Originally published in the Libertarian Party of Pennsylvania's March 2018 Newsletter. Disclosure: the author is the publication's sole editor. https://lppa.org/index.php/home-alt/newsletters/march-2018/249-why-principle-matters-by-sean-brown
Right now it seems the Libertarian Party is largely divided between two factions: the pragmatists and the principled.
They don’t call themselves that, really, but I think those descriptions are apt.
On one hand you have the pragmatists claiming that the Libertarian Party needs to loosen up a little, relax its obsession with the almighty “principle”, and try to win as many people over as possible to win elections as soon as possible. On the other you have the principled, claiming that the Libertarian Party needs to rigidly stick to principle, no matter the cost.
But this presents a false dichotomy between principle and pragmatism.
Why not both?
I argue that being principled in the right way is actually the most pragmatic approach of all.
It all comes down to presentation. Presentation is everything.
The principles of the Libertarian Party are fairly basic, but because it presents such a radical shift in worldview from the (rather blurry and ill-defined) norm, it can be tough getting people to listen to it. There are several ways you could present this worldview to people, and some are going to be more successful than others.
For example:
Person A: “The Libertarian Party believes that you have the right to own yourself, own your labor, and own property derived thereof. Initiating force against another person is wrong because it violates self-ownership.”
Person B: “The Libertarian Party places the highest importance on ensuring that you, as an individual, get to live your life your own way, provided you don’t prevent anyone else from doing the same. And the government doesn’t get a free pass on that.”
Which do you think will have more success in converting people to the message of liberty?
Neither is necessarily “more principled” than the other. But I’m sure you’ll agree, that Person B is going to be far more successful at attracting voters. Person A is speaking far too formally, as though they are reading straight out of some Rothbard treatise or something. Far too much deep philosophy has been compressed into twenty seconds for the average voter to handle. On the other hand, Person B is speaking like a real person, and is distilling the message down to its most appealing parts without sacrificing its integrity.
I know that we, as committed libertarians, totally and completely understand Person A, and may even personally prefer Person A’s presentation because it’s more clearly defined and more intellectually rigorous. But it is a horrible messaging strategy.
I subscribe totally and completely to the argument that if we sacrifice principle for electoral success, we have not actually won. We must win as actual libertarians, not as Libertarians-in-name-only. But sticking to principle isn’t worth having to put a walking, talking philosophy textbook on television.
Then again, again notice that Person B still stuck to principle, despite fielding a more appealing message. They didn’t start talking vaguely about “liberty” or “freedom”, terms which can be easily abused and twisted to mean whatever you want them to mean. They didn’t digress into talking about the Constitution, which is really not the fundamental basis for this party and is also an easy platform for the Republicans to steal. They didn’t start prioritizing the easy left-wing vote-winner of weed legalization, or the easy right-wing vote-winner of gun rights.
They stuck to the essence of self-ownership as their primary message, because they wanted the public to know exactly what they stood for. They were proud of their principles and didn’t try to hide it. They didn’t dress it up in a costume to mask its true identity. They didn’t tell half-truths about it to make it sound less radical. They just said it in a digestible, palatable way that wouldn’t immediately shut voters’ brains off.
No matter how appealing, an unprincipled message will also get us nowhere fast. Although we may achieve short-term electoral success, we would be compromising the long-term ideological integrity of the party by doing so. I absolutely do not subscribe to the view that we can succeed by allowing only libertarian-ish or libertarian-leaning people to participate in this organization. Vote for us, yes. Donate to our campaigns, yes. Even volunteer for our campaigns, yes. But have voting power in the organization? No.
The Libertarian Party is founded on strong philosophical ideas, not specific policies. Its purpose is getting to a definite destination, not merely setting a general direction -- the only internal disagreement ought to be on how little government we can actually get away with and still achieve the moral, peaceful, and free society we all want. We must improve how we market these basic ideas to the public. Whether it is through making moral and ethical arguments, or by thoroughly educating ourselves on the Austrian school of economics so we can intellectually debunk popular economic fantasies and myths, we must be able to bring the party’s core principles to the public in an appealing way without compromising their integrity.
Why is using an unprincipled approach going to destroy us?
Because it will mean that every single electoral success we earn will have been built on a house of cards: a tangle of cunning reinterpretation, half-truths, sleight of hand, and possibly even outright lies. We won’t have won because the public actually embraced libertarianism. We’ll have won because we conned the public into voting for a party that did not actually represent them.
People will join the party en masse believing we stand for the diluted version of our platform we presented to them in the previous election. If this occurs one too many times, an accidental “hostile takeover” could easily occur. Worse, it would be a self-inflicted takeover, not one initiated by one of the Big Two Parties that got scared we were going to throw an election. It would doom the party to irrelevance as “the purple party”: halfway between red and blue.
That is not who we are. That is not who we are meant to be. We are meant to represent a total paradigm shift in politics, not simply a middle-of-the-road compromise.
Parties which try to go down the middle seldom make it far. Both the Democrats and the Republicans emerged from the relative fringes over 150 years ago as starkly unique, ideologically motivated movements. The Libertarian Party cannot emerge down the middle.
If we successfully manage to legitimately and honestly sway public opinion in our favor, electoral success will happen automatically, with very little effort.
If we are standing on a house of cards -- made up of the undecideds, the independents, the token “freedom” advocates who will turn their backs on it the moment it would allow something they don’t personally like -- we cannot endure.
Principle is certainly important. In fact, it’s incredibly crucial to the ideological and operational integrity of the party. But we don’t have to make the tough choice between being principled and winning elections. Principle, if done right, is actually the most pragmatic approach by far, and in the long view, it will bring us the most success.