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Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all. We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain.
― Frédéric Bastiat, The Law

Bastiat’s words have been quite obviously true from the day he wrote them, but the socialists and statists of today have laid bare their complete inability to distinguish between society and the State. The Orwellian newspeak of the modern left has rendered the distinction between the public sphere inhabited by the State and the one inhabited by culture difficult to describe. One example highlights an old semantics battle fought and won by the left. Over a decade ago, 17 year-old me struggled with the question posed in civics class: “What is the difference between civil rights and civil liberties?” A quick flip in the dictionary to “Civil Rights” yields this answer:

Personal liberties that belong to an individual, owing to his or her status as a citizen or resident of a particular country or community.

Another quick flip to “Civil Liberties” yields this answer:

rights or freedoms given to the people by the First Amendment to the Constitution, by common law, or legislation, allowing the individual to be free to speak, think, assemble, organize, worship, or petition without government (or even private) interference or restraints. These liberties are protective in nature, while civil rights form a broader concept and include positive elements such as the right to use facilities, the right to an equal education, or the right to participate in government. (See: civil rights)

Needless to say, the competition this question was based on didn’t go well for me. However, this question has stuck in my head for years. It wasn’t until studying 14th Amendment jurisprudence in law school that the answer dawned on me. There is no difference between civil rights and civil liberties . . . but there was!

In the original formulation of the 14th Amendment, the politicians and thinkers of the time split rights into three relevant categories: civil, political, and social. Civil rights were what we would recognize today as negative rights (1st Amendment, etc.). Political rights are those limited positive rights (voting rights, etc.) that are focused on the procedural aspects of running the government. Social rights are recognized as positive rights (no private discrimination, welfare, cultural identity, etc.). However, this all seemed foreign to somebody like me who had no exposure to these classic definitions. Today, they are all lumped together as civil rights, giving us libertarians no easy “handle to grasp” when discussing these issues. It would be an easy mantra for us to say “legislate civil rights, not social rights,” but the phrase has no meaning to a modern audience.

Reflecting back on Bastiat’s quote from The Law, it is clear that libertarians have just as difficult of a time separating society from the State as statists do. Many times we jump to the conclusion that the only hurdle for “goodness” or “morality” is that something should not be legislated against by the State. We’ve all heard the slur that libertarians are just libertines.  Many libertarians take a weak stance (if any at all) against encroaching cultural changes. Some even hold open disdain toward participation in the “Culture War.”

This is exactly the wrong tactic to use in defense of liberty. While the abstaining libertarians spend their time and effort staying “above the fray,” the Culture War wages on beneath them, dragging them further and further away from their end goal. Prominent libertarian thinkers sprint full-speed, grasping and lunging for the elusive Libertarian Moment. All the while, they’re stuck on a bullet train headed straight for Statist Station. Without addressing the elements of our society most hostile to liberty, any handful of progress made will be fleeting, meaningless, and overwhelmed by the dump truck load of totalitarianism that has accumulated in the same duration.

Andrew Breitbart observed that politics is downstream from culture. I believe this to be very true. The statist shift we have seen in the last 100 years isn’t because politicians have tricked well-meaning citizens into supporting growth of the State. The cause and effect is flipped. Our culture has created these politicians. Only when we internalize this can we understand the importance of the Culture War. Libertarians will be nothing until we engage in evangelism, organization, disruption, and institutional control to the level that the Progressives have for the last 100 years. No standard libertarian disclaimers apply here. We need to seize the positions of power for our culture, and we need to exert our influence on society.

This feels dirty and unlibertarian. It feels downright statist. However, this is because the line between society and the State has been so blurred. We can influence culture without abandoning our principles. Usually, this is where libertarian thinkers fall flat on their face. In courting the libertarian feels, they’ll say things like: It’s as simple as challenging somebody when they mindlessly spout off about how “there should be a law!” It’s as simple as giving a few dollars to a liberty-loving non-profit that supports victims of the State. It’s as simple as teaching your children to view government with a healthy skepticism.

If the last 100 years have taught us anything, it’s that winning back liberty isn’t that simple. Liberty loving individuals aren’t ones to use the Alinskyite playbook to get our way, but we’ve been eaten alive for a century. It’s time to ratchet things up. We need to establish the organization and infrastructure required to mount a counter-assault against the Statist-held institutions of society and the State. We need to organize on local levels to make sure that things like unfair zoning, over-restrictive HOAs, and abusive eminent domain are met with protest. We need to establish a cost-effective alternative to the public indoctrination centers so that families aren’t forced to choose between sending their kids to a daily Progressive church service and having enough money to eat. We need to offer entertainment and news that is completely detached from the legacy media, especially their agenda-setting powers. We must cover events that actually matter rather than the ones personally groomed by Statist elites. We must free the studies of history, economics, and philosophy from the shackles of postmodern leftism by better promoting libertarian academicians.

The answers to many of these problems are not imminently forthcoming, but putting our fingers in our ears and chanting “shouldn’t be illegal, not my problem” is going to lead to only one place. . . totalitarian ruin. It’s not only okay for libertarians to wade into the Culture War, it’s necessary. If we don’t, we’ll wish we were only as irrelevant as we are today. Only, we won’t have the words to describe what happened.