From James Poulos:
How many hipsters are too poor to party? The liberaltarian bargain, with the state as cool parent, does have a first principle: we should help create a popular ‘private sphere’ that can, should, and does expand as costs are socialized and power is centralized.
It is the allure of this promise, already planted within the popular culture, which is making lots of young people more liberal and more libertarian — this principle, and nothing else.
Spontaneous order, centrally planned? If that oxymoron is the offer, count me out.
Okay, count me out anyway, because “liberaltarianism” is little more than progressives attempting to sell economic errors to libertarians because we allegedly agree on social issues. We don’t agree because liberty is about more than opposition to the current American Right. Libertarianism concerns itself with liberty for each individual. Much like today’s conservatism, liberalism seeks its preferred collective outcomes, to be imposed on the unwilling minority. All partisanship is the mistaken belief that everyone should play for your team. It assumes the defeated would like this, if only they weren’t so <insert negative personal attribute>. That’s not liberty.
But I reject the idea more vehemently and vocally if a government-created private sphere is what I should expect. I think it is.
Link via Andrew Sullivan.
Tony:
I think you (and by extension, James) miss a big part of the point of “liberaltarianism,” which is ultimately to push both libertarianism and liberalism closer to their classical liberal roots, a point I make at much more length here:
http://www.ordinary-gentlemen.com/2009/02/the-promise-of-liberaltarianism/