Recently, Tea Party leaders called for a truce on social issues, urging Congress to focus instead on getting government spending under control. But even when gay marriage, abortion, etc., are left out, the coalition still has a host of supposedly non-economic issues to fight over. Enter this week’s hot button topics: Wikileaks and Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.
There’s nothing like a good national security debate to bring the relationship between conservatives and libertarians back to pre-Obama levels of mutual hatred.
On the subject of Wikileaks, libertarians (the dozens of them in my Facebook News Feed, at least) have been characteristically supportive of people learning more about the secret dealings of duplicitous, war-mongering governments. Ron Paul has defended Wikileaks–I heard him do so just two weeks ago when he came to Arizona State University. Libertarian-leaning Fox commentator Andrew Napolitano praised the previous round of revelations on his show, saying: “Something is not right when people must break the law and risk their freedom to tell us the truth. Thank God for the truth, no matter how it comes to us.”
Intriguingly, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange admitted to having an ideological kinship with American libertarianism in a Forbes profile just yesterday:
It’s not correct to put me in any one philosophical or economic camp, because I’ve learned from many. But one is American libertarianism, market libertarianism. So as far as markets are concerned I’m a libertarian, but I have enough expertise in politics and history to understand that a free market ends up as monopoly unless you force them to be free.
WikiLeaks is designed to make capitalism more free and ethical.
Contrast this with conservatives’ treatment of Assange and assumed “leaker” Bradley Manning:
Bill Kristol: “Why can’t we act forcefully against WikiLeaks? Why can’t we use our various assets to harass, snatch or neutralize Julian Assange and his collaborators, wherever they are?”
Bill O’Reilly: “Whoever leaked all those State Department documents to the WikiLeaks website is a traitor and should be executed or put in prison for life.”
John Bolton: “I believe treason is still punishable by death and if [Manning] were found guilty, I would do it.”
To sum things up: libertarians think Assange and Manning are heroes and conservatives want to kill them. That’s a pretty stark difference of opinion.
In much the same vein, the debate over repealing DADT is contentious. Libertarians cheered when Ron Paul joined only four other House Republicans in voting to end the policy. Meanwhile, John McCain has made blocking the repeal vote in the Senate his most important cause, despite the objections of his wife and daughter.
But besides giving libertarians and conservatives something to fight over, the debates over Wikileaks and DADT hold important political consequences for the pro-economic freedom coalition. Elements of the Tea Party movement recognize that low taxes and less spending are popular ideas in their own right. It is the social-issues side of conservatism that makes the ideology unappealing to independents, moderates, and young people. The same goes for the foreign policy positions of the neoconservatives. If the Right (conservatives, Republicans, whoever) wants to endure as a viable political movement rather than resigning itself to being the momentary stopping point of an angry electorate, it should accept the death of DADT and quit demanding the death of Wikileaks.
Conservatives and libertarians will only get along insofar as priority number one remains slashing government spending, and slashing government spending just so happens to be the conservative issue with the broadest appeal. Let’s go for that.
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