Libertarians vs Conservatives: Whom would you support?

[Surlethe]

Suppose, in a hypothetical universe, the US political parties realign. Instead of the Democratic and Republican parties, representing socially liberal + economically conservative and socially conservative + economically liberal coalitions respectively, we have a Libertarian party and a Conservative party, representing socially liberal + economically liberal and socially conservative + economically conservative coalitions.

So in elections, instead of generally facing a choice between a relatively progressive party and a relatively regressive party, US citizens face a mix of the two. Supposing you're a US citizen, you can choose to support an evangelical who will simultaneously push universal health care and a constitutional marriage amendment, or a libertarian who will simultaneously push drug legalization and across-the-board tax cuts. How would you vote? What criteria would you use to determine whether to support one party's candidate or the other's?

Myself, I feel like I'd probably find myself supporting a libertarian more often than not simply out of anti-evangelical tribal inclinations, but simultaneously the religious party would probably end up with more humanitarian results, especially if it passed universal health care and instituted a more progressive tax. I suppose the optimal course would be to support the religious party until it got its "big platform" economic issues, such as health insurance and a more progressive tax, passed, and then switch to the libertarian party before the conservatives could take significant steps toward enshrining current prejudices and making atheists and gays second-class citizens. What are your thoughts?

Any speculation as to how unlikely this scenario is, or how it could potentially come to pass, is welcome. Any "I'd move to Canada" one-liners are not.

[Starglider]

I'd most likely vote Libertarian because they're more likely to follow through on their campaign promises. Libertarians tend to have a single minded no-compromises-are-acceptable determination, so if you're granting them a majority, they will get drugs and gay marriage legalised, torture outlawed etc. They won't put federal funds towards infrastructure or research, but at least they'll pare down some of the idiot regulation, and in principle states can simply step up their own role in funding infrastructure and research. They will at least remain relatively science-friendly, even if they won't actually act on things like environmental degredation (and again, states may be able to act on that). They will cut military spending and adopt a more isolationist policy, and right now that is probably a good thing for the US, after a decade of interventionism with 'mixed results' at best.

By comparison a religious fundamentalist party can't even reliably execute their own supposed agenda. Even if they say they will reduce income inequality and implement single-payer national healthcare, they are so endemically and hopelessy corrupt (just look at religious regiemes in Iran etc, scaling breathtaking new heights of hypocrisy and cynicism every month), I imagine they will be paid off by special interests in no time, and none of this will actually get done. They will work to actively corrupt and eliminate the scientific establishment wherever possible. I think it will be far harder for a successor party to dismantle all the discriminatory bullshit, religious laws and corrupt back-scratching beurecracy they install, than to build afresh on the relatively clean slate that a libertarian slash-and-burn will leave. Finally they will likely ramp up military spending and invade some more middle easten countries to hasten the second coming / spread their religion / kill the dirty heathens etc, which would be really bad news.

[Darmalus]

I would wind up voting for the conservatives (I assume both parties have equal amounts of determination and corruption/incompetence, making the goals the only difference). In the end, I think I would prefer to live in a stable, oppressive society rather than a self-destructive anarchy. I can go through the motions for a few hours a week at a church and otherwise keep my feelings to myself, I can't un-firebomb my house after a Ford death squad teaches me a lesson for picking the wrong car company.

[Starglider]

In the end, I think I would prefer to live in a stable, oppressive society rather than a self-destructive anarchy. I can go through the motions for a few hours a week at a church and otherwise keep my feelings to myself, I can't un-firebomb my house after a Ford death squad teaches me a lesson for picking the wrong car company.

I was assuming that these parties are at least theoretically electable in contemporary America, which means that they won't be that much more extreme than the current parties. There will of course be extremist elements, but I was assuming that the hardliners won't be in total control.

If they were, again the anarcho-capitalists will run into the problem of US states having a lot of local power to tax and regulate. AFAIK they can't effectively remove that power from control of the federal government only, not without literally tearing the country apart. Unfortunately the fundamentalists will have a much easier time of it, though they'll need a complete lock on the supreme court if they're going to rampantly disregard the constituion.

[Darmalus]

I was assuming that these parties are at least theoretically electable in contemporary America, which means that they won't be that much more extreme than the current parties. There will of course be extremist elements, but I was assuming that the hardliners won't be in total control.

Even in that case, the UHC platform wins them for me, plus progressive taxes are icing on the cake. The social problems are rather academic problems for me, while the possibility of an agonizing death because I can't pay is a serious possibility.

[Starglider]

The social problems are rather academic problems for me,

How noble of you, not giving a shit about the gays, jews, blacks etc. I probably should quote Martin Niemöller here.

while the possibility of an agonizing death because I can't pay is a serious possibility.

The notion of Ford death squads is not realistic except in the most insane America-becomes-Somalia extremist fantasies. Are you still harping on about that or do you mean higher crime under the Libertarians (granted your chances of getting shot will go up with zero gun control) or the expectation that health insurance will become totally unaffordable?

[RedImperator]

I think Starglider's right though: when was the last time a fundamentalist party anywhere showed enough competence at governance and honesty to actually pass a major domestic policy reform like UHC? They're great at breaking shit, passing awful retrograde laws, and taking bribes in exchange for favors, but when have they ever actually accomplished anything? And libertarians, by definition, will respect the prerogative of the states to mitigate the damage they do at the federal level, while fundies will happily ride roughshod over them if they can.

[Mayabird]

Your average libertarian seems less doctrinaire and blindly ideological than your average American conservative. It's a lot of being fed nonsense all their lives (the parties are all just the same, and government is always bad, etc etc) and sugar-coating of what libertarianism is all about. Actually getting into power would jolt them out of the sillier stuff when they see how things really work and what can and can't be done, and they'd be far more willing to compromise to get stuff to work and get done than a bunch of retrograde rednecks.

Also like hell am I going to let those types of Southern Baptists get any more power than they already have. The rural hicks already have delusions of their own importance and not enough sharp pointy objects going through their torsos.

[Darmalus]

The notion of Ford death squads is not realistic except in the most insane America-becomes-Somalia extremist fantasies. Are you still harping on about that or do you mean higher crime under the Libertarians (granted your chances of getting shot will go up with zero gun control) or the expectation that health insurance will become totally unaffordable?[/quote]

I was thinking of which I wanted more, abortion and same-sex marriage or UHC. The Ford death squads was me thinking of that thread with the ultra-libertarian, Voluntaryist. I would expect the libertarian party to eventually lead to more crime if they stayed in power, simply by gutting federal funding for police forces. More pollution due to letting corporations get away with whatever they want. I would expect the conservative party to steadily reduce my options as far as general social freedom across the board, minorities would be more oppressed, and a general living expenses as more regulations are enforced. The tangible benefits of being able to see a doctor for the first time in my adult life outside the military just have a vastly stronger pull than anything else listed.

[Darth Wong]

I'd most likely vote Libertarian because they're more likely to follow through on their campaign promises. Libertarians tend to have a single minded no-compromises-are-acceptable determination, so if you're granting them a majority, they will get drugs and gay marriage legalised, torture outlawed etc. They won't put federal funds towards infrastructure or research, but at least they'll pare down some of the idiot regulation, and in principle states can simply step up their own role in funding infrastructure and research. They will at least remain relatively science-friendly, even if they won't actually act on things like environmental degredation (and again, states may be able to act on that). They will cut military spending and adopt a more isolationist policy, and right now that is probably a good thing for the US, after a decade of interventionism with 'mixed results' at best.

By comparison a religious fundamentalist party can't even reliably execute their own supposed agenda. Even if they say they will reduce income inequality and implement single-payer national healthcare, they are so endemically and hopelessy corrupt (just look at religious regiemes in Iran etc, scaling breathtaking new heights of hypocrisy and cynicism every month), I imagine they will be paid off by special interests in no time, and none of this will actually get done. They will work to actively corrupt and eliminate the scientific establishment wherever possible. I think it will be far harder for a successor party to dismantle all the discriminatory bullshit, religious laws and corrupt back-scratching beurecracy they install, than to build afresh on the relatively clean slate that a libertarian slash-and-burn will leave. Finally they will likely ramp up military spending and invade some more middle easten countries to hasten the second coming / spread their religion / kill the dirty heathens etc, which would be really bad news.

Is it fair to judge religious parties based on the known incompetence and hypocrisy of real religious parties, while judging libertarian parties based solely on their own self-promotional rhetoric? A real libertarian party in power is no more likely to successfully live up to its own rhetoric than a religious party.

[Anguirus]

I think libertarians are mistaken, naive, and obnoxious, but they are still a damn sight better than American social conservatives, who are by and large a pack of utter bastards.

Having said that, there's not enough info to decide. If I thought the Conservatives had an excellent chance of making universal health care happen and a relatively low chance of successfully oppressing minorities, I'd bite my tongue and vote for them. It would depend on the situation, rather than currently when the Democrats have to be my default pick.

[Darth Wong]

I think libertarians are mistaken, naive, and obnoxious, but they are still a damn sight better than American social conservatives, who are by and large a pack of utter bastards.

Oh really? Libertarians would happily let the downtrodden starve, lose their homes, and die for lack of medical care because they think Darwinian Natural Selection is a moral imperative rather than a natural mechanism. You can sum up the entire libertarian approach to national policy and ethics as "the strong survive, the weak perish".

Yes, religious conservatives can be utter bastards. But you can't tell me that libertarians aren't. And yes, The United States of Taliban would suck to live in. But so would the libertarian paradise Somalia.

[Starglider]

Is it fair to judge religious parties based on the known incompetence and hypocrisy of real religious parties, while judging libertarian parties based solely on their own self-promotional rhetoric?

No, but what else can you do? AFAIK there aren't any examples of a libertarian party taking control of a significant sized nation.

A real libertarian party in power is no more likely to successfully live up to its own rhetoric than a religious party.

This is a personal judgement based solely on the personalities of various libertarians I know (and knew; I was one myself as a teenager), but I disagree. IMHO a libertarian takeover would go roughly along the lines of a communist takeover, despite the specifics being polar opposites (I seem to recall you making this comparison yourself in the past). The majority of the initial party will genuinely believe their own rhetoric and believe that they are acting for the good of everyone (or in some cases the twisted Randian equivalent of that sentiment). There will initially be sweeping changes and relatively pure policies, but opportunists will start climbing on board as soon as they take power, and corruption will set in. After a decade or two the platform will grind to a halt, there will be another decade or two of steady decline, and then there will be a collapse into anarchy (either warlordism and/or popular revolt against massive wealth disparities), all assuming that the libertarians haven't been booted out of government. That's a big assumption, because nearly all libertarians still enshrine democracy, and will probably do a better job of defending it than the current US government.

A religious party won't have the grace period. They start with a cheerful mixture of corruption, bigotry and outright insanity. They are inherently anti-democratic, in that their preferred social model is the preachers telling the masses how to behave. They are already accustomed to taking money from corporate interests in return for approval, and for bribing peons into supporting them (see missionary charity). In my experience the libertarian movement does not tend towards personal glorification, at least not any more than humans in general, but religious movements want prophets and saints and popes and 'great leaders'. They will quickly turn the American system into the Iranian model, where there is a show of democracy but in fact all candidates must be approved by the mullahs, who are themselves only elected by other mullahs. Libertarianism effectively spreads violence and misery by government apathy, but religious dictatorships actively persecute their population (not to mention promoting hatred of and war on other countries) and tend to grossly distort the economy whether they are declared communists or not (because all temporal things should be subordinate to religious authority). I strongly doubt that a religious-conservative administration could have enough positive achievements to make up for these failings; Iran has comprehensive government health care, but it also has death squads that will drag you away to be tortued and executed for criticising Islam or government decisions.

[Darth Wong]

Is it fair to judge religious parties based on the known incompetence and hypocrisy of real religious parties, while judging libertarian parties based solely on their own self-promotional rhetoric?

No, but what else can you do? AFAIK there aren't any examples of a libertarian party taking control of a significant sized nation.

And can't we interpret that as a statement on their capabilities? Why do we arbitrarily declare that there's an imaginary competent libertarian party to start with (which subsequently falls apart as you suggest later in your post) while not giving a religious party a similar benefit of the doubt? The OP specifies a religious party that is not already corrupted by corporate interests, does it not? It says that the party will sincerely push universal health care and be much more engaged in helping the downtrodden; you can't assume that it would be just like a real religious party.

[Starglider]

The tangible benefits of being able to see a doctor for the first time in my adult life outside the military just have a vastly stronger pull than anything else listed.

I sympathise with your personal position but this does not generalise. Most Americans do have access to healthcare. It is expensive and precarious and unreliable compared to say Canada or the UK, but it is still pretty good compared to third world countries or even Russia (which notionally has government health care but actually severely trails the US on all major statistics). Libertarians would make the situation worse by cutting or eliminating government medical benefits, which would create a lot of misery, but this only affects a minority of the population. The situation would continue to gradually deteriorate, but there won't be an outright crash of healthcare as there was in the former USSR (in the early 90s), and healthcare providers are still limited in how much they can charge while still remaining in business.

As for the social issues, remember that we are not talking about merely no improvement on the status quo (if that was the case, the libtertarians would not be able to eliminate medicare), we are talking about giving the parties pretty much everything they want, e.g. a huge regression. This isn't just a lack of gay marriage, it's the recriminialisation of homosexuality, possibly the return of prohibition (you might think the beer companies would bribe the government, but look at Iran; alcohol is illegal but government employees profit enormously from smuggler bribes), outlawing teaching of evolution (and shutting down universities that do not fall in line) etc etc.

[Starglider]

AFAIK there aren't any examples of a libertarian party taking control of a significant sized nation.

And can't we interpret that as a statement on their capabilities?

Not really. Military junta take over nations all the time without having any ability to actually govern. Libertarians haven't been elected for the same reasons that the American communists haven't been elected, or any of the other minor parties; because their message isn't attractive enough. In fact given the two-party lock-in in the US, I believe the libertarian parties are actually doing better than any of the other minor parties.

Why do we arbitrarily declare that there's an imaginary competent libertarian party to start with (which subsequently falls apart as you suggest later in your post) while not giving a religious party a similar benefit of the doubt?

I'm not sure what kind of competence you're referring to. The OP simply states that those are the two major parties and they have electoral support; if it's like the current parties, a lot of that will be tribal/customary rather than rational. I am not assuming any particular competence to govern on either part - indeed I think that both will make a hash of it - merely that they have majorities (and control of the executive and legal branches) sufficient to pass the laws they actually support. The basic difference is that Libertarians (in my experience) are fairly honest; they desires are generally what they say they are, regardless of whether they have a leadership position. I know they often debate dishonestly (though frankly, less so than fundies), but they don't normally misrepresent their own positions. By contrast fundamentalists are inherently dishonest, both in the lying and self-delusion senses, starting at the rank-and-file and getting even worse as you go up the power structure. The major reason for this may be that religious leaders can easily profit from lying to their flocks while libertarians can't, but that doesn't matter, the groups are what they are.

The OP specifies a religious party that is not already corrupted by corporate interests, does it not? It says that the party will sincerely push universal health care and be much more engaged in helping the downtrodden; you can't assume that it would be just like a real religious party.

I was in fact assuming that both parties would be like their real life equivalents, just with a lot more support. I don't think it's a big stretch to say that libertarians will act like typical ideology motivated (e.g. communist) revolutionaries, just with an ideology that hasn't been tried on a large scale before, while religious fundamentalists will follow the time-worn path of tyranny and corruption that every previous religious government has followed. Just look at the Taliban; they don't come any more fervent than that, yet they were still utterly corrupt and hypocritical from they day they gained power. It took the Soviet communists decades to get to that point, in fact I don't think they were ever as bad.

[Morilore]

This is a personal judgement based solely on the personalities of various libertarians I know (and knew; I was one myself as a teenager), but I disagree. IMHO a libertarian takeover would go roughly along the lines of a communist takeover, despite the specifics being polar opposites (I seem to recall you making this comparison yourself in the past).

Um, what? Surlethe specified that these are the two parties in a democratic election, not two factions in a civil war. The winner would still have to deal with the Supreme Court, it would still need a filibuster-proof majority for especially divisive issues, etc.

As for the social issues, remember that we are not talking about merely no improvement on the status quo (if that was the case, the libtertarians would not be able to eliminate medicare), we are talking about giving the parties pretty much everything they want, e.g. a huge regression.

Since when? We are talking about which of the parties do you support in an American election. Why are you assuming the victor becomes omnipotent?

[Starglider]

Since when? We are talking about which of the parties do you support in an American election. Why are you assuming the victor becomes omnipotent?

I was taking a cue from other thread participants (e.g. the 'Ford Death Squads'), but to a large extent it's a matter of degree, so the basic arguments hold regardless of how much of the platform gets passed, as long as both sides have roughly equal success. That said the points about libertarians being easier to boot out later and easier for individual states to perform damage control on stand in all but the most extreme 'Taliban' and 'Somalia' cases.

The point I have been coming back to is how much historical precedent confirms that religious parties will deviate from their claimed principles if given actual power. There's no historical precedent for libertarians, but no one has yet refuted me using communist parties as the closest approximation. This is again independent of how much success the parties have in changing the US to match their desires.

[Darth Wong]

I was in fact assuming that both parties would be like their real life equivalents, just with a lot more support.

Then you are not reading the OP. The OP specifies that these are not like the real-life libertarian and religious parties. The religious party is explicitly said to be consistent in its ideology against materialism and in favour of the downtrodden, unlike real religious parties.

That's the whole point of this thread: to see which one would be preferable if they actually were consistent with their ideology.

[Morilore]

The point I have been coming back to is how much historical precedent confirms that religious parties will deviate from their claimed principles if given actual power. There's no historical precedent for libertarians, but no one has yet refuted me using communist parties as the closest approximation. This is again independent of how much success the parties have in changing the US to match their desires.

How many religious parties throughout history have social welfare policies like universal health care and progressive taxation as part of their party doctrine? On the other hand, how many communist parties throughout history have taken control of the government through free and fair elections and gone on to respect constitutional government that predates them?

I think that the Libertarians in this scenario would be more corrupt than the Conservatives, because Libertarian policies are beneficial to the wealthy and powerful, and so the wealthy and powerful would prefer them and invest in/bribe them.

[Starglider]

How many religious parties throughout history have social welfare policies like universal health care and progressive taxation as part of their party doctrine?

Iran and Saudi Arabia are actual theocracies and notionally have both of those policies; I'm told Iran's health care is surprisingly good considering the general state of the country, but of course both are thoroughly corrupt, bribes are usually necessary to jump waiting lists, and taxes are easily evaded if you are favored by the government. Even the Taliban notionally maintained Afghanistan's public health system, but in practice massive persecution of female health workers and doctors who tended to be 'anti-Islamic intellectuals' (i.e. not batshit insane) degraded its effectiveness almost to nothing. This is the standard pattern; great claims of charity and hospitality and helping fellow men, in practice massive corruption and destruction of the system in the name of religious conformity. Don't worry though, most likely US citizens under fundamentalist government would enjoy free faith healing, and that's the most effective treatment of all right?

On the other hand, how many communist parties throughout history have taken control of the government through free and fair elections and gone on to respect constitutional government that predates them?

None that I know of, but I think that's simply because their platform has been pretty thoroughly discredited. The only example (AFAIK) of communists abolishing democracy is the Russian one, and that was a very weak democracy that had existed for less than a year. Some European communists came close to getting majorities in the interwar period, and even now that they still get a solid 20-30% of the vote in Spain and Italy. The Italian communists in particular have intermittently controlled several local governments. Generally European communist parties seem like relatively sane players in parlimentary democracy, (excepting the Warsaw Pact period where the Russians imposed communism by force); they don't go around claiming that the only valid laws come from a barbaric tribe that existed millenia ago, or that all authority must flow (through them) from a magic invisible sky king.

[Starglider]

Then you are not reading the OP. The OP specifies that these are not like the real-life libertarian and religious parties. The religious party is explicitly said to be consistent in its ideology against materialism and in favour of the downtrodden, unlike real religious parties.

Even with that enormous hand-wave, it would be extremely hard to vote for the religious party. Surlethe's notion of giving them a few years in power might work, but the risks are enormous. What are you actually getting from this party? I can only think of three positive things;

a) National health care
b) Higher minimum wage
c) Higher unemployment/disability benefits (don't expect any improvement in maternity rights, women should be barefoot and pregnant remember, not working taking jobs from men)

That will mitigate some suffering, but at what cost? 'Three strikes' and 'zero tolerance' will be increased. Crackdowns on drugs and illegal immigrants will rise. Abortion and possibly homosexuality will be criminialised. This means that America's already insanely high incarceration rate will skyrocket - that alone will probably cause enough harm to entirely cancel out the benefits of national health care, even assuming this government magically manages a competent Canadian-style implementation rather than the likely US horrible private-public compromise (and remember you weren't prepared to grant such competence to the libertarians). Foreign powers will be alienated or outright antagonised; foreign aid may actually be increased but it will come with mandatory missionaries. You will be rolling back the rights of women, homosexuals and most likely racial minorities, and teaching an entire generation of children that this is right and proper (and that the earth is 6000 years old and that ultimate truth comes only from the bible). By putting religious nuts in power you will be giving US society as a whole a strong push away from science and towards fundamentalism; keep that up for long enough and the eventual endpoint will be another Iran (not Afghanistan; the US populace is educated and relatively peaceful), but with the world's largest military to go crusading with. I'm honestly not sure what they'd do about gun control; libertarians obviously hate it, but US fundamentalists aren't exactly fans of it either, so I wouldn't expect either of these parties to increase it.

Libertarians will at least end the war on drugs and dial back incarceration rates (and most likely end capital punnishment, though that's not a certainty). That alone will prevent literally millions of broken families and individuals lost to the productive economy. They won't engage in wars that kill hundreds of thousands of foreigners. Education quality will suffer due to the reduction in federal funding (only die-hard libertarians want to cut it entirely), but the bulk of funding comes from the state and local level, so frankly I consider this much less serious than endemic religious indoctrination (which ties right into military recruitment, e.g. child soldiers in the Iran-Iraq war, though I imagine the US will stick to a minimum age of 16).

The price for that is lack of federal benefits, reduced infrastructure spending, and creeping increases in wealth disparity. Frankly, that's both more bearable on an individual level and a noticably slower slide towards tyranny than the religious alternative. It's still going to produce a hellish dystopia in the long run, but if I had to chose the lesser of two evils, I'd probably still go for the libertarian one, though I'd likely try to give the fundies the occassional single term in power if the situation persisted. The final virtue of the libertarian option is that it at least hasn't been tried, so we will learn something in the process (the Russian communist experience has served as a good warning to other countries tempted to try the same thing). By contrast the theocratic state is a depressingly familiar outcome with no easy escape.

[Stark]

I'm not following some of those points. Why WOULDN'T libertarians engage in foreign wars? Would big business somehow be a less powerful lobby or political entity? Wouldn't a nation fully embracing libertarian ideas lose people to the productive economy due to individual enforcement/justified homicide?

[The Romulan Republic]

It depends on how conservative the conservatives were and how libertarian the libertarians were. I would be inclined to prefer the libertarians, but I might take a moderate conservative over a hard core libertarian, for example.

[Darth Wong]

Starglider, methinks you are not sufficiently afraid of anarchy: perhaps the result of growing up in relatively controlled first-world nations like ours, where we learn to take a regulated society for granted. The end result of an unchecked religious party is tyranny, but the end result of an unchecked libertarian party is anarchy.

Taliban vs Somalia: either one is a terrible decision. But in your posts, you seem to think that the libertarian party would be much more benign and would stay much farther away from the extremes of its own ideology; is there some particular reason you should expect that, without expecting it of the religious party?

It seems to me that if you take the OP at face value and treat both sides equally, they both lead to very bad outcomes. As I said earlier, Taliban vs Somalia.