It’s Not Racist to Hate Government: Nick Gillespie on the Libertarian Agenda

Faced with sinking approval ratings for
President Obama and a looming blowout in midterm elections,
Democrats and progressives are now trying to smear proponents of
limited goverment as racist.

When it comes to libertarians, that gambit isn’t just desperate
but totally wrong, writes Nick Gillespie.

The fixations of small “l” libertarians include ending the drug
war, mandatory minimum sentence and other prison reforms, and
pushing a maximalist version of school choice, all of which would
directly benefit minorities more than non-minorities. Libertarian
public-interest law firms such as the Institute for
Justicespend much of their time fighting occupational licensing
laws that disproportionately stymie inner-city entrepreneurs who
have little to no political or economic capital. IJ’s first case,
dating back to 1991, attacked Washington, D.C.’s absurd laws
against African hair-braiding without expensive and
irrelevant cosmetology licenses.

Similarly, there’s no way to confuse libertarian obsessions with
Fourth Amendment rights, ending stop-and-frisk policies, and
reversing “the rise of warrior cops” with anything
related to white supremacy. The same goes for the libertarian
insistence against an interventionist foreign policy, whether
through boots on the ground or via drone strikes and bombing runs.
As with any group, there are differences, but libertarians have
long been in the forefront of pushing for legalized abortion and
gay marriage. (Reason magazine, like the Libertarian
Party, was calling for the legalization of same-sex marriage in the
early 1970s, when the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of
Mental Disorders still considered homosexuality a form of
mental illness that should be “cured.”)

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