Civil Libertarianism

Prompted by a Tweet on Glenn Greenwald's Twitter account asking him if he were a Libertarian (he said not), I found this interesting response on a forum regarding the differences between a Libertarian and a Civil Libertarian:

jshore Charter Member   Join Date: May 2000 Posts: 6,496

Well, I've heard plenty of talk about / from libertarians. Basically, libertarians believe in what they would call "maximal freedom for the individual", in particular from government control. They believe in the absolute primacy of the market in the economic realm since this is the only method they believe people make "free exchanges" and are not compelled by the government to do things. "Civil libertarians" emphasize personal liberty but deviate from libertarians (unless they are also libertarians) on property rights and the role of government in the economic realm...They generally still believe in property rights but not to the point where government can only "take your money/property" for anything but a few specific vital necessary functions. Now for some commentary: I think one of the things that is so attractive about libertarianism is that it seems like a nice consistent theory. I.e., libertarians can say simply "I want government off your back as much as possible whereas civil libertarians have to explain why they want to limit government in the realm of personal liberty but still allow it to play a big role in the economic realm. However, I think there are big problems with libertarianism: (1) It fails to recognize various problems with the market such as externalities, lack of information, ... that make the market less than ideal. [Some libertarians do recognize the need to deal with these.] (2) It fails to recognize that government is not the only coercive power and that in fact government is the only way be which the large majority of people can regulate the coercive power that economic power brings. Libertarians seem to believe that you are still making a choice freely even if you are doing it under the duress, say, of not starving to death. (3) It fails to recognize how collective our economic system is, i.e., that the money that each person makes is only "theirs" in an approximate sense and hence it isn't stealing if the government takes part of it to administer the collective enterprise and even to redistribute. [See last part of next point.] (4) It is not really as much "one consistent principle" as it seems because most libertarians end up making exceptions for certain government functions they deem important so in the end they are drawing lines almost just as much as anyone else. In particular, you don't hear libertarians questioning things like corporate law and patent law and the like, so they rig the economic rules of the game a certain way, and then cry "Redistribution...you are stealing other people's money!" when any attempt is made to remedy the inequities that result. (5) It doesn't work for shit. I do think in the end you have to check your principles against the results they produce and decide how you feel about it. [Setting up a society ain't all deductive reasoning.] I think excessively libertarian societies already lead to excesses of inequality that many of us simply find abhorrent (and probably even unstable in that they lead to high crime and even revolution). In the end, I believe that libertarianism, like Marxism, is an idealistic theory that would work great if people were angels but does not work in the real world.

Does anything?

And, another responder:

hawthorne Guest   Join Date: Apr 2000

Well there are plenty of libertarians here as well as civil libertarians. And their concerns overlap to a fair degree. I am a committe member of my local equivalent to your ACLU. Some of the general membership are libertarians, but the active membership is mostly (just) left of centre. Two crude generalisations: Libertarians see most if not all government activity beyond the definition and enforcement of property rights as an enfringement upon liberty, and they view market transactions as pretty much always consentual. But whilst civil libertarians agree that governments are a grave threat to liberty they believe governments can also enhance freedoms threatened by sometimes oppressive market forces. Civil libertarians believe that in order for everyone to make real choices about their lives governments may need to limit the power of some people. Libertarians tend to be less concerned about equality of bargaining power and more concerned that government activity constrains choices.