Liber-al-tarianism in a liberal age

Mark Thompson writes:

One of the things that has happened in the early days of the Obama Administration has been some fairly good (but by no means great) steps in the direction of restoring civil liberties and reigning in executive power. While this is something libertarians such as me have absolutely cheered, the reality is that these issues were a major part of what was pushing libertarianism to the left in recent years. As victories have been earned on those fronts, the entire basis for that move leftward is getting removed (although history tells us that we’re not about to see a complete restoration of civil liberties and balance of power anytime soon, either).

To be sure, really good bases remain for a left-libertarian coalition on certain specific issues, especially the War on Drugs. And I still fully agree with the great FA Hayek, whose opus Road to Serfdom describes many of those we now call liberals as essentially misled classical liberals (that we now call libertarians). And that says nothing of his essay “Why I Am Not a Conservative” - still relevant nearly half a century later.

So I still think that, at some point in time, progressives and libertarians will be reunited within a political coalition separate and distinct from conservatives. But at a minimum the progressive response to the financial crisis, with its finger-pointing for the crisis almost solely at deregulation and its use of the stimulus bill as a means for implementing all sorts of pet projects that have little to do with stimulus even under a Keynesian analysis, has brought the economic divide between liberals and libertarians to the forefront in a way unseen for decades.

To be sure, I think conservatives - especially conservative politicians - have played a role in the whole situation, both by saddling us with massive debt in the name of the War on Terror and by repeatedly (and falsely) campaigning on the idea of Obama as a socialist (and thereby turning an unwinnable election into a de facto referendum on socialism). But the fact is that the political Left, led by Congress, is now using this opportunity to implement wide-reaching policies that are anathema to libertarianism.

Simply put, it appears that liberals and Progressives, at least the influential ones, have once again taken up the mantle that regulation is always (or almost always) good, and so is just about any form of non-military government spending.

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He adds in the comments:

those of us of the more “soft” Hayekian variety do have quite a bit in common with liberals as a foundational matter, at least in the sense of having similar intellectual roots. On that basis I think it is well worth pursuing not so much a formal alliance as an open dialogue aimed at finding some common ground on which liberals would be willing to pander to libertarians.

But ultimately the idea of a permanent and inflexible alliance with either conservatives or liberals is in my mind foolish. Conservatism and libertarianism have always been different worldviews, and liberalism has evolved enough from its roots that it’s a clearly independent worldview from classical liberalism, so a complete reunion is likely not achievable.

So really what I’m looking for is to at some point have liberals at least willing to listen to libertarians on economic issues, and conservatives at least willing to listen to us on social issues. In the meantime, the best approach for libertarians is to simply be political free agents, supporting Dems who are libertarian where Dems are supposed to be libertarian, and supporting Republicans who are libertarian where they are supposed to be libertarian.