I was watching an Ayn Rand biographer on Reason.tv discuss how she regarded conservatives and libertarians. Conservatives alienated her when they said they wanted nothing to do with her atheistic views and her elevation on selfishness. Likewise, Rand alienated libertarians because she regarded them as anarchists with no direction.
The problem is that all three of these groups need to work together. All three have a common enemy that is currently defeating all of us and leading us down a road to tyranny. That enemy is the Statists, who have thus far perverted the United States Constitution and bent the rules to suit their own needs. To them, our lives, liberty, and property are quaint little attributes to be taken at their whim.
The trouble with such an alliance is that all three sides have very different views on several key things and none are willing to work with the other in order to achieve them.
The libertarians, for example, tend to hold a lot of seemingly socially liberal stances on issues like gay marriage, drugs, prostitution, and abortion. Now, not all libertarians agree uniformly on these issues, but that really doesn’t matter in the long run. These kinds of things drive conservatives nuts, because for many of them, they would rather be run by some tyrannical oligarchy that has outlawed abortion rather then suffer under freedom with the option of abortion. Likewise, drugs are considered to be some social ill that must be vanquished, forgetting that drug cartels are largely caused by anti-drug laws.
When it comes to Objectists, they tend to have a very rigid system of morality that counters the conventional morality that conservatives have and dismisses the lack of morality the libertarians tend to have. As such, they have alienated their potential allies because they would rather see people ruled by selfishness and reason than what they regard as superstition. Unfortunately, they are their own worst enemy in my opinion because to love and embrace freedom means that some people will continue to worship whatever god they desire.
The conservatives, by far the largest group of the three, tend to also have a very rigid moral system that is rooted in Judeo-Christian ethics. They often try to push for policies that enforce these morals and thus tend to alienate those who would normally ally with them to defeat the efforts of the Statists. I’m not saying that they shouldn’t take these moral stances or abandon their moral code (the same goes for the Objectivists), but that they need to re-prioritize their goals.
In essence, if an alliance were forged between all these groups, I think the cause for limited government would grow much stronger than it is now. If we could focus on cutting down the size and scope of the Federal government in the United States (not just tax cuts, but real spending cuts and the elimination of several useless Federal programs), then I think we would see a reversal of tyranny.
Instead we see the conservatives being constantly tricked into voting for a Statist because he or she is pro-life, the libertarians either voting for the Libertarian or Constitution Party, and the Objectivists not really making much of a political impact at all these days.
I am not saying that your moral stances aren’t important. Just that the fight for free markets, for capitalism, and for smaller government is much more important. Who cares about morality when it is about to imposed on us by an oligarchy based in DC?
Sadly, I am not the one to pull off such an alliance nor do I see any side willing to come to the table and call a cease fire to all hostilities. Instead I see lots of bickering and squabbling over social issues and morality while the Statists continue to run over our rights with a steamroller.
This will probably continue on as it has for the past six decades or so because none the respective sides can really seem to get past that. And that is why the principles of freedom are losing in the United States. No one can really seem to unit to oppose tyranny. Our house is divided and so we will fall.
When history books are published a thousand years from now, I wonder if they will look at us and wonder why we didn’t bother ally ourselves for the common cause of defeating Statism. Of course, they may be doctored by the tyrants who will inevitably rule the future, given the way things are going now.