Libertarians discussing anything.

Recently, within the Liberty-o-sphere, much hay was made over a speech by Jeff Deist, president of the Mises Institute, titled “For a New Libertarian.” Steve Horowitz, Professor of Economics at St. Lawrence University took issue with Deist’s employment of the phrase “blood and soil,” calling it a “clearly racist and anti-Semitic Nazi-era phrase.” Reaction to Horowitz ranged from pointing at him and hissing ‘Jew!’ to more measured responses. From my reading of the speech, I find claiming Deist’s employment of the phrase to be “clearly racist and anti-Semitic” to be uncharitable. However, I do find the defense of “Blut und Boden” being first coined by 19th century German romantic nationalists to be a bit odd in this context, as I wonder why the president of an ostensibly anarcho-capitalist think tank would choose as his cri du coeur a phrase that was the very center of the ideological foundations of the modern nation-state. Indeed, lost in all the back-and-forth over whether or not “For a New Libertarian” is Mein Kampf redux is the larger question: Is thin libertarianism dead?

Horowitz, as a self-styled “Bleeding Heart Libertarian,” is a proponent of what is known as thick libertarianism. That is, the belief that libertarianism entails certain social and political beliefs, namely a lukewarm 20th century humanist liberalism. Thickists argue that a society (or an individual) is not truly libertarian unless there is a general belief in egalitarianism, tolerance, democracy, etc.. On the other hand, Rothbardian anarcho-capitalists argue for thin libertarianism, which is defined as the belief that libertarianism equals the non-aggression principle – nothing more, nothing less. At least they did until Deist’s speech two and a half weeks ago. When Deist argued that “[i]n other words, blood and soil and God and nation still matter to people. Libertarians ignore this at the risk of irrelevance,” it is an explicit rejection of thin libertarianism; he is saying that there is more to libertarianism than the NAP. However, contrary to the Bleeding Heart Libertarians, Deist and others now argue that it entails some flavor of traditionalist social conservatism.

As an anarcho-capitalist, I’m quite used to completely execrable human beings advocating for positions I share, which is why I believe Deist’s recent gambit to be wrong-headed. In the name of attempting to make liberty more appealing to people, Deist is, in fact, limiting and delimiting the movement extremely narrowly. Deist claimed “Mecca is not Paris, an Irishman is not an Aboriginal, a Buddhist is not a Rastafarian, a soccer mom is not a Russian,” yet here I am, the son of a Rastafarian and a Jew who converted to Buddhism at the age of 24. Thin libertarianism is what allows me to stand ranks with Deist against ever-encroaching statism. I need not agree with Deist’s new penchant for romantic nationalism, but as long as he respects the NAP, we can co-exist in the liberty sphere. It’s a shame the moonshine is so good that Deist keeps wanting to be invited to all those yokeltarian hootenannys down in Auburn, for with the death of thin libertarianism, the liberty movement may have suffer a self-inflicted dolorous blow from which it will not recover. Contra Deist, what will, in actuality, doom libertarianism to irrelevancy is fracturing the movement along 1,000 little stupid country mouse/city mouse pissing matches.

Thicc Libertarianism on the other hand…