ance, innovation, and voluntary cooperation over forced partici-
pation in as many parts of life as possible. It’s part and parcel of
the great shift in thinking that got underway during the Renais-
sance, Reformation, and Enlightenment (an epoch increasingly
known as the Early Modern period). That period generated a
consensus about truths that we still hold to be self-evident: All
of us are created equal and we’ve got certain rights that can’t be
taken away, especially life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Individuals exist before the creation of the state or the church,
and the king, the Pope, and the body politic don’t have unlimited
rights to tell us what to do.
“Forced worship stinks in God’s nostrils,” the great colonial
American religious reformer and defender of secular govern-
ment Roger Williams once wrote to explain why theocracy was
an affront to human dignity. So it is with most aspects of our
lives. Libertarians want to increase the spaces where we get to
choose (or invent) how to live. This broad set of ideas has obvi-
ous, immediate, and long-lasting political effects, but they can’t
and shouldn’t be reduced to a simple slogan or a single rigid form
of (non)government.
This is another way of saying that like Walt Whitman’s
America, libertarianism is vast and contains multitudes (and
contradictions). In fact, I think libertarian works better as an
adjective than as a noun. You can be a libertarian anarchist, a
libertarian centrist, even a libertarian socialist (Noam Chom-
sky’s preferred self-designation). But these are personal prefer-
ences, not logical truths or mathematical proofs. They all rest
upon an understanding of limited government that proceeds
directly from Early Modern beliefs about the sanctity of the
individual, which implies limited government.
For these reasons, give me minarchism. Some things will
always be subject to political consensus, but let’s limit those to
the few that are absolutely necessary. That isn’t a clear line but
a constantly shifting border that will always have to be negoti-
ated. But one clear benefit of small government over anarchy is
that it swaps out bull sessions about first principles for a conver-
sation that most of us are already having, which is where and
when to draw the boundary of governmental control over us.
Everyone—even economic progressives such as Bernie Sand-
ers and social conservatives such as Rick Santorum—believes
there are limits to what the state should be allowed to do. That
is precisely where libertarians can engage people to the right
and left and make real progress toward a better, freer world.
The federal budget is $4 trillion and getting bigger all the
time. What say you, Bernie Sanders? You agree with me that the
government shouldn’t do everything, so where do we cut? I’d
start with the biggest items in the budget, such as transfer pay-
ments to rich old people in the form of Social Security and Medi-
care. Why not go after funding for overseas wars and domestic
military bases? I think states should end drug prohibition, and
that state and local governments should mostly get out of the
education business and instead cut checks to the schools that
kids and their parents pick (thank you, Milton Friedman, you
statist bastard, for coming up with that idea). Better yet, just
give those who need help unrestricted cash grants that they can
spend how they see fit.
I’ve known people who needed $200 to fix their car so they
could go to work. But there’s no welfare for that, so instead
they lose their jobs and then get a bunch of highly constrained
vouchers—for medicine, for housing, for food. Why not figure
out a way to help people keep their jobs rather than become
unemployed wards of the state, Rick Santorum? Uber, Lyft, and
the ride-sharing revolution have taught us that a whole raft of
government regulatory bodies such as taxi commissions aren’t
necessary to ensure safe and reliable service. Whole Foods certi-
fies the provenance of its produce with a dedication, accuracy,
and legal certitude the USDA will never be able to match.
There are demonstration projects everywhere showing that
what we thought could only be done by government can in fact
be done in all sorts of better ways. They don’t lead ineluctably
to anarchy, though—just to more freedom, more autonomy,
more choice.
To be sure, there’s a lot about this vision of libertarianism
that is simpatico with anarchy, but it’s not dogmatic and tenden-
tious. Duke political scientist Michael Munger makes a useful
distinction between what he calls directional libertarians and
destinationist libertarians. The latter tend to be anarchists, and
their focus is on very specific and absolute outcomes: The only
good government is no government. Anything that stops short of
that is a mistake. Directional libertarians instead deal in rela-REASON 39“Most people overlook
the ways in which
their lives are already
ordered and the welfare
of others supported
through noncoercive
methods.”