Democrats Are Not Libertarians

The American Democratic Party is not ideologically akin to libertarianism; in fact, the Republican Party's ideology is more libertarian in nature, advocating smaller government and less regulation.

Image: Libertarian Impulses

The American Democratic Party is not ideologically akin to libertarianism; in fact, the Republican Party's ideology is more libertarian in nature, advocating smaller government and less regulation, which are two of the main tenets of libertarianism.

Political Ideologies

The political ideology of libertarianism is rooted in liberty. And no liberty is more important than the individual freedom of each citizen. Libertarianism remains skeptical of big governmental forces and holds that "the function of government is to enable each of us to pursue our own good in our own way."

Likely because Democrats are considered "liberal," the term "libertarian" seems to imply a close connection to the Democratic Party.  But the liberalism of the American Democratic Party should be distinguished as "modern liberalism," quite different from the "classical liberalism" of the Founding Fathers and others who have supported individual liberty for a nation’s citizens.

The policies of the Libertarian Party are much more closely aligned with the Republican Party than they are with the Democratic Party. The Republican Party is the party of small government, low taxes, and strong defense, and individual liberty. The Libertarian Party advocates "smaller government, lower taxes, and more freedom."

Democrats and Libertarians

Policy differences dictate the true differences between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, and between these two parties and libertarianism.  While Republicans do prefer a leaner more efficient government, in practice they do not go far enough for most libertarians.  Still, any person who favors more government intrusion in the lives of citizens cannot claim to espouse libertarian views.

The Democratic Party is the party of big government, high taxes, and expansive regulation and intrusion into individual lives, guaranteeing less freedom, not more.   This position was on display during the 2016 election season. Democrat Hillary Clinton was proffering a socialist agenda, promising to go further than President Barack Obama had done in circumventing the Constitution and ruling by executive order, bypassing congress.

(After acquiring government power in the 2020 election, the Democrat-led Biden administration under the guise of protecting the public from the COVID virus has threatened the American public with mandates, shutting out vast swaths of the citizenry from participation in the workforce, in travel, and even in entering certain buildings.  American citizens are waking up to the idea that either Republicans nor Libertarians would seize and wield such an obscene level power and control over their fellow citizens; thus, projections for the next election of 2022 are stacking up to hand the Democrats an ousting from the House of Representatives.)

Hillarycare, Obamacare Intended to Lead to Single-Payer

An example of big government Democrat policy, Hillarycare—intended as a step in transitioning to single-payer, government controlled health care—was a forerunner of Obamacare, which once passed began to devastate the quality of medical care in the USA.  Just as with Hillarycare, the real purpose in passing the Obamacare bill was to establish a single-payer, government regulated system that Democrats always support.

However, to understand the effects of "universal healthcare" or government-regulated healthcare, one needs to look at Canada and Great Britain. Some Canadians who need immediate care have found they must come to the U. S. or resort to suing their own government to get care.

The cumbersome nature of government-regulated healthcare affects the quality and quantity of medical care. For the worst example of such a system, consider Cuba. When ordinary Cubans, as opposed to the ruling class and wealthy foreign visitors, go to the hospital, they have to take their own sheets, towels, and even their own aspirin.  Thus, government run healthcare is not favored by libertarians.

Libertarian and Republican Independence

Democrats favor plans to control the economy. They pit the middle-class against the rich and promise to tax the rich to pay for government regulation. Democrat politicos often claim that they have the ability to bring down gas prices, but such government tampering has always led to higher prices and inflation. The economy is best left to self-regulation. Government control has never improved economic conditions in any country.

Like libertarians, Republicans believe in the independent spirit that the Founding Fathers wrote into America’s founding documents, the Declaration of Independence and the U. S. Constitution.  Smaller government means more liberty and prosperity for everyone. Big government Democratic Party policies, as currently are being enacted by the Biden occupancy of the Oval Office, are resulting in a system of control that might well require another revolution to change.

That on-going leftward push of the Democratic Party remains the most convincing piece of evidence that Democrats are not libertarians. The slate of Democratic presidential candidate-wannabes for the presidential campaign 2020 continued that leftward push, with each nominee seeker trying to out-left the next.  Bernie Sanders and his ilk openly praised socialist schemes that have devastated such nations as Venezuela.

Sanders’ claim that his oxymoronic "democratic socialism" is exemplified by the Scandinavian countries has been debunked by leaders of those countries; for example, Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen has responded to Sander's socialist "slurs": "I would like to make one thing clear. Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy. Denmark is a market economy."

The platform of the Democratic Party holds no plank identical to any of the philosophical tenets of libertarianism.  Even the claim that libertarians are similar to Democrats in their views on such issues as gay marriage does not hold up.  The libertarian, and libertarian-leaning Republican, stance on marriage is that the government should not regulate marriage, gay or traditional.

The Democratic Party continues to move in the opposite direction from libertarian values.  In its push to distinguish itself even from earlier more moderate members, the Democratic Party continues to embrace policies that usurp freedom and undermine the abilities of citizens to engage in economic activities that lead to prosperity, all the while asserting disingenuously that those policies help the poor by stealing from the rich.

The Democratic Party's power hungry members seek only power for themselves not for all citizens, and they condemn anyone who disagrees with their ideas a "racist."  With the occupation of the Oval Office by plagiarist Joe Biden, the cry of white supremacy became a rallying feature for Democrat discourse.

A Fabricated Appropriation

That Democrats would attempt to pass off their authoritarian agenda as libertarian should come as no surprise to anyone paying attention to all the other fabrications, falsifications, and obfuscations they have concocted and widely spread throughout the past several decades.

Because citizens must sift through a plethora of lies and deceptions, sorting out the differences between liberal/Democrat, conservative/Republican, and libertarian/libertarianism, can be a confusing exercise.  It is understandable that many citizens come to disdain politicians as charlatans.

Joe Biden started his 2020 presidential campaign based on a lie.  Claiming that President Trump had praised white supremacists by equating them with legitimate protesters, Biden repeated the lie of the "fine people one both sides."  About the white supremacists, Trump said, "and I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists -- because they should be condemned totally."

Hillary Clinton was caught blatantly lying about her activities as First Lady, and Barack Obama claiming he had no idea that his pastor of twenty years was a flaming racist, anti-Semite while campaigning, and then as president blatantly lying, "if you like your doctor and you insurance you can keep them" and then spreading his even bigger lie, "pants on fire" rated by Politifact: "What we said was, you can keep (your plan) if it hasn’t changed since the law passed."

The big Bosnia lie was just the tip of the iceberg for Clinton. An avid gun-control advocate, she suddenly became "Annie Oakley," when it fit her agenda. So is she for gun-control or not? It depends up the state in which she is campaigning.

After moving into the White House in January 2021, the current Oval Office Occupier Joe Biden has begun sending out a steady stream of prevarications, earning him a sports arena chant for his lies about his administration’s mishandling of the military withdrawal from Afghanistan.

American Revolution 2.0

Americans surely do not want another revolution, but if the ideology of the Democratic Party secures a stranglehold on the United States government, the country may need a revolution/civil war to get the country back to the land of freedom and opportunity.

The lawlessness of the two terms of the Obama administration and the current Biden fiasco exemplify the authoritarian, statist nature of the current Democratic Party, whose members tout a totalitarian-socialist agenda, while using identity politics to claim they are on the side of the people.

And the Democrat claim of libertarianism is just another deceptive tactic adopted by an historically duplicitous political organization, whose very name is a deception; there is nothing democratic about the Democratic Party, just as there is nothing "libertarian" about it either.

Sources

• Jan Narveson. "Government." Libertarianism.org. August 15, 2008.

• Editors. "What Is Modern Liberalism?"  Goodman Institute.  Accessed December 2, 2021.

• Ralph Raico.  "What Is Classical Liberalism?"  Mises Institute.   November 1, 2018.

• The Libertarian Party. "About the Libertarian Party." Libertarian National Committee (LNC).  Alexandria, VA.

• Kelsey Snell. "Democrats Used To Run From Big Government Label; They're Now Embracing It." NPR. April 12, 2021.

• Editors.  "Freedoms Democrats Take Aware Are Not Coming Back."  Civil Candor.  November 19, 2021.

• Marisa Schultz.  "Clinton vows to go further than Obama with executive actions."  New York Post. May 6, 2015.

• Andrew C. McCarthy.  "Biden Knows His Vax Mandates Are Unconstitutional — but Just Doesn’t Care."  New York Post. September 10, 2021.

• Mia Heck.  "Hillarycare: The Slow-Walk to Single-Payer." RealClear Health.  June 2, 2016.

• Philip Dorsey. "Obamacare Ruined My Healthcare Coverage, And Now I'm Just Another Statistic."  Forbes.  November 24, 2015.

• David Gratzer."The Ugly Truth About Canadian Health Care."  City Journal.  Summer 2007.

• Roberto de Jesús Guerra Pérez. "Cracks Show in Cuban Healthcare System."  Institute for War & Peace Reporting.

• Andrew Thomas.  "Democrats’ War on the Middle Class."  American Thinker.  January 1, 2012.

• Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. "The Self-Regulating Economy."   Mises Institute. January 1, 2005.

• Ethan Lamb. "Nordic Countries are Neither Socialist nor Paradise."  The Economics Review at NYU. January 29, 2019.

• Kerry Jackson. "Denmark Tells Bernie Sanders It's Had Enough Of His 'Socialist' Slurs."  Investor's Business Daily.  November 9, 2015.

• Rand Paul. "Government Should Get Out of the Marriage Business Altogether."  Time.  June 28, 2015.

• Matt Welch."Democrats Hate Wealthy Candidates…When They're Not Democrats." Reason. January 31, 2019.

• John Steinreich.  "For Democrats, Power Isn't Everything — It's the Only Thing."  American Thinker.  November 8, 2019.

• Tim Murtaugh.  "Joe Biden's Plagiarism Problem."  RealClear Politics.  July 23, 2020.

• Charlie Eastman. "Exposing the Democrats’ White Supremacy Myth." The American Spectator.  August 24, 2021.

• Glenn Kessler. "Obama’s pledge that ‘no one will take away’ your health plan."  The Washington Post.  October 30, 2013.

• Steve Cortes.  "Trump Didn't Call Neo-Nazis 'Fine People.' Here's Proof." RealClear Politics.  March 21, 201.

• Editors. "Read the complete transcript of President Trump’s remarks at Trump Tower on Charlottesville." Los Angeles Times.  August 15, 2017.

• Louis Jacobson. "Barack Obama says that what he'd said was you could keep your plan 'if it hasn’t changed since the law passed'."  PolitiFact.  November 6, 2013.

• Pamela Engel."Here's the story behind Hillary Clinton's claim about landing under 'sniper fire' in Bosnia." Business Insider.  June 22, 2016.

• H. A. Goodman. "Before attacking Sanders on guns, Clinton was 'Annie Oakley'." The Hill.  January 20, 2016.

• Ewan Palmer.  "'F*** Joe Biden' Chant Breaks Out at New York Jets NFL Game."  Newsweek.  October 4, 2021.

• Editors. "6 Lies Joe Biden Told about Afghanistan."  New York Post.  September 1, 2021.

• Keith Edwards. "Leaked DNC emails prove there’s nothing 'democratic' about the Democratic Party."  American Thinker.  July 29, 2016.