The Teaparty movement is the most exciting thing I have seen in American politics in my lifetime. To paraphrase Michelle Obama, I'm finally proud of America. The Teaparty movement is trying to do what America has needed for years -- to bring together a coalition of varied viewpoints, all dedicated to reforming the system.
While this movement started with libertarians, it quickly captured both Republicans and Democrats who felt unheard by their government. So far, the Teaparty has organized a number of protests and made incumbents on both sides of the aisle very nervous about their chances for reelection. That's a great beginning, but the real work will be in finding the common ground amongst traditionally disparate views. A platform has yet to develop that will help to outline the goals of the movement in detail, and I think the key to making this happen will be found in libertarian ideals.
The Nolan Chart
Of course, the biggest hurdle to proving that is in effectively explaining what a libertarian is. Fortunately, this isn't something new to libertarians, and brighter minds than my own have developed a very good place to start -- The Nolan Chart.
The Nolan Chart has been used by the Libertarian Party for years to help people identify where they fall in the spectrum of political thought. What has often been called the "world's shortest political quiz" is designed to show you how much you have in common with Libertarians, and you can take the quiz that will place you on the Nolan Chart here. I hope you'll take the time to finish the quiz before you read on, I'll wait.
In America, political thought is typically divided from left to right as liberal or conservative respectively. This doesn't work very well for libertarians who tend to agree with the most left of liberals on some issues and the most right of conservatives on others.
The Nolan Chart, developed by David Nolan in 1970, addresses this problem brilliantly. The chart measures a person's tolerance for self-governance on two scales: personal and economic. This adds another axis to the political spectrum, an up and down to go with the left and right. Since Libertarians prefer a government that is limited to a few specific functions, this new axis helps to differentiate them from Republicans on the right, Democrats on the left, and those of either stripe who are interested in a more expansive role for government. Although the Nolan Chart does what it was designed to do very well, it has done two other things, and neither has been very helpful to the Libertarian Party. You've probably already seen a clue to the first of these problems.
Problem #1: libertarian or Libertarian
You may have noticed that I don't always capitalize the word libertarian like I do Republican or Democrat. That isn't a mistake, I'm making a distinction between big-l Libertarians (capitalized) and little-l libertarians (not capitalized). Libertarians are members of a political party like Republicans or Democrats; libertarians are people who hold libertarian views, whether they vote for the party or not. Unfortunately, the Nolan Chart leads some libertarians to work against Libertarians.
The chart is designed to help bring people to the Libertarian party. People who take the quiz are likely to see that they hold some views in common with Libertarians. In reality, the quiz is designed to be as inclusive as possible. Libertarians would ideally like to draw anyone who scores above the center line of the chart into the party. Those people are more libertarian than they are authoritarian; they might need to be convinced of certain policy points, but they could be useful allies. Some libertarians, though, react very differently to the quiz.
For some libertarians, the quiz sparks a competitive spirit. They want to prove how dedicated they are to libertarian ideals; the higher they score on the chart, the more libertarian they are. The goal suddenly becomes to move your position to the apex of the chart. (That's where I score by the way.) Unfortunately, this places them ideologically further away from those closer to the center line -- the very people the Libertarian Party is trying to court. The Nolan Chart becomes a "purity test" that drives some members away from the "big tent" goals of the Party.
Problem #2: Something for Everyone or Nothing for No One.
The second problem can't be blamed on libertarians; it's more a problem with human nature. The quiz for the Nolan Chart is good at pointing out similarities with libertarian ideals, but it is equally good at making clear the differences. People who take the quiz will almost always find something they vehemently disagree with. Libertarians support a very limited role for government, but most people want the government to do some things for them.
The government has cleverly offered "goodies" that people want. These are usually the things that Libertarians would seek to remove (or at least curtail). The only thing that Libertarians have to offer is less of everything -- although, I would hope that more freedom counts for something. This is a difficult position to be in, and it's not an easy problem to solve because it's tied to the ideology itself.
What is a libertarian?
Both Libertarians and libertarians want a more limited government. Personal responsibility and individual freedom are the cornerstones of libertarian thought. Modern libertarians sometimes have trouble selling these ideas to the public at large; they find themselves on the fringes politically. If that's true, how can libertarian ideals help to bring people together? To do that, libertarians need to focus on people who supported limited government, personal responsibility, and individual freedom who also have the respect of most Americans. Those people are the Founders, of course. They believed in all those things and they left a framework that couples those ideals with a working government, the Constitution. (But, let me save that discussion for next week.)
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