Another Day, Another Panic About ‘Paranoid Libertarians’

At Slate, University of Chicago law professor Eric
Posner
adds his voice to the growing chorus of disapproval directed at
so-called “paranoid libertarians,” the group who allegedly
“distrusts the government to an unreasonable extent.” According to
Posner, paranoid libertarians pose a genuine risk to the social
order, since their incessant harping on government misdeeds
threatens to undermine the functioning of the American state. “If
people trust the government, they may accept its assurances that
flying or nuclear power is safe. They may absorb the messages of
its educational programs. If they don’t trust the government, then
no go,” Posner writes.

We’ve seen this claim
before. And once again, the response is that there’s nothing
dangerous or unusual about what Posner or his predecessors are
lamenting. In fact, bedrock American jurisprudence requires our
courts to do precisely what is described above. Criminal suspects,
for example, are presumed to be innocent, meaning that cops and
prosecutors are not taken at their word and are instead required to
shoulder the burden of proof. By the same token, regulations that
touch on free speech or religion are presumed to be
unconstitutional, thus forcing lawmakers to provide a compelling
justification for their actions that can survive strict scrutiny by
the courts. We don’t even trust Congress to be alone in the same
room with the First Amendment.

So “paranoid libertarianism” is either a meaningless term or
America is already a nation of paranoid libertarians. Either way,
there’s nothing to freak out about.