Damn Distasteful Things

I see around the blogosphere that there are some attempts, here and there, to sway the libertarian-inclined (as distinct from the Libertarian Party) vote.  As usual from the Right, but more unusually from the Left, now painting themselves as the guardians of our liberties from the eeevil conservatives.

Well, I'm not going to try and explain why you're not going to find many of us finding one side or the other exactly appealing.  The social conservatives know their issues with us and our issues with them, so there's not much point in explaining.  The question seems to come more from the left, certainly, but for them I really don't have the space to explain the economics and political theory to background our view as to why we remain tragically unconvinced.  Go read Locke, Hayek, and Postrel, to pick three names out of a hat, and then come back and tell me why y'all's claims to protect and extend our liberties and attend to the progress of civilization are generally good for a hollow laugh or two, down our way.

So, instead, let me attempt to explain the rather simpler problem of why we frequently find ourselves voting or working with such an unlikely set of allies.  After all, while libertarians - or at least minarchists - are a natural fit for small-government conservatives, alliance-wise, it's much harder to explain what we might have in common with social conservatives (the religious and secular right both), neoconservatives, or the corporate giveaway/protectionist faction.

Well, not to put too fine a point on it, our backs are to the wall.

Think about it.  If you guys on the left, here, start finding things intolerable, you can always bugger off to Canada or Europe, and find some right-minded (sic) people to live among; many of you may love your country and not want to leave, fine, but the option is still there.  If you're a libertarian in England, you poor suffering bastard, you can always jump ship and come here.  But if you're a libertarian here - well, you've got nowhere to go.

This is it.  This is as good as it gets.  If you value liberty, natural rights, what - to speak immigratorily for a moment - used to be called the rights of Englishmen, and you want to live as if you really believed that, then you can do it between the Lakes and the Gulf, and between sea and shining sea, or you can do it in theory.  Whatever flaws you might dig up, and despite the best efforts of statists of the Left and Right over the 232 years of its existence, the Land of the Free still is, by a good order of magnitude.  Leaving aside assorted howling barbarians - demonstrating, daily, that liberty is not anarchy - the statists and statist philosophies have the Earth entire.

Except here.

So, pray forgive us if we find ourselves working with some damn distasteful people, sometimes.  When you're staring down an existential threat, you hold your nose, and you do what you have to.  Because this is our "shining city on a hill"; our last, best hope.  And be damned to you, sirs, you cannot have it!