The Rhetoric of the American Libertarian Party

As someone who identifies himself as a Libertarian-leaning Republican, I pride myself on knowing what both of the parties mentioned in my affiliation stand for. As the Republican point of view is usually easier to locate in terms of where they stand on any given issue, I will focus mainly on the Libertarian point of view, where they stand, on how they wish to portray themselves to the common person and in the media.
Personally, I have always thought of the libertarian view as something that can be simply stated as their old slogan; “Freedom of Choice on Everything.” Libertarians favor limited government in every aspect of life, from business to the personal lives of American citizens. But it then occurred to me that I had never read much literature on the party, nor listened much to the candidates that they have put up for office. The one time I listened to Bob Barr speak, I couldn’t take him seriously by virtue of the fact that he continued to insist to his interviewer that he had a legitimate chance at winning the presidency (we all know that third parties have no chance at winning the presidency, the purpose they hold is more a function of giving people who are frustrated with the current establishment a chance to throw their lot in with someone they feel better represents their views, all I ask from these candidates is that they grasp this reality). So with this in mind I set out to learn something more official about a party that I feel may be more representative of the typical American voter than the voter even realizes, and I figured the best way to go about this quest was to begin at the party’s official website at www.lp.org.
What I found mostly confirmed what I already knew, but what I found interesting was the extremes that the website went to in order to drive home their point of small government and freedom for all in all aspects of life. In speaking of government’s role in society, they are very clear that the only role of government is ‘help individuals defend themselves from force and fraud,’ a very minimalist approach to be sure. Oppositely, they expressly state that the government should stay out of economics, arguing that ‘peaceful, honest people (should be able to) offer their goods and services to willing consumers without a hassle from government.’ When they speak of rights that should be reserved to the people of the United States, they really push the ‘freedom of choice on everything’ factor, even going so far as to mention topics like freedom to medicate oneself however they see fit, and to smoke and make love however they wish. Certainly values the party has always represented, but the inclusion of such subjects in the party’s official website is something I doubt you would see in either of the two major parties. I think the point of this is to emphasize the vast differences that the Libertarian Party holds from both Democrats and Republicans. It seems every four years we see Ralph Nader running for the Green Party citing that he feels that both major parties are too similar on too many issues, so this is probably a staple of third party politics in the United States. This is not the only place where the Libertarian Party’s website shows their adversity to partisan politics either.
I have always identified Libertarian voters to be aligned more with the Republican side of politics than the Democrats, and this may be partially because I think of Libertarianism as the old Republican way of thinking, but also because Libertarians like Ron Paul have sometimes thrown their hat into the mix of Republican presidential candidates. I may even have thought this because I personally have always seen economic issues as being of greater importance than social ones, and that is where Libertarians and Republicans have always had a common ground. Whatever my reasoning for this has been in the past, I’m afraid that now I will have to change my thinking. The website really emphasizes its differences with both parties as much as possible, and in particular takes some extra shots at Republican congress members and their ideas of big government, usually a concept that the common voter would think that Democrats have cornered. Their daily poll noted that plenty of past Republicans had also tried to pass ‘big government’ health care bills and called it hypocritical of them to be criticizing Obama for his own government system proposal. Similarly, an article on the homepage for the site takes special care to mention that although they are opposed to Obama’s bill for a larger government role in the health care industry, they also oppose Republican plans for government health care that have been put into place over recent years. This seems a bit odd, going out of their way to take shots at Republicans for ideas of times long past that clearly are not relevant in today’s political discussion, but it could possibly mean that I was not alone in believing that Libertarians leaned more towards the Republican side of politics. If too many Americans held this way of thinking towards the Libertarian Party it is possible that these shots were meant to help avoid a conflict for the party of being accused of being too close to the Republican Party on too many issues, a fault that Libertarians and Green Party members accuse the two major parties falling into, and a problem that the aforementioned Ralph Nader runs into when running for president (although in his case he accused of being too close to the Democrats on too many issues).
The final interesting choice of communication that I found on the Libertarian Party’s website was their use of the phrase ‘America’s third-largest party.’ They make a point to use this phrase almost religiously, and the phrase can be spotted on most every page on the site. Additionally, every article on the home page and in the news section has the phrase within the first sentence or two. I would guess that the aim of this is twofold. First, like every political party the Libertarians are trying to gain leverage and popularity in order to gain influence on major issues and to get members of their party elected to office. By identifying themselves as America’s third-largest party they can hope to push out smaller third parties and attract more attention that may otherwise go to these smaller entities. The second and probably more important reason for this self-identification is to remind Americans that they do have another choice besides the two major parties. They want it to sound like Bob Barr was not completely full of it when he said he thought he had a legitimate shot at winning the 2008 election, and more than save face there, they want that kind of talk to be a reality in the future for the party.
The official website of the Libertarian Party showed quite a bit of interesting communications pieces which told me a lot about the message of the party, and even more about how they want to be perceived in American politics and society. In the end, they are a party with new ideas that come with extreme division from traditional political party norms, even to the point where one might question if their commitment to small government might hurt their cause (the idea of health care with no government regulation whatsoever is something that I think the American people would have a hard time believing would work, it even makes me raise an eyebrow). Still, extreme ideas may be what are needed to reshape the political landscape into something that will work better for the people of the United States. I am happy for the opportunity given to me to discover a different way of thinking that I can incorporate features of into my own political ideology and I think that we would all be well-served to investigate many of the third parties that lie off the beaten path in order to get a better perspective on the different sides of the many issues that we face in American society, and perhaps as a result become better educated voters.