Jeremy Lott has a brief essay entitled, Quiet Libertarian Victories, about how the last year has proved libertarians right about their core principles, and some successes effecting change toward more liberty. Lott observes that
The last several years have not been easy for libertarians to stomach. The U.S. government, which had bloated under President George W. Bush and a Republican Congress – the annual budget had climbed from $2 to $3 trillion under Bush and that didn’t count much off-budget military spending – has grown even more under President Barack Obama and his Democrats.
The U.S. now has nationalized industries, out-of-control deficits, and a looming entitlement crunch to deal with. And that’s before we factor in Obama’s calls for even more stimulus and new programs. America, the joke goes, doesn’t have the change to afford hope any more. So why are so many libertarians smiling?
It’s not merely a matter of I-told-you-so. They have real cause to be happy. At the same time as government has grown so much, there have been several quiet libertarian victories that expand American freedoms and that may work to put the brakes on more government intrusions in the future. Those victories were engineered or assisted by libertarians who have decided to press their case not just in the political arena but through the courts.
Lott lists victories for more liberty, more speech, and a freer society: the U.S. Supreme Court Decisions in Heller (recognizing the right of American citizens to keep and bear arms), Citizens United (finding unconstitutional many federal restrictions on political speech), and challenges to cap and trade and for the medicinal use of marijuana. Some of these victories have been — for a while will continue to be — controversial.
They’ll prove popular and enduring, though; Americans are a people receptive to the message of individual liberty, limited government, free markets, and peace.
There’s not the slightest doubt in my mind that local efforts to regulate more are destined for failure and disappointment. These efforts produce more work than they’re worth, and compel our local political class to conceal or exaggerate the ill consequences of these schemes. Given the choice between speaking clearly and maturely against half-baked projects, or sitting around fabricating silly and absurd lies about supposed local triumphs, I very much prefer the former.
Only months ago, at a public meeting in Whitewater, a commission member declared being tired of too much talk of supply and demand. Too funny, really — someone tired of the voluntary exchange in the marketplace between people acting for cooperative, mutual benefit. There was a brief moment, at the end of the last federal administration, and the beginning of the current one, when it seemed to libertarians that America had chosen against free and productive exchange. Those who felt that way were unnecessarily pessimistic: Americans have always returned to the unparalleled prosperity that free markets offer.
So they have returned, to that fair and sound arrangement.
In Whitewater, there’s seldom been serious advocacy of market solutions. There are those who favor regulation generally, those who favor regulation to benefit their friends, and those bureaucrats who pretend they understand private activity while using public money and public debt to finance their schemes. When Whitewater leaders wonder why they’re at a competitive disadvantage as against neighboring towns, they need only look to
their own restrictive, meddling, and unproductive influence.
America, though, has embraced — and embraces yet again — a better way.