Libertarian Populism

By Jeff Deist

Political parties might be coming to an end. We might have to face the possibility that the future is less ideological, because populists by definition are less ideological.

There is nothing wrong with issue libertarianism - single issue libertarianism. Ron Paul worked this very well, with regard to End The Fed, which was a populist uprising, and with regard to getting out of Iraq and Afghanistan. These were both populist sentiments that didn't need a lot of intellectualization to sell.

Libertarianism is not an intellectual exercise. It's not a suicide pact. It has to offer real solutions to the problems that people see.

The State isn't working. The Fed can't work. Neoconservative foreign policy can't work. Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid can't work....on paper, or otherwise.

We know what can work. We know what real money is. We know what real economic prosperity is. We know what real peace is. And finally, despite claims to the contrary, as believers in the marketplace, we know what real social cohesion looks like.

It's not The State.

So we can't afford to look down our noses at this sort of populist uprising. Remember, it's not just elections that are won or lost on these tribal and emotionalist grounds. It's not just elections that are won on self interest, it's whole movements that are won on naked self interest.

Too often libertarianism is viewed as people who have heads without bodies...without guts, without stomachs. Or, worst case scenario, as C.S. Lewis called them, "Men without chests." So libertarianism doesn't need to mean this hyper-individualized, atomized society, where all we care about is pure economics. 

Society without The State doesn't mean society without culture, or language, or identity, or God, or something bigger than ourselves.

So I'll conclude with this. The future is not necessarily left vs. right, red state vs. blue state, statist vs. libertarian. The future is centralized vs. decentralized. It's what work versus what doesn't. It's reasonable people versus unreasonable people.

​It's PC versus the truth.