New York Times Magazine: “Has the ‘Libertarian Moment’ Finally Arrived?”

The New York Times
Magazine has just published a
6,600-word exploration of, essentially, whether, Nick Gillespie
is right when he says “The
libertarian moment is now.” Writer Robert Draper, author of the
terrific 1991 book
Rolling Stone Magazine: An Uncensored History, and more
recently
When the Tea Party Came to Town, takes an entertaining
tour through various antechambers of the libertarian movement, from
Reason’s gin-swilling D.C. headquarters, through the Free
State Project’s anarchic PorcFest, to the offices of Rep. Justin
Amash (R-Michigan) and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky), in search of
ever-elusive answers about what these libertarians want, how/if
they plan to use two-party system to get there, and whether 2016
will be the presidential cycle when the burgeoning libertarianism
of the millennial generation will produce a political
realignment.

You’ll come for the Kennedy Ron Paul/Nirvana quote, stay for the
Nick Gillespie/Lou Reed comparison, savor David Frum’s delicious
contempt, and be left rooting for a clarifying Rand Paul/Hillary
Clinton showdown.

Here’s how the piece begins:

“Let’s say Ron Paul is Nirvana,” said Kennedy,
the television personality and former MTV host, by way of
explaining the sort of politician who excites libertarians like
herself. “Like, the coolest, most amazing thing to come along in
years, and the songs are nebulous but somehow meaningful, and the
lead singer kills himself to preserve the band’s legacy.

“Then Rand Paul — he’s Pearl Jam. Comes from the same place, the
songs are really catchy, can really pack the stadiums, though it’s
not quite Nirvana.

“Ted Cruz? He’s Stone Temple Pilots. Tries really hard to sound
like Pearl Jam, never gonna sound like Nirvana. Really good voice,
great staying power — but the whole is not greater than the sum of
its parts.”

I met Kennedy (a gabby 41-year-old whose actual name is Lisa
Kennedy Montgomery) in Midtown Manhattan at Fox News headquarters,
where she hosts a Fox Business Network program called “The
Independents.” By cable TV standards, the show, which is shown four
times a week, is jarringly nonpartisan, for the simple reason that
she and her co-hosts — the Reason magazine editor in chief Matt
Welch and the entrepreneur Kmele Foster — are openly contemptuous
of both parties.

Here’s a section exploring how, as the Reason/Rupe poll
has indicated, millennials are philosophically and politically
up for grabs:

Meanwhile, the age group most responsible for
delivering Obama his two terms may well become a political wild
card over time, in large part because of its libertarian leanings.
Raised on the ad hoc communalism of the Internet, disenchanted by
the Iraq War, reflexively tolerant of other lifestyles, appalled by
government intrusion into their private affairs and increasingly
convinced that the Obama economy is rigged against them, the
millennials can no longer be regarded as faithful Democrats — and a
recent poll confirmed that fully half of voters between ages 18 and
29 are unwedded to either party. Obama has profoundly disappointed
many of these voters by shying away from marijuana
decriminalization, by leading from behind on same-sex marriage, by
trumping the Bush administration on illegal-immigrant deportations
and by expanding Bush’s N.S.A. surveillance program. As one
30-year-old libertarian senior staff member on the Hill told me: “I
think we expected this sort of thing from Bush. But Obama seemed to
be hip and in touch with my generation, and then he goes and reads
our emails.”

Early polls show young voters favoring Hillary Rodham Clinton in
2016, but their support could erode as they refamiliarize
themselves with her, just as it did in 2008. Clinton has been even
slower than Obama to embrace progressive social causes, while in
foreign policy, she associates herself more with her former Senate
colleague John McCain than with noninterventionists. Nor is Clinton
likely to quell millennial fears about government surveillance.
Welch says: “Hillary isn’t going to be any good on these issues.
She has an authoritative mind-set and has no interest in Edward
Snowden, who’s a hero to a lot of these people.”

After eight years out of the White House, Republicans would seem
well positioned to cast themselves as the fresh alternative, though
perhaps only if the party first reappraises stances that young
voters, in particular, regard as outdated. Emily Ekins, a pollster
for the Reason Foundation, says: “Unlike with previous generations,
we’re seeing a newer dimension emerge where they agree with
Democrats on social issues, and on economic issues lean more to the
right. It’s possible that Democrats will have to shift to the right
on economic issues. But the Republicans will definitely have to
move to the left on social issues. They just don’t have the numbers
otherwise.”

More excerpts after the jump. Later this morning, I’ll put up a
blog post with some supplemental reading material from the
Reason archive.

Here is the best known rendering of Reason.com/Reason TV Editor
Nick Gillespie:

Gillespie poured me a glass and led me to a
sitting area beside his office, which is festooned with vintage
rock posters. Nick Gillespie is to libertarianism what Lou Reed is
to rock ‘n’ roll, the quintessence of its outlaw spirit. He is 50,
a former writer for teen and heavy-metal magazines, habitually
garbed in black from head to toe, wry and mournful in expression, a
tormented romantic who quotes Jack Kerouac. For the past 20 years,
Gillespie has been a writer, editor and intellectual godfather for
Reason, the movement’s leading journal since its founding in 1968
(and which today has a circulation of about 50,000, while its
website receives 3.3 million visits a month). […]

“I was never conservative,” he told me as we sipped our gin.
“Republicans always saw libertarians as nice to have around in case
they wanted to score some weed, and we always knew where there was
a party. And for a while it made sense to bunk up with them. But
after a while, it would be like, ‘So if we agree on limited
government, how about opening the borders?’ No, that’s crazy. ‘How
about legalizing drugs? How about giving gays equal rights?’ No,
come on, be serious. And so I thought, There’s nothing in this for
me.”

Gillespie likes to point out that unlike the words “Democrat”
and “Republican,” “libertarian” should be seen as a modifier rather
than a noun — an attitude, not a fixed object. A cynic might assert
that this is exactly the kind of semantic cop-out that relegates
Gillespie’s too-cool-for-school sect to the margins. Not
surprisingly, he begged to differ. “It’s wedded to an
epistemological humility,” he told me, “that proceeds from the
assumption that we don’t know as much as we think we do, and so you
have to be really cautious about policies that seek to completely
reshape the world. It’s better to run trials and experiments, as
John Stuart Mill talked about. The whole point of America — and
this is an admixture of Saul Bellow and Heidegger and Jim Morrison
lyrics — is that it’s in a constant state of becoming, constantly
changing and mongrelizing. We’re doing exactly what free minds and
free markets allow you to do. Part of why I’m a libertarian is that
if you restrict people less, interesting stuff happens.”

Continuing his riff with beatnik locomotion, he added: “It’s
like what happens in garages. Rock bands form in garages. Computer
companies. And O.K., occasionally serial murders. But as long as
you’re not just parking your car there, garages are always
interesting.”

Did you need to taste David
Frum’s delicious tears? Here you go:

One of
the more pugnacious advocates of this across-the-board approach is
Cathy Reisenwitz, a 28-year-old Washington-based journalist who has
a tattoo under her right biceps that reads, “I Own Me.” (“What does
that mean, ‘I own myself?’ ” David Frum, a former speechwriter for
George W. Bush and Republican commentator, sputtered in
exasperation when we spoke later. “Can I sell myself? If I can’t, I
don’t own myself.”) […]

In a 1997 Weekly Standard article titled “The Libertarian
Temptation,” David Frum belittled its followers as feckless
hedonists who “claim that snorting cocaine is some sort of
fundamental human right.” When I recently asked Frum if his
feelings toward libertarianism had mellowed, he assured me that
they had not.

“It’s a completely closed and airless ideological system that
doesn’t respond well to reality,” he said. “Libertarians are like
Marxists in that they have prophets like von Mises and Hayek, and
they quote from their holy scripture, and they don’t have to
engage.”

Finally, a clip from some of Draper’s intriguing interactions
with Rand Paul:

I got to the point. Were we living in a
libertarian “moment,” or was that wishful thinking on the part of
Nick Gillespie and others?

“I think a plurality of Americans don’t consider themselves to
be either Republicans or Democrats,” Paul said, citing young people
and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs in particular. “I also think there
was a time, maybe 30 years ago, when ‘libertarian’ was a term that
scared people. Now I think it seems more like a moderate point of
view. So I think the term is something that is definitely
attracting, not repelling people.” […]

During our conversation, Paul made a point of characterizing
libertarianism as being “moderate” rather than liberal on social
issues. Movement leaders would likely object, but Paul’s
preoccupation is with swaying the center-right.

“The party can’t become the opposite of what it is,” he told me.
“If you tell people from Alabama, Mississippi or Georgia, ‘You know
what, guys, we’ve been wrong, and we’re gonna be the
pro-gay-marriage party,’ they’re either gonna stay home or — I
mean, many of these people joined the Republican Party because of
these social issues. So I don’t think we can completely flip. But
can we become, to use the overused term, a bigger tent? I think we
can and can agree to disagree on a lot of these issues. I think the
party will evolve. It’ll either continue to lose, or it’ll become a
bigger place where there’s a mixture of opinions.” […]

[L]ater, with an irritated edge to his voice, Paul added: “Some
people are purists, and I get grief all the time — all these
libertarian websites hating on me because I’m not as pure as my
dad. And I’m putting restrictions on foreign aid instead of
eliminating foreign aid altogether. And I’m like: ‘Look, guys, I’m
having trouble putting these restrictions on, much less eliminating
them! So give me a break!’ “

The whole article is well worth a read.