For years now, people far less libertarian than I have been recommending I read Ayn Rand.  While I admit I have no interest in reading her books, I know enough about the author to find her distasteful, iconoclastic, and hypocritical.  Libertarianism is an ideal which treasures self-governance - that is, personal responsibility for one's actions and the freedom to make really bad mistakes as well as the freedom to believe something stupid.  I was excited when I heard about Jonathan Chait's New Republic trashing of Rand, but after I read the article, I couldn't help but feel angry and offended.

Chait, like many, many political commentators from the left, assumes that libertarianism is a simple, unnuanced ideal, that libertarians are incapable of breaking with dogma, and, in general, are a group of elitists who seek to control the world via some sort of perceived innate ability to be better than everyone else at almost anything.  This is an absurd caricature.  Libertarianism is motivated by different factors for different people, despite the fact that Chait suggests it is a psychological disease resulting from abusive parents! 

My own libertarianism is motivated by two factors: the first is humility.  I don't think of myself or any other human as capable of deciding what's best for strangers.  I should be in control of my own life, just as other people should be in control of theirs.  For instance, even if I find gay marriage to be absurd and/or immoral, why should my opinion matter?  Shouldn't two gay people be able to make that decision for themselves?  It's none of my business, and I feel the same about heterosexual marriage.  As long as people don't hurt or encroach upon the rights of others, their behavior and choices are their behavior and choices.  That is why America was founded as a republic and not as a democracy.  Amy Chua admirably explores the tendency of democracy to discriminate against minorities in her book "World on Fire."  It's unfortunate that our society has strayed so far from its original purpose that politics has become a popularity contest.  What right do Maine voters have to impose the tyranny of the majority on the institution of marriage, in essence a private contract between two individuals?  Or what right do Massachusetts voters have to decide whether or not someone can smoke marijuana?

The second factor motivating my libertarianism is a strong appreciation for traditional Christian values.  Notice, I didn't say appreciation for Christian religion.  I find the desire to legislate morality by majority-rules to be morally repugnant and childish.  People should be mature enough to be moral without an external threat, whether that threat is eternal torment in Hell or jailtime.  People who are not moral for practical reasons but only because it is right are the true Christians (or Muslims, or Atheists).  Here I feel the need to repeat my belief that encroachment upon the rights of other people is never acceptable and should be punished. 

I believe the answer to poverty is much more in line with education reform than with welfare, which creates a slave-class of dependents - exactly the opposite of its purpose.  It would be too general to point out that the U.S. has had its least amount of economic mobility since the imposition of the welfare state.  One could counter with the example of the Nordic countries, France, or Japan, but these countries impose welfare in much smarter ways, such as with universal healthcare to create healthy, productive members of society, or with investments in education, instead of just food, checks, and lip-service.  As for poverty, I feel that my understanding of the positive is akin to that of left-liberalism, but my normative is assuredly not; I attach more value to results and unintended consequences and believe in the inherent fallibility of both bureaucrats and elected leaders.  Elected leaders are not neccessarily good at solving problems; they are good at getting elected.  Intentions do not matter to anyone but oneself.  We should therefore create a system based on pragmatic empiricism. 

The ideal figure for libertarians of the Objectivist slant may be John Galt, but for me, it is Jean Valjean.  As such, I am certainly no Randroid.  Objectivist libertarians and libertarians such as myself strongly differ in our belief in the role of luck.  Objectivist philosophy is incompatible with the idea of luck; Objectivists believe a free-market system rewards the hard-working and virtuous, hence free markets are moral.  I believe a free-market system allows people the opportunity for personal development and to take advantage of luck through copious trial-and-error.  This flexibility creates a healthy and happy society of Lacademonian individuals.  On the other side of the coin, I believe capitalism is also the perfect system for people who don't want to work and instead want to maximize free time.  Objectivists would find the contention that people should be free to do nothing repugnant.

When our capitalist system breaks down via the creation of moral hazard and the doling out of corporate welfare arbitrarily based on elegant - as opposed to accurate - economic models, it loses its capacity to improve humankind.  A capitalism wherein there is no possibility for failure is no capitalism at all; it is a nanny state.  Such a government is like parents that do everything for their children instead of allowing their children to learn about the world themselves.  Certainly there is a middle ground, but, let me ask you, how long would you continue to give your children an allowance with no demands of accountability?  Do you think this would be best for your children?  Would it change things if the allowance came not from you, but from your neighbors?  Isn't this easier and more politically palatable, though less effective, than "tough love"?  And isn't every parent's goal for children to make the right decisions not out of fear of reprisal, but out of strong, individual moral grounding?  

Jonathan Chait's article casts libertarians such as myself as members of a radical right-wing fringe of an almost religious sort.  On the contrary, I would describe myself more as a political agnostic: the default position is to be skeptical of the efficacy of government, while hoping for real results someday.  For this reason - and for the overwhelming moral imperative to end the Iraq War - many libertarians of my slant voted for Kerry and Obama respectively in 2004 and 2008, putting hope before the teachings of experience.  Such behavior is hardly right-wing, as Chait would suggest. 

In conclusion I would just like to say to everyone: stop blaming Wall Street.  Wall Street is greedy and inept, like everyone else, which is why Wall Street firms especially should be allowed to fail.  Wall Street got especially greedy ten years ago and started lending to people who it shouldn't have been lending to, and instead of being allowed to pay for its mistake via the natural trough of the business cycle, Wall Street was given billions of dollars that Wall Street's allies in government took from taxpayers so the same people can do the same stupid things all over again. 

There is a bias within our culture against finance, as though financiers leech off the productivity of others.  Nevertheless, Wall Street has financed every important technological change for the last hundred years, including the internet, which allows you to read this article, and the advances in medicine that allow me to write it (I've had pneumonia twice and suffered a collapsed lung when I was 16.).  The beneficial effects of finance on society would far outweigh the negative effects of finance on society if only we allowed the bankruptcy laws which developed over hundreds of years of trial and error to take effect instead of propping up our corporate empire with taxpayer dollars.  Chait misses this central tenet of many forms of libertarianism, lumping us all into an extremist corporatist sterotype while representing his own naive ideology as the center.