Former Democrats Seeking a New Home Consider “Classical Liberalism”

A number of former Democrats are switching to supporting Trump or Republicans, using the label “classical liberal”. It’s a good development, so far as it goes.

Roseanne Barr, of all people, wrote the following on Twitter: liberal is actually a term wh[ich] refers [to] a ‘liberal’ interpretation of [our] constitution. Liberal SCOTUS =pro corporations anti individual rights.

I think she’s confused, as  many people are today. But she actually has discovered the concept of “individual rights” — the only kind of rights there are — and this much is encouraging.

Trump is not a classical liberal, and neither are Republicans. But each has leanings in that direction, at least if they’re sincere (which most politicians are not).

One definition of “classical liberal” is: a political ideology and a branch of liberalism which advocates civil liberties and political freedom with representative democracy under the rule of law and emphasizes economic freedom.

The libertarian Mises Institute has a better definition: “Classical liberalism” is the term used to designate the ideology advocating private property, an unhampered market economy, the rule of law, constitutional guarantees of freedom of religion and of the press, and international peace based on free trade. 

Ayn Rand once wrote, The majority of those who are loosely identified by the term “liberals” are afraid to let themselves discover that what they advocate is statism. They do not want to accept the full meaning of their goal; they want to keep all the advantages and effects of capitalism, while destroying the cause, and they want to establish statism without its necessary effects. They do not want to know or to admit that they are the champions of dictatorship and slavery.

When Rand wrote this in the 1960s or 1970s, it was true. Fast forward to 2017, and I would argue there’s one crucial difference: Leftist “liberals” know that they’re for dictatorship and slavery. And they’re just fine with it.

One thing is clear. The Democratic “progressive” left is not in the least bit liberal. Try disagreeing with any hard-core Democrat you know, even an otherwise reasonable and nice person, and the hostility you see will make Archie Bunker or the Ku Klux Klan seem mild in comparison. Reason is not the operating premise underlying what used to be called “liberalism” on the left. That’s all over. And it’s not Donald Trump’s fault, either. Donald Trump simply allowed them to release their totalitarian, intolerant rage. The truth has finally come out.

Keep in mind that even intellectually, there’s nothing about leftism that’s liberal. They talk about “diversity” and “tolerance”, but there’s nothing tolerant about Obama’s Attorney General threatening legal action — even criminal legal action — against persons or parties who question climate change or Islam. There’s nothing sensitive about forcing Christian bakers to bake gay wedding cakes, at the threat of gunpoint or jail. There’s nothing compassionate about punishing success via endless taxes and regulations, not to mention forcing people to pay 400 percent more in health insurance premiums so others may pay nothing.

Consequently, many honest, peaceful and reasonable people who never considered themselves Republican but are looking for an alternative to the mouth-frothing, intolerant hate-fest that now passes for “progressivism” are turning to the idea of classical liberalism. However muddled that concept might be in their minds, at least it’s a start. At least they’re rejecting the thing they once called home that no longer is (pardon the term) a safe space for anyone remotely rational to be.

In its simplest terms, classical liberalism means “hands off”. Government keeps its hands off your body (sex organs included) and hands off your bank account. But it works across the board. Just because you make $50,000 a year and someone else makes $100,000, or a billion, does not give you the right — under classical liberalism — to seize any portion of that other person’s money, merely because he has more. Private property means exactly that — private property –at every level of income. If you don’t share that view, then classical liberalism is probably not for you.