On Hardball this week, Chris Matthews addressed the appeal of libertarianism. He speaks favorably of it, but not in the way he might of say, a leg thrilling democrat candidate, but more in the way of someone looking back fondly on the time when they believed in Santa Claus or that summer when he was convinced he was growing a real life beard at the tender age of 30. Favorably, yes, but with a condescending “isn’t that cute” pat on the head.
“Let me live my life in freedom” is one of the sentiments Matthews is snickering at as a childish notion. Wonder how the Founding Fathers would feel about that?
“The problem came when we realized government is not only necessary but good,” Matthews opines. He then goes through a series of liberal talking points greatest hits before arriving at what we assume is his point. “We put away the things of the child, the charming libertarianism that grabs us in our youth.”
Small “l” libertarianism is, as Matthews points out, as American as apple pie. Or it once was. And he notes that it is nice to have charming and childish candidates like Rand Paul around to remind us of our youthful conceits. Implicit in his acknowledgement, of course, is that no serious adult would ever seriously consider a libertarian or Libertarian politician to be a serious prospect for serious office. Because seriously, you guys. Silliness and child’s things and stickers.
I agree that being libertarian is something that must be tempered with judgment, and I agree that with age and experience come subtle changes in one’s point of view about just about everything. But Matthews doesn’t argue the fine and mild point of temperance. Instead, he looks down his nose from Solomon’s throne and chuckles. And by the way whille there, the democrat decisions from that perch would have no trouble with the mother wishing to keep her baby. He realizes that government can avoid the child-splitting conundrum by simply preventing the birth in the first place, or at the very least having the child raised by a village after the fact.
There is certainly something to be said for weighing the libertarian impulse innate in the American spirit against the needs of the many. But unlike Chris, I don’t look at it as an adolescent folly to be remembered but rejected. And I certainly don’t think that a reasonable criticism of libertarianism should start with the idea that living life “in freedom” is the part that should be chuckled at. He’s not arguing for being circumspect, he’s mocking the very idea of rejecting big brother. While pretending to fondly remember it, he’s actually trashing all the very deepest core principles of the libertarian ideal so integral to American history.
But then, it’s not really a fond critique of the excesses of the libertarian philosophy that Matthews is actually undertaking here. He’s simply propagandizing against a philosophy that is anathema to his democrat allies. It’s Alinksy all over again. “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.”
And that, I dare say, is what’s childish.