Ideological Purity

Over at Libertarian Central, J.D. Tucille offers up the standard librarian fare, claiming that both political parties are just Big Gummint:

Incumbent President Donald Trump has spent much of his first term catering to xenophobia. He demonizes foreigners, whether they want to come here as immigrants or just sell products to Americans. Immigration restrictions and protectionism inherently require a larger and more intrusive role for the state, leaving little room for a government that will just leave you alone. That trade and migration restrictions both inflict domestic economic damage seems largely irrelevant to his supporters, who embrace nativism as a cause in place of leaving people free to make their own way in the world.

Sounds more like a Democrat than a libertarian, there.  Of course, it’s nonsense.  Trump doesn’t demonize foreigners;  he just doesn’t want them to come here illegally and change the way we run things.  But libertarians espouse the “no borders” line because peeeple gotta be freeeeee, man (which is the maskirovka used by globalists, incidentally).  And having no protectionism in the U.S. works fine — in theory — until you come up against the rampant protectionism set up in places like China and Europe, whose competing theories would eventually destroy us if we didn’t respond in kind.

And as always, we have the “trade and migration restrictions both inflict domestic economic damage”  trope, which makes economic well-being the primary social focus — except that there’s more to life than economics;  there are things such as the social fabric and societal institutions, which a lack of restriction undermines.  But the nihilistic streak that runs through most libertarian theory either ignores those two benefits or else wants to destroy them — making libertarians little different from socialists in that regard, albeit for diametrically opposed reasons.

And by the way?  Trump’s reduction of the regulatory burden has reduced government interference in commerce, and his trade policies have brought more economic well-being to the U.S. population as a whole than decades of globalism (which enriched mostly manufacturing corporations and financial institutions).  But because trade restrictions run counter to libertarian theory, they must be wrong.  Once again, the libertarians sound more like socialists, in that ideological adherence is more important than facts and outcomes.  And having too little government is almost as bad as having too much government, something which libertarians always fail to see.

No wonder they only ever get a minuscule proportion of the vote, everywhere they run.