Donald Pittenger asks about the limits to libertarianism, given the nature of ideological movements:
I tend to agree with a concept encountered years ago while reading Crane Brinton’s account of the French Revolution. It has to do with tipping points of ideology-driven political movements. In particular, the point where a drive to ideological purity forces out real-world practicality. Where movement members judged not pure enough are ejected or otherwise eliminated. And the movement spirals away to irrelevance or even self-destruction.
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Libertarianism appeals to me in its quest for limited government. But it seems less persuasive otherwise because its doctrine (as I understand it) of radical individualism has within it the seeds of the situation described by Brinton. In other words, doctrinal purity can be the enemy of attaining and exercising political power. This is a risk for any party that is strongly idea-based.
Can there be “big tent” libertarianism? Yes and no, I’d say:
Libertarianism definitely has a Romantic strain that is clearly Liberal in origin — classically liberal — steeped in the Truth of universal human Rights.In this sense, it should go hand in hand with Rand’s Objectivism, but Rand despised the modern Left and the “nihilistic” hippie subculture that was also drawn to libertarian ideals.
There’s another much less liberal strain of libertarianism in American conservatism, which says that our Founding Fathers established a largely libertarian set of ground rules that worked, and we’re fixing something that ain’t broke as we slouch towards socialism.
Related to this conservative strain is an economically informed strain that emphasizes allocating property rights to maximize social welfare. Where costs and benefits are internalized, the decision-maker should be the (one, clear) owner of the resource — but the real world is full of externalities, and we aren’t all atomistic individuals who interact purely through efficient markets. So we need avoid the pitfalls of political decision making, but we still sometimes need to make group decisions — and we’ve inherited a decent, if imperfect, system for that, but there are ways to improve it.