I'm not a subscriber to TNR and so can't read the article you linked, but if you provide a good synopsis, then Lindsey is overlooking a couple of tremendous points.

While it's true that libertarians are dismayed over the massive prescription-drug entitlement and the federal tentacles of the No Child Left Behind Act, Democrats actually wanted these programs to be larger than the Republicans did. On those two issues, Republicans were the lesser of two evils.

But even more important is the fact that libertarians are totally at odds with most Democrats on Second Amendment issues. In fact, current Democratic leaders like Pelosi and Schumer are among the most vigorous crusaders for eliminating Second Amendment freedoms. Some of the new crop of Democrats in Congress claimed in their campaigns to be less anti-gun than their partly leadership, and perhaps that's true. But if you look at the websites of the Brady Campaign and other anti-rights groups, you'll see they are loudly cheering the new Democratic majority as an opportunity for a host of new abridgements of Constitutional freedoms. It's going to be hard for the Democrats to recruit libertarians by using an agenda like that.

Cheers,
DR

I think that Libertarians have long made their choice. If torture, warrantless wire taps, holding of people without access to counsel, preemptive war, etc, etc, etc, haven't turned them into democrats, then it's clear where the libertarian values lay. Henke is a perfect example of this. He'd rather go to work for a bona fide racist than vote democrat.

2nd amendment rights? My lord. The king of all the amendments. I'll be glad to know I can still own a gun but I can be locked away without anyone ever knowing about it, tortured, etc.

You guys keep whining about your 2nd amendment rights while the constitution has been gutted under your noses. Yea, an armed populace really prevented Bush n' company from doing their dirty work, didn't they.

Now, Azael, you are forgetting.

The record of the Clinton admin, on confiscations, aggressive searches, and confiscation of property, is little better than the Bushies. Clintonism created an aggressive "revenue enhancement" opportunity for fed, state, and local law enforcement to take property (cars, boats, houses) for anyone who knew someone who knew someone who once met someone who dealt drugs.

The Dems are not against illegal wiretaps, or any of the other things you (rightly) criticize the Bushies for. So I don't see why voting Dem would be an answer.

And the 2nd Amendment thing....stop drinking that Hateraid! It's making you bitter. Sure, the 1st, 4th, and 5th Amendments are more important than the 2nd. But the Dems want to gut the 5th Amdmt protections against takings, and they have little concern for the 1st Amdmt protections on political speech through campaign spending, or 4th Amdmt protections in drug cases. Finally, the weasel Dems have actually started to SUPPORT 2nd Amdmt "rights," if anything.

There is just no good reason to think the Dems will be better, or even different, from the Repubs. Like political pressures as causes produce like corrupt polices as effects, as Newton (sort of) said.

I just have to admire the kind of sickness that just says "well, the democrats would have been worse".

I mean, really.

And "hateraid"? How middle class. Slogans are a piss poor substitute for actual arguments.

It's this wonderful attitude like yours which has gotten us into this mess. It's like you've figured there's no point in worrying any more so you mine as well see how much money you can vacuum up on the way to perdition.

Geez, louis. No wonder you guys got your asses kicked in November.

Libertarians are more heavily represented in the blogosphere than anywhere else on earth, with the possible exception of Cato's own building. Politically speaking, they are good for big talk, and that's all.

You can always find evidence of libertarian passion for the easy stuff, like tax cuts and opposition to gun control. You can often find similar passion for hopeless stuff, like abolishing Medicare and legalizing drugs of all kinds. But on the doable but difficult stuff, like cutting government spending, libertarians are reliably AWOL. No politician, or party, thinking of trying to appeal to "the libertarian vote" should expect to gain much from the effort.

Isn't the calculus of many libertarians that Republicans are better on economic liberty issues, and Democrats on social liberty issues, and support tends toward Republicans because economic liberty issues have more effect on most libertarians? Yes, we can and should decry the prescription drug plan and increased federal spending from Republicans. However, that doesn't change the fact that on various taxation and regulation questions, Republicans are much closer to libertarian values than Democrats are.

Let's face it - not every libertarian out there, or even most, has a personal interest in drug legalization, or cares strongly about social liberty issues the Republicans are largely incapable of changing. What does affect just about every libertarian is taxes, in all their forms, and regulations from the many, many agencies that try to regulate our lives. And that's where support for Republicans comes from.

that's where support for Republicans comes from

Precisely. And that's why it's a Sisyphean task for the democrats to ever try to "lure" the libertarians away from the Republicans. Torture, civil liberties, constitutional guarantees - these things simply don't have the impact in the same way that money, drugs and the right to own slaves does on the libertarian mind.

Y'all talk a good game, but really...

Z:

No POLITICIAN is reliably Libertarian, because the sources of power -- continued employment and lobbyist goodies -- for a politician are based on stupid spending or stupider tax cuts. And how is Reagan remembered today? For cutting government? Not really. His reputation rests on winning the Cold War.

The American People have not embraced term limits (though the last GOP Congress was a significant argument for them) or resdistricting reform, and the thought leaders have generally refused to concentrate on these issues. Campaign finance "reform" was more fun. (And better for the politicians.)

To Dan's point -- the past is nice, but the present is where we are. It may be, to accomplish some libertarian aims in the political sphere (no torture, no badly thought wars, some kind of protection against civil liberties intervention), better to play with the Democrats. The GOP, on spending and government intervention and protectionism, aren't furtheing libertarian aims, and are unlikely to do so until the current governing philosophy is rejected by the party. Welfare reform was swell -- and so ten years ago...

For those without a TNR subscription, the article can be read at http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=6800

I haven't yet read it, but I will note that one of the great libertarian triumphs of the past several decades--the end of the draft--happened in alliance with a Republican administration that was anything but libertarian. A lot depends on time, place, and circumstances, as well as effective arguments like Milton Friedman's in that instance.

Given that the ideological libertarian constituency amounts to something like 0-3 percent of the population (the typical results achieved by LP candidates) does it really matter who fuses with them? The are a lot more high school educated white (and black) males out there that want a more populist economic direction -- practical v. ideological trade policy, lower immigration, maybe a more progressive tax structure. Conservatives should go after these guys. Nothing in Burke mandates free trade or open borders, quite the opposite.

"the legalization of abortion" as a "libertarian breakthrough?" Sure, unless you're the unborn child.

When Democrats actually get some serious tax and spending cuts done should Republicans be worried about a permanent libertarian shift.

From my experience with libertarians they much prefer to be in their own corner from where they can pick and choose their political alliances as they see fit.

Mitchell is absolutely right. Libertarians are such an insignificant portion of the electorate that they aren't worth worrying about. What we see on the Internet is an example of selection bias; libertarians have a lot to say and aren't afraid to say it, while people with more mainstream views generally don't feel the need to lurk on blog comment threads or Usenet.

Bush's attempt to privatize Social Security shows just how unpopular libertarian ideas are among the American public. And this isn't even the worst or most unpopular idea from that crowd. Sure, Americans love tax cuts, especially if they think they won't have to pay any real price in exchange for them. But when it comes down to something truly important, that goes by the wayside. National health care is desired by a large majority of Americans, and polls show many would even be willing to pay higher taxes in exchange for that.

Populism, not libertarianism, is the road to travel. That said, gun control is a losing issue for the Democrats, and it should be dropped. And given the makeup of the Class of '06, I don't think that any new gun control proposals are going to be floated. It's a silly issue and not worth spending real political capital on, when that capital could be used to help out the middle class.

A question for libertarians, or anyone who knows one: do you really not like the Sherman Anti-Trust Act? It seems that something like this is necessary to the efficient functioning of a free market. Am I confused?

Bush's attempt to privatize Social Security shows just how unpopular libertarian ideas are among the American public.

But you can't balance the budget or stop the eventual Social Security and Medicare train wrecks without (fiscal) libertarian policies.

Virginia, you make an excellent point about libertarians and their opposition to the draft. Interesting that a Democrat -- Rangel -- is leading the charge to bring it back.

Yglesia is exactly right -- in fact the opposition to the sixties Civil Right legislation was justified on just such libertarian grounds, that the federal government or government in general had no right to tell Mr. Smith to whom she had to rent. After all, Barry Goldwater was Mr. Libertarian, and he opposed most all of the sixties Civil Rights agenda. Even Reagan was famous for his statement that "In America you have the right to be wrong" specifically in a racial context.

Fact is, libertarianism only works in a fairly homogeneous society. Hong Kong could be libertarian because it is overwhelmingly Han Chinese. Singapoore is a libertarian's nightmare -- it has to be authoritarian to prevent its ethnic groups from going at one another.

Or take a look at California. Sure libertarians might approve of the 'free market' operation of Mexicans lining up to do yard work or sell oranges at intersections, but those Mexicans and their offspring vote for politicians that push for minimum wage increases, universal (government paid) healthcare, expand the power of public sector unions, and so on. Libertarianism, the open borders kind, eats itself.

Mr. Lindsey should realize that no one trusts a frontrunners whether it be in sports or politics. It is interesting that Mr. Lindsey and other CATO Institute scholars didn' propose this alliance in 2004 but waited until 2006 when it looked (correctly) that Democrats would take at least one house.

Furthermore, Mr. Lindsey may be pro-choice and pro federal spending on stem cell research but Libertarians themselves are divided on those issues (see Ron Paul or Steve Chapman). Libertarian and social liberalism are not one in the same and are too often confused. Remember, Goldwater the Libertarian Conservative ran against Rockefeller the social liberal and they disagreed on more than just economic principles.

Here are a host of major issues that almost all Libertarians of the CATO Institute variety and liberals disagree on:

(1) Guns (excepting those liberals who are doing so now for political expediency.)
(2) free trade
(3) size of the government in general
(4) socialized healthcare
(5) foreign policy on humanitarian interventions
(6) tax cuts
(7) minimum wage
(8) social security
(9) affirmative action
(10) differences still on immigration as libertarian tend to favor guest worker programs more than liberals do
(11) environmental regulation

Ironically, the people with the most libertarian economic views (i.e. Tom Coburn and Shaddegg and Pence) also have very socially conservative views as does the one libertarian in the house, Ron Paul.

the future of the Democratic Party, I'm sorry to say, if with Lou Dobbs and the backlash against globalization. This might have worked when Bill Clinton ran the party to the center on economic issues, but its won't any more. The Democrats will move to economic populism/nationalism, and will slowly become more conservative on social issue. the traditional "Nation" wing of the party will be out of control in 20 years, just like the moral-majority types took over the Republican party after the southern strategy.

one of the great libertarian triumphs of the past several decades--the end of the draft--happened in alliance with a Republican administration that was anything but libertarian

In alliance? I seem to recall that there was some pretty significant opposition to the draft that was decidedly non-Republican. Milton Friedman notwithstanding, to present this as a triumph of libertarian thinking, rather than a political move that happened to coincide with libertarian ideas, misplaces the emphasis badly.

the opposition to the sixties Civil Right legislation was justified on just such libertarian grounds, that the federal government or government in general had no right to tell Mr. Smith to whom she had to rent.

No. The opposition, with very few exceptions, was based on racism. I would, by the way, include Goldwater among the exceptions.

Reading the articles over at Reason and the commentators, one gets the feeling that tax cuts and drug legalization is more important than civil liberties or habeus corpus.

And none of the so-called Libertarians who yell for tax cuts have ever come up with a good suggestion for what should go in their place. As far as I can tell, they seem to think that the money for defense, the law courts, the roads, etc. all just appear out of thin air.