After seeing the unpleasant reaction to Kentucky Republican Senate candidate Rand Paul expressing a bit of Libertarian friskiness, I’m afraid that I may be out of contention for senator or president or governor or fashion editor of the Hartford Business Journal.
Rand Paul is not a political pro, so when he got cranked up on the Libertarian itch that fuels his Republican soul, he questioned whether such stuff as civil-rights law should apply to private businesses, because, well, you know, they’re “private.”
It’s not as if Rand put on a sheet and burned a cross on the White House lawn. Mulling the theoretical danger of allowing the government to sniff around private enterprises is rather standard chatter around the campfire at Libertarian summer camp — with the understanding that the nation has trotted off in a different direction.
In fact, there are economists with no Libertarian credentials at all who offer up this scenario: If a dominant company in a particular market refuses to hire qualified blacks, thus reducing the bargaining power of the black job candidates, then a competing company will hire them at the discounted rate and increase market share to the point where the blacks may be paid comparable wages to the whites at the bad, bad company.
Mr. Paul shares a frailty with many other Libertarian types; expressing your suspicion of freedom-gobbling government in a way that makes others uneasy — even when the Libertarian message in broad terms is reasonable.
In speeches explaining my occasional Libertarian giddiness, I sometimes mention how wonderful it would be if we all lived, naked, in the forest, living off bugs and berries, with no government bureaucrats regulating our behavior. I don’t exactly mean quite that — just as I imagine Mr. Paul is not poised to dismantle federal anti-discrimination law.
But when I run for office, someone is going to accuse me of advocating naked bug-eating — as opposed to expressing some disgruntlement with government intrusion into everything.
The advice to Rand Paul should go something like this: the Libertarian types are generally correct 50 percent of the time; reasonable men can differ about what they believe 30 percent of the time; and 20 percent of the time they come across as a bit too fringe-player for popular consumption. The trick for politicians such as Paul is to focus on the 50 percent, mention the 30 percent, and tread very softly with the 20 percent.
At the heart of the Libertarian message is a warning that government encroachment on freedom is a philosophical mistake, whether or not it is a practical nightmare.
The Libertarians won a major public relations victory in Connecticut a few years ago, with a U.S. Supreme Court challenge in a New London eminent domain case. The Libertarian public-interest law firm (Institute for Justice) that took the case “lost” the decision, but created an uproar across the land with the message that government could grab private land not only for bridges and dams and highways, but also to hand over to private developers.
While the Libertarians find more in the way of happy hunting grounds in such places as New Hampshire and Wyoming and Alaska, there is room for some playfulness in more despotic places as Connecticut, where taxis aren’t allowed to roam the streets looking for fares; and you can’t buy a bottle of wine in a grocery store.
The mantra that works best for the Rand Paul types: the government big and powerful enough to do what you like is also big and powerful enough to do what you don’t like.
Laurence D. Cohen is a freelance writer.
