The libertarian believes that the best and most wonderful social outcomes are not those planned, structured, and anticipated, but rather the opposite. (Conservative Tribune)

By Jeffrey Tucker

Well, Hillary Clinton has gone and done it.

To the cheers of alt-righters everywhere, those angry lords of the green frog meme who hurl edgy un-PC insults at everyone to their left, the Democratic nominee has put them on the map at long last. Specifically, she accused Donald Trump of encouraging and giving voice to their dark and dangerous worldview.

Lets leave aside the question of whether we are talking about an emergent brown-shirted takeover of American political culture, or perhaps merely a few thousand sock-puppet social media accounts adept at mischievous trolling on Twitter. The key issue is that more than a few alt-rightists claim some relationship to libertarianism, at least at their intellectual dawning until they begin to shed their libertarianism later on.

What are the differences in outlook between alt-right ideology and libertarianism?

1. The Driving Force of History

Every ideology has a theory of history, some sense of a driving theme that causes episodic movements from one stage to another. Such a theory helps us make sense of the past, present, and future. The libertarian theme of history is beautifully articulated by Murray Rothbard:

My own basic perspective on the history of manis to place central importance on the great conflict which is eternally waged between Liberty and Power I see the liberty of the individual not only as a great moral good in itself (or, with Lord Acton, as the highest political good), but also as the necessary condition for the flowering of all the other goods that mankind cherishes: moral virtue, civilization, the arts and sciences, economic prosperity. Out of liberty, then, stem the glories of civilized life.

There it is: liberty vs. power. Liberty unleashes human energy and builds civilization. Anything that interferes with the progress of liberty impedes the progress of humanity. One crowds out the other. The political (or anti-political) goal is clear: diminish power (which means reducing unjust violence) and enhance liberty.

What is the alt-right theory of history? The movement inherits a long and dreary tradition of thought from Friedrich Hegel to Thomas Carlyle to Oswald Spengler to Madison Grant to Othmar Spann to Giovanni Gentile to Carl Schmitt to Trumps speeches. This tradition sees something else going on in history: not liberty vs. power, but something like a more meta struggle that concerns impersonal collectives of tribe, race, community, great men, and so on.

Whereas libertarianism speaks of individual choice, alt-right theory draws attention to collectives on the move. It imagines that despite appearances, we all default in our thinking back to some more fundamental instinct about our identity as a people, which is either being shored up by a more intense consciousness or eroded by a deracination and dispossession from what defines us. To criticize this as racist is often true but superficial. Whats really going on here is the depersonalization of history itself: the principle that we are all being buffeted about by Olympian historical forces beyond our control as mere individuals. Each of us only matters when our uniqueness is submerged to a group. This grop in turn calls forth a leader. It takes something mighty and ominous like a great leader, an embodiment of one of these great forces, to make a dent in historys narrative.

2. Harmony vs. Conflict

A related issue concerns our capacity to get along with each other. Frdric Bastiat described the free society as characterized by a harmony of interests. In order to overcome the state of nature, we gradually discover the capacity to find value in each other. The division of labor is the great fact of human community: the labor of each of us becomes more productive in cooperation with others, and this is even, or rather especially, true given the unequal distribution of talents, intelligence, and skills, and differences over religion, belief systems, race, language, and so on.

And truly, this is a beautiful thing to discover. The libertarian marvels at the cooperation we see in a construction project, an office building, a restaurant, a factory, a shopping mall, to say nothing of a city, a country, or a planet. The harmony of interests doesnt mean that everyone gets along perfectly, but rather that we inhabit institutions that incentivize progress through ever more cooperative behavior. As the liberals of old say, we believe that the brotherhood of man is possible.

The libertarian believes that the best and most wonderful social outcomes are not those planned, structured, and anticipated, but rather the opposite.

To the alt-right mind, this all seems ridiculous. Sure, shopping is fine. But what actually characterizes human association is deep-rooted conflict. The races are secretly at war, intellectually and genetically. There is an ongoing and perpetual conflict between the sexes. People of different religions must fight and always will, until one wins. Nations fight for a reason: the struggle is real.

Some argue that war is what defines us and even gives life meaning, and, in that sense, is glorious and celebratory. For this reason, all nations must aspire toward homogeneity in stock, religion, and so on, and, as for the sexes, there must be dominance, because cooperation is an illusion.

Maybe you notice a certain commonality with the left here. In the 19th century, the Marxists whipped themselves up in a frenzy about the allegedly inherent conflict between labor and capital. Their successors fret incessantly about race, ethnicity, ability, gender, and so on, pushing Marxian conflict theory into ever more exotic realms. Ludwig von Mises captured this parallel brilliantly when he wrote, Nationalist ideology divides society vertically; the socialist ideology divides society horizontally. Here, as with many other areas, the far right and far left are strangely aligned.

3. Designed vs. Spontaneous Order

The libertarian believes that the best and most wonderful social outcomes are not those planned, structured, and anticipated, but rather the opposite. Society is the result of millions and billions of small acts of rational self interest that are channelled into an undesigned, unplanned, and unanticipated order that cannot be conceived by a single mind. The knowledge that is required to put together a functioning social order is conveyed through institutions: prices, manners, mores, habits, and traditions that no one can consciously will into existence. There must be a process in place, and stable rules governing that process, that permit such institutions to evolve, always in deference to the immutable laws of economics.

Again, the alt-right mind finds all of this uninspired and uninspiring. Society in their conception is built by the will of great thinkers and great leaders with unconstrained visions of what can be. What we see out there operating in society is a result of someones intentional and conscious planning from the top down.

If we cannot find the source, or if the source is somehow hiding, we imagine that it must be some shadowy group out there that is manipulating outcomes and hence the alt-rights obsession with conspiracy theory. The course of history is designed by someone, so we might as well engage in the great struggle to seize the controls and hence the alt-right obsession with politics as a contact sport.

Oh, and, by the way, economics is a dismal science.

4. Trade and Migration

The libertarian celebrates the profound changes in the world from the late Middle Ages to the age of laissez faire, because we observed how commercial society broke down the barriers of class, race, and social isolation, bringing rights and dignity to ever more people.

Of course the classical liberals fought for free trade and free migration of peoples, seeing national borders as arbitrary lines on a map that mercifully restrain the power of the state but otherwise inhibit the progress of prosperity and civilization. To think globally is not a bad thing, but a sign of enlightenment. Protectionism is nothing but a tax on consumers that inhibits industrial productivity and sets nations at odds with each other. The market process is a worldwide phenomenon that indicates an expansion of the division of labor, which means a progressive capacity of people to enhance their standard of living and ennoble their lives.

The alt-right is universally opposed to free trade and free migration. You can always tell a writer is dabbling in alt-right thought (or neoreactionary or Dark Enlightenment or outright fascism) if he or she has an intense focus on international trade as inherently bad or fraudulent or regrettable in some sense. To them, a nation must be strong enough to thrive as an independent unit, an economic sovereignty unto itself.

Today, the alt-right has a particular beef with trade deals, not because they are unnecessarily complex or bureaucratic (which are good reasons to doubt their merit) but because of their meritorious capacity to facilitate international cooperation. And it is the same with immigration. Beginning at some point in the late 19th century, migration came to be seen as a profound threat to national identity, which invariably means racial identity.

5. Emancipation and Progress

The libertarian celebrates the profound changes in the world from the late Middle Ages to the age of laissez faire, because we observed how commercial society broke down the barriers of class, race, and social isolation, bringing rights and dignity to ever more people. Slavery was ended. Women were emancipated, as marriage evolved from conquest and dominance into a free relationship of partnership and consent. This is all a wonderful thing, because rights are universal, which is to say, they rightly belong to everyone equally. Anything that interferes with peoples choices holds them back and hobbles the progress of prosperity, peace, and human flourishing. This perspective necessarily makes the libertarian optimistic about humanitys potential.

The alt-right mind cant bear this point of view, and regards it all as naive. What appears to be progress is actually loss: loss of culture, identity, and mission. They look back to what they imagine to be a golden age when elites ruled and peons obeyed. And thus we see the source of their romantic attachment to authority as the source of order, and the longing for authoritarian political rule. As for universal rights, forget it. Rights are granted by political communities and are completely contingent on culture. The ancients universally believed that some were born to serve and some to rule, and the alt-right embraces this perspective. Here again, identity is everything and the loss of identity is the greatest crime against self anyone can imagine.

Conclusion

The alt-right knows exactly who its enemies are, and the libertarians are among them.

To be sure, as many commentators have pointed out, both libertarians and alt-rightist are deeply suspicious of democracy. This was not always the case. In the 19th century, the classical liberals generally had a favorable view of democracy, believing it to be the political analogy to choice in the marketplace. But here they imagined states that were local, rules that were fixed and clear, and democracy as a check on power. As states became huge, as power became total, and as rules became subject to pressure-group politics, the libertarian attitude toward democracy shifted.

In contrast, the alt-rights opposition to democracy traces to its loathing of the masses generally and its overarching suspicion of anything that smacks of equality. In other words, they tend to hate democracy for all the wrong reasons. This similarity is historically contingent and largely superficial given the vast differences that separate the two worldviews.Does society contain within itself the capacity for self management or not? That is the question.

None of this will stop the mainstream media from lumping us all together, given that we share a dread of what has become of the left in politics today.

But make no mistake: the alt-right knows exactly who its enemies are, and the libertarians are among them.

Jeffrey Tucker is Director of Content for the Foundation for Economic Education. He is alsoChief Liberty Officer and founder ofLiberty.me, Distinguished Honorary Member of Mises Brazil, research fellow at theActon Institute, policy adviser of theHeartland Institute, founder of the CryptoCurrency Conference, member of the editorial board of theMolinari Review, an advisor to the blockchainapplication builderFactom, and author of five books. He has written 150 introductions to books and many thousands of articles appearing in the scholarly and popular press. This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxfRNgRajjM&feature=youtu.be Michael Cannon, director of health policy studies at the Cato Institute has been a formidable opponent of ObamaCare; so formidable, in fact, that he has been described by the New Republic as ObamaCare's "single most relentless antagonist." Along with Case Western Reserve Law School professor Jonathan Adler, he has provided the legal foundation for the Supreme Court case King v. Burwell, which questioned the legality of subsidies administered under the auspices of a federally run health insurance exchanges. In 2015, the court by a 6-3 decision, upheld ObamaCare. In this interview, Cannon discusses the inherent problems with ObamaCare, explains his role in encouraging states to refuse to set up their own exchanges, and discusses the failure of Vermont's single payer healthcare scheme. Read More: The Perpetual Failure of ObamaCare and Single Payer Healthcare Read More: Why Trump Shouldn't Immediately Repeal ObamaCare He voices concerns regarding the Republicans current Repeal/Replace plans, which many have feared will result in "ObamaCare lite," and takes aim at the Democrats for the disingenuous manner in which they implemented such provisions as the "Millennial Mandate" which obligates health insurers to cover children under their parents' policies until the age of 26. Cannon also shares his thoughts on the now-infamous words of ObamaCare architect Jonathan Gruber, who generated a firestorm of controversy by referencing a "lack of transparency" and lampooning the "stupidity of the American voter" in relation to ObamaCare passage. Libertarians and conservatives are presented with a blueprint for addressing the problems with ObamaCare, single payer healthcare, and socialized medicine. googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-1459522593195-0'); }); Ultimately, he concludes that ObamaCare, in fact, offers less choice and less competition to American consumers, while obligating many Americans to buy expensive healthcare plans that they neither want nor need. Cannon suggests that a Balanced Budget Amendment is the key to taking money and power out of the hands of politicians, and returning it to the American citizens and taxpayers.

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Don't Confuse the Alt-Right with Libertarianism. Here's How They're Different - PanAm Post