On libertarian opposition to Bob Barr.

Anyone who is a libertarian knows that libertarians can be some of the hardest people to please. (Guilty) Elections and choices of candidates are no exception. Rarely will you ever hear a libertarian (big or small L) voice great satisfaction with the Libertarian Party. Considering that a Libertarian Presidential candidate has garnered more than 1% of the vote and approached 1 million votes just one time in its history, why should we? Given our natural aversion to government, it goes without saying that we rarely voice happiness with any individual candidate for office even from our own party, much less a Republican or Democratic candidate/politician. (Ron Paul is a tremendous exception, although you'll find a number of libertarians who even found him unacceptable for various reasons.)

Almost every election year when it seems as though libertarians (again, big L and small l) have a candidate who has the potential to launch our movement into a strong and perhaps permanent foothold in the political mainstream, it seems as though there is a violent backlash against said candidate from a sizable chunk of libertarians. The Rothbardians despised Ed Clark in 1980 for his "low-tax liberalism" style of libertarianism. Pro-Choice libertarians had major problems with Ron Paul in 1988, an election year of less consequence, and of course they and pro-open borders libertarians had issues with him again this time around as his campaign really picked up steam. Other issues libertarians had with Paul included his insistence on federalism, his "making the perfect the enemy of the good" on many economic issues, and mistrust of him on the issue of race in light of newsletter-gate.

Again this year, another high-profile libertarian candidate with the potential to take the movement to a mainstream foothold is Bob Barr, a former Republican Congressman from Georgia. Congressman Barr was a high-profile participant in the impeachment of President Clinton in the 1990s, which gained him considerable notoriety at this time. Since 9/11, he has been a vocal critic of the Bush Administration's incursions on civil liberties, building his pedigree through numerous media appearances and speaking engagements around the country. Given that he is a notable former Congressman, and the expanded profile of libertarianism in light of Ron Paul's surprisingly successful Presidential campaign, he is in an unprecedented position to take libertarianism to the next level.

But alas, numerous libertarians have been quick to the draw to voice their issues with Bob Barr. Like Ron, he is facing heat on the issues of abortion and immigration. While this was a problem with a sizable number, it still didn't seem to be something that was hugely prohibitive for most of these libertarians with Paul, as LP members and activists around the country worked energetically for the campaign and turned out to vote for him. Furthermore, his positions on these issues don't fundamentally disqualify his libertarianism, as there are libertarian arguments for the pro-life and restricted immigration positions. (The restricted immigration article by Kinsella doesn't even cover the national defense argument.) If, like Paul, libertarians' issues with Barr were limited to just these two issues, I wouldn't see much of a problem.

But their problems with Barr are not limited to just these two issues, and they are problems that have given even Ron Paul supporters pause. To begin with, libertarians have voiced serious mistrust of what appear to be Barr's conversions on the Patriot Act, the War in Iraq, the War on Drugs, and (at least at the federal level) Gay Marriage. These are major issues for libertarians broadly because his past positions contradict some bedrock libertarian principles: civil liberties (the Patriot Act), non-intervention (Iraq War), freedom of choice (Drugs), and freedom of association (gay marriage). This mistrust on the War in Iraq, War on Drugs, and Gay Marriage is understandable, and Barr has been wrong to support these ventures in the past. But I don't think there's much reason to doubt his commitment to protecting civil liberties. Barr did not support the Patriot Act until working to attach sunset clauses to the legislation. Under the circumstances of the time (the panic of 9/11), he should be commended for having the initiative to review the legislation (which most members of Congress didn't) and the concern for the Bill's intrusion on civil liberties to ensure that the legislation was not permanent while at the same time weighing national security concerns that, I'm sure for everyone at that time, were genuine. He also exercised similar diligence to protect civil liberties in inserting amendments to the Clinton Administration's Comprehensive Anti-Terrorism Act of 1995, and he was noted by Michael Barone in a 2002 USNWR article after his 2002 Primary defeat as "a strong voice for civil liberties." Once can accuse Bob Barr of many things, but not being a principled defender of the Bill of Rights isn't one of them.

I do believe additionally that his conversion on foreign policy, drugs, and gay marriage, though, are genuine. For starters, he has gone to work for the Marijuana Policy Project; if one doesn't truly advocate something, they don't spend their time and energy to work for its promotion. As Barr himself explains,

I, over the years, have taken a very strong stand on drug issues, but in light of the tremendous growth of government power since 9/11, it has forced me and other conservatives to go back and take a renewed look at how big and powerful we want the government to be in people’s lives.

Furthermore, his progression toward libertarianism did not just happen in a day or month, or a year before an election, as was the case with Mitt Romney's sudden embrace of statist social conservatism. This is something that occurred over the course of about 6 years. He began working with the ACLU shortly after his 2002 primary defeat by John Linder, and he joined very soon after. He could have bolted immediately to the Libertarian Party and attempted to take it over and run for President on its ticket in 2004, but instead he worked to support Badnarik's campaign before making the full switch to the LP. Unlike Romney, he didn't just show up to the party with a boatload of money, nice hair, and some clever spinning away of his past; he got down in the dirt and worked for libertarian principles near and dear to his heart. Barr still opposes drug legalization and gay marriage at the state level, but his federalist position to remove the federal government from these issues is wholly consistent with achieve libertarian ideals through a Constitutional approach and qualifies him as a proponent of libertarian policy at the federal level. This progression also, in my view, qualifies his change in position on Iraq as legitimate.

However, in all of their fury, the new "anti-Barr" contingent of libertarians has dug up another "skeleton" to come after him, an article he recently authored calling for more concern in U.S. foreign policy about Latin America. Many are calling this advocacy of "interventionist" policy in the region; a left-libertarian friend of mine posted a note on Facebook about the article titled "Bob Barr wants to invade Latin America." If you actually, read the article, you will find absolutely no evidence that he advocates any sort of military intervention in Latin America. Barr writes that we should devote more "concern" and "resources" to the region, but there's nothing to indicate these should be of a military nature. By my reading, he's advocating for more assertive diplomatic efforts in Latin America, with perhaps a pumped up intelligence presence, which are wholly justifiable and not at all inconsistent with the doctrine of military non-interventionism. This is some serious reaching by Barr opponents.

I urge libertarians who have raised these issues with Barr to please reconsider both the substance of their concerns and the consequences of failing to get behind and push a campaign that could be the next step toward cementing permanence in the mainstream of American politics. Bob Barr may not be perfect on policy at every level of government, but at the federal level he is an ace. The fact is that we are going to have to build a broad coalition including people we don't currently typically think of as libertarians, both for huge electoral improvement in this campaign and to draw more to our ranks in future campaigns if we are to make effective policy change. Bob Barr offers us the opportunity to do this.