freedom vs. coercive control. And on this pole, libertarians are at one extreme, totalitarians at the other.
Still, numerous libertarians fondly trot out this little exercise at fair booths and meetings of the Rotary. Not surprisingly, more than a few of their interlocutors remain unimpressed. Yes, you may have shown that the pat political designations of left and right fail miserably to grasp the complete range of political ideology. But libertarian ideas remain outré, extreme — and thus dismissible.
Libertarians must face an obvious fact: most people wisely shun extremism. Your average American might not be thinking of Aristotle when she mentions the ancient wisdom of moderation, but she has good grounds to reject an extreme. Extremism goes against the grain of most paths to success. For most people most of the time, moderation between extremes is the path of virtue, and virtue the surest source of happiness.
If this were all the story, I would side with everyday opinion and counsel a wholesale rejection of libertarian ideas. But this is not the whole of the story.
The Nolan chart maps political opinion as it relates a particular institution, the State, to a category of action, initiatory coercion. It does not map the relations of person to person. But it is this latter perspective that is most relevant to everyday life and to the demonstrable utility of moderation.
The libertarian rule prohibiting the initiation of force
is not an extreme position, but an ideal compromise. It is the the happy medium. Liberty marks the point of balance. Free persons are neither predator nor prey, parasite nor host, criminal nor victim. Free persons do not lurch to either extreme. Instead of being anti-social or oppressed, free people may cooperate for mutual advantage to the extent they see an advantage. They may choose the most permanent of social hubs for their associations or engage in a loose series of transient transactions. But whatever particular route to happiness they may try, the balance is still struck by that moderating principle, liberty.
So, viewed this way, libertarianism is not an extremism but the soul of moderation.
This suggests to me that those who strive to promote freedom had best encourage this individualistic perspective, not the traditional institutional one. They must:
Liberty strikes the balance that best enables people to come into their own, peacefully interact at work and play, and prosper.
If I were in the promotion business, perhaps I'd say something like this:
Between you and me, it is the advocates of the meddlesome state who are the extremists! I prefer to strike a reasonable balance among people. What could be more extremist than fighting forever to draw and redraw unequal boundaries between man and man, and, at the same time, aggrandize an institution, the state, at our grievous expense?
But whatever rhetoric the libertarian uses, it must strike a chord among people of moderate temper. It must avoid the taint of fanatic extremism. As Eric Hoffer pointed out, though fanatics of all stripes may seem at opposite poles,
fanatics are actually crowded at one end. It is the fanatic and the moderate who are at opposite ends and never meet.
Ah, libertarians: You may have moderation and virtue — and the most reasonable hope for peace and prosperity — on your side. But to most people (and maybe even in your own eyes) you remain nothing better than extremists.
Your primary task? Prove otherwise.
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