Curmudgeons No More

Do you have to throw away your Good Samaritan duties when you become a Libertarian? Ron Coleman, busting out some of his Greatest Hits of 2008, says that the libertarian perception of selfishness is what keeps him away.

There is something worse than your own wasted potential which, after all, can take tremendous efforts to overcome. It is standing by watching someone else spin his wheels, and you can, with very little effort, help him out of the ditch. Your friend’s beast collapses under its burden? Surely you will help him raise it. This a moral obligation.

That I believe this, of course, is the reason I am not a libertarian, or anything like it.

My initial response was to leap to the defense of my fellow Libertarians but, you know, he’s right. Lost in the Norquistian “Leave Us Alone” sentiment at the core of the libertarian mindset is the very real fact that we do have a duty to those around us, if we expect our civilized, free society to continue. We have a well-earned reputation for being the neighborhood cranks, the guys who do little but carp and complain about everything that’s wrong with the country without much getting our hands dirty trying to fix anything. Ron Paul’s campaign harnessed a lot of political energy, but it was all negative energy. There was no positive message at all to Paul’s campaign and Libertarians seemed to really like it that way.

But we can’t be like that and expect to be any sort of force for reform. Americans are sick and tired of hearing negatives, even if the negatives are true and appropriate. The truth of the matter is that we do have a duty to help whenever we are able, in the best way we can find. And the libertarian message ought to be that the duty belongs to us and that it is wrong to pawn that duty off on the government. We know that the government can never deliver as much help, as efficiently, or as directly as we can ourselves. But we have to make sure that we also stress that when we push the government back, we can and will fill the vacuum ourselves. We can not be ambiguous about that. If we reliably deliver the message that the job of looking after our neighbors is ours and mean it, folks like Ron Coleman would be on our side in a heartbeat.

Other Posts of Interest:

• Why are Libertarians Leaving the Republican Party? Because of Disingenuous Libertarians Like Ryan Sager
• Congratulations, Barack Obama
• We Need the Government Sanction of Marriage

Tags: America, Libertarians

Category: Featured, The Rise of the Nanny State, The Social Issues