"then I’m a libertarian in the sense of the term dominant in contemporary public discourse"

God bless Will Wilkinson for wading into the " Who's A Libertarian?" nonsense. At least he's readable. Nevertheless, and maybe it's age, he spends a hellish amount of time on this issue, as well as on the meaning of the word "coerce". I was thinking of doing an Austinian analysis of "coerce", but didn't last more than five minutes. It's more interesting than who's a libertarian, which is uninteresting to the point of being a soporific. Some people seem to think it's like a brand, say "Coca-Cola" or "Tide", and you can be sued for copyright or trademark infringement, or whatever the hell it is.

Anyway, I think that I agree with Wilkinson, but we have very different ways of expressing our views. I use negative and positive liberty, and, if it interests you, go read Berlin's "Two Concepts Of Liberty", from where I derive these concepts. If not, fine.

"Why don’t I get 100% on economic issues? Because, like noted socialists Milton Friedman and F.A. Hayek, I support a redistributive safety net.

One might be a WSPQ-libertarian for many, many different reasons. I happen to think principled constraints on government power are extremely important for the very same reasons I think rooting out sexism and racism are important: because people need to be free."

I agree here.

Anyway, here's Austin:

"there is no simple and handy appendage of a word called "the meaning of the word (x)"

Definitions of words are messy affairs, and, if you are going to examine them, it's best to come prepared with a decent armory of conceptual and analytical weapons.

"I just took the “World’s Smallest Political Quiz.” It says I am a… libertarian!"

To hell with the quiz. Do you think I'm Raymond Smullyan or Martin Gardner for God's sake?

"We have a presumption against government regulation, which can be rebutted by showing long-term social improvements"

Richard Epstein on Forbes about Jacob Weisberg on Slate. I actually posted on Slate about this, and received a few ludicrous comments. I have to admit that I took Weisberg to be indulging in a bit of over the top polemic, and my response was meant to be a little humorous and over the top as well. Others, a lot of other libertarians, have responded to Weisberg, taking him to be completely serious. Anyway, I like this quote from Epstein:

"Limited-government libertarians like me are not anarchists. We have a presumption against government regulation, which can be rebutted by showing long-term social improvements. We know not only about the virtues of competitive markets, but of the challenges posed by asymmetrical information, public goods, prisoner's dilemmas and market cascades.

Accordingly, we recognize that the specter of bank runs, illiquidity and credit freezes might justify some regulation. In dealing with the current crisis, we have to accept some role for the Federal Reserve as a lender of last resort under our current institutional arrangements. But we are equally adamant that bad regulation can wreck credit markets. And we insist that governments must mend their lending habits to reduce the odds of credit trains going off the rails yet again. We also strenuously oppose using the credit crisis as a lever for introducing all sorts of senseless gimmicks to disrupt labor and product markets."

I tend to agree with this statement, and my main arguments with Epstein would be about those long-term social improvements and how to get there.

On this, I totally agree:

"Alas, the financial rot started in the underlying home-mortgage market, with the government decision to subsidize home mortgages generally through low interest rates, and compounds the problem by offering special Fannie and Freddie guarantees at the low end of the market.

These foolish decisions prompted market actors to react just as libertarians fear: to profit privately from public foolishness. Savvy lenders looked less to the creditworthiness of their borrowers and more to unwise government guarantees that insulated them from risk. A high-risk loan of $1,000, without that guarantee, could be worth half that sum before the ink was dry. But who cares, if a government agency will pick up the slack?"

It's good to have his agreement on this.

Whither Libertarianism?

ka1gu1a on Freedom Democrats with a provocative post:

With all due respect to Lane, now is the time for libertarians to actually be picking up their manifestos, not putting them down. Low-tax liberalism now is about as much a pipe dream in the US as it would be in one party states such as China or historically, in Mussolini's fascist, corporatist Italy. I'm sorry, libertarianism is not about providing the swing vote for which party gets to select the puppet masters from the same pool of ruling class overlords.

Here's my comment:

You've written an interesting and provocative post. I disagree, but want to raise just one point here. The market's reaction after the Lehman refusal showed that the markets and investors were expecting a bailout. In other words, there was an implicit government guarantee to intervene in a crisis such as this. In this instance, to try and go against the expectations of the market would be very hard and complicated. On the other hand, going forward, it will be clear that this implicit guarantee, which will now be explicit, was partly responsible for this crisis. I believe that this will come to be widely understood. Contrary to what you are saying, the moral hazards of this arrangement are more widely understood and accepted, and will finally have to be addressed.

Why Would Libertarians Engage Libertarian Democrats?

Libertarian Democrats are not libertarians. One issue that divides us is having a social net of services for the poor in our country provided by the government. This would include health care, retirement, and some kind of guaranteed wage or benefits. This means that libertarian Democrats support a kind of national health care, social security, and welfare for the truly needy or incapacitated.

Another disagreement would concern the notion of positive liberty, an idea most libertarians reject.

What will bind the two groups with be a large number of issues where there is basic agreement, and a commitment to liberty as a core principle to be considered in every issue dealt with. Hence, libertarian Democrats will engage in a continuing debate and discussion with organizations like Cato, Reason, and Liberty magazine.

Of course, libertarian Democrats are Democrats, and will often compromise in order to further the general interests of the party.

It seems to me that this is enough to justify a trial attempt at piecing together a more or less unified and separate category called the libertarian Democrat. It can help influence the Democratic party on real issues important to libertarians, and help Democrats gain allies where there before had been avoidance or indifference.