Earlier this month Kathleen Hunker wrote an article for PolicyMic that was headlined "Libertarian Views Will Never Be Mainstream In America, Unfortunately."
The "Unfortunately" is apparently a nod to Hunker's profile in which she's described as a classical liberal.
But why the "Never"?
There was a time when her classical liberal forebears would have written "Socialist Views Will Never Be Mainstream In America, Fortunately."
And arguably that's still true.
What America really is today isn't so much socialist as it is a combination of the worst of many coercive collectivist ideologies: socialism, communism, fascism, statism, corporatism, cronyism, oligarchy and just plain Good Ole Timey Ruling Class Mafia Gangsterism.
And that's just at home. America's foreign policy consists of another sociopathic brew of gratuitous ruthlessness: interventionism, expansionism, colonialism, imperialism, militarism and economically crippling empire building in general.
Socialists understood two things back in the day.
1. Socialism might never triumph in their own lifetimes, and
2. "The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism. But under the name of Liberalism, they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program until one day America will be a socialist nation without knowing how it happened." – Former Socialist Party leader Norman Thomas.
(Some say the Thomas quote is bogus, but based on the quote itself liberals are supposed to deny that liberalism is socialism.)
Most participants in the Modern American Libertarian Movement understand the first point but should never become the hypocrites of the second. The non-aggression principle not only rejects coercion and intimidation as means toward reaching goals but also rejects fraud, which is lying for personal gain.
Libertarians need do only what they are doing today:
1. Choose the flavor of libertarianism you can champion best; Libertarian Party, minarchism, anarchism, anarcho-capitalism, voluntaryism, left libertarianism, etc...
2. Champion it by pounding away about the non-aggression principle on all fronts: political, social, economic, academic, legal, creative, .and every other way it can be communicated.
Above all, recognize the fact that today there are many more people aware of the word, or the basic concept, or the fundamental principles of libertarianism than at any time since the founding of the Libertarian party in 1971.
Those who scorn libertarianism as not being mainstream are actually paying libertarians a compliment; just look at the unspeakable atrocities mainstream politics has done to a once-free society.
Someday libertarianism will be mainstream again and then we can rewrite Hunker's headline.
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