My title may suggest a Jane Austen novel, but I have something totally different in mind. I write about the politics not of amour, but of state. There isn’t much love in our politics, and there probably never has been. But the bigger and more oppressive the government becomes, the smaller the space left in our society for love.
When I speak to fellow libertarians of the Republican and Democratic parties as “major,” and the Libertarian as “minor,” the sparks fly. They’re insulted because they think I’m suggesting that the Libertarian Party is less important. Since that’s not what I mean, I’ve tried to find more accurate terms. The Democrats and the GOP are the parties of power, but the Libertarians are the party of persuasion.
These terms respond to the fact that the two types of political parties have different functions. If we remember what that difference is, we may keep a clearer picture of the goals we can accomplish. Not only that, but we’ll likely spare ourselves a lot of frustration.
The bigger and more oppressive the government becomes, the smaller the space left in our society for love.
Devotees of the power game can’t understand us, because they don’t understand the importance of persuasion. No truly free society can exist without it. If coercion and aggression are everything, then only power matters. People who think like that will always belong to parties of power.
Libertarians are believers in persuasion. We measure our political success not by “winning,” but by convincing. It took me some time to make my peace with that concept, but when people tell me that my candidate has no chance of winning an election, in that condescending tone they always use, it no longer makes me gnash my teeth. I simply measure success by a different yardstick.
Even if we’re not capital-L people, if we are lovers of liberty we are people of persuasion. And a growing segment of the public is being persuaded. We have every reason to hope that the number will continue to grow. Power players will go right on telling us what losers we are because we can never “win.” But the game is changing.
The success of anti-establishment candidates in the power party races has plunged the power players into gloom. They think the voters are having yet another temper tantrum, and are lecturing us all on the unsuitability of the popular favorites. Their argument has morphed, however, from hyperventilation over Trump’s vulgarities and Sanders’ revolutionary fantasies into warnings that they can’t “win.” It’s almost — almost — enough to make me wish that the two surprise contenders would face off in the finals, making it a battle of losers, one of whom would then actually win. It would, at least, confound the morons who’ve mistaken the process of choosing the most powerful executive on earth for a national championship.
If coercion and aggression are everything, then only power matters. People who think like that will always belong to parties of power.
Would it lead them to see how silly the exercise has become? Perhaps it would, for some. For a great many others, it already has. Polls show Libertarian Party presidential frontrunner and former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson poised for an historic level of electoral support for that very reason. Johnson won’t win, but he’s changing the game — and persuading.
We need parties of persuasion to exist as civilized people. Politics isn’t going away, whether we like it or not, because for the foreseeable future, despite how much we hate the idea, government is here to stay. And power politics will exist as long as there is big and intrusive government. The twin Goliaths care about nothing but power, having long ago abandoned most pretenses of caring about persuasion. That’s where the Davids come in, and it’s why we’re necessary.
Even when they win, power-game voters almost never get what they want. They are merely being used as a means of keeping the Goliaths in charge. And this time, until the next time, once they have served their purpose they will be discarded and disregarded. If we explain this to them, some of them just may stop telling us what losers we are and begin to consider voting for more libertarian options.
The primary concept to get through to them, though, is the difference between power and persuasion. Which function do they want politics to serve? That is the decision that determines not only their own choices but the direction our country will take.
