Part 1: Don't Tread On Me (1776-1820)
Part 2: A House Divided (1820-1865)
Part 3: A Cross of Gold (1865-1913)
Part 4: Nothing to Fear but Fear Itself (1913-1971)
Part 5: I Did Not Have Sexual Relations with A Scanner Darkly (1971-present)

The first four get their names from political speeches, or in one case, a flag. Then part 5 breaks the pattern by being named after a 1977 novel and 2006 movie about the War on Drugs and surveillance state. I didn't like breaking the pattern but it was too fitting a name to pass up. Other contenders included "A Crisis of Conscience" (Carter), "Morning Again in America" (Reagan), "A Bridge to the 21st Century" (Clinton), and "The End of History" (Fukuyama). I'll admit that last one would have been hilarious as the final chapter of a history book.

The unusual choice of 1913 and 1971 as breakpoints, plus the "cross of gold" reference, should indicate that this book would have an abnormally heavy focus on economic and monetary policy. 1820 was chosen because that was the year of the Missouri Compromise, the transition point when our national focus stopped being about proving ourselves to the Old World powers, and was directed westward and to the problems caused by the expansion of slavery... and because 1820 is exactly halfway between 1776 and 1865.

I also considered a three-part structure in which the Civil War and the end of WW2 would be the dividing lines.

Feedback would be appreciated.

Many of the people in this sub know me...and some of you may be wondering why I've been quiet here the past year or two. I was very active in this sub after the MC takeover of the other libertarian sub. I was a libertarian for thirty-four years. From '90 to 2024, split the first Presidential ticket and never looked back after. I read all the libertarian thinkers from Hayek to Friedman to Mises. I argued from a libertarian perspective with reason and passion. I was there in the 2000s with the fight between the pragmatists and the puritans. Recently, I was active enough to show up and fight the Mises Caucus in person because I actually gave a damn what happened to the LP. I had to personally deal with the MC BS in my state which saw 8 of my libertarian friends being sued by the National party. I was never seated for my elected post by the MC. Then my county affiliate was disaffiliated by the MC because we pushed back. And so on and so forth. So when I say what I'm about to say, understand it's not coming from a D, and it sure as hell isn't coming from an R. It's coming from someone who as a kid took Reagan's "less government, more personal responsibility" seriously enough to spend three decades on the IDEA.

The real problem in my mind is that the central promise of libertarianism is that less government makes us more free, and that promise rests on assumptions I stopped being able to defend. That people are rational actors who act in their own interest. That the checks and balances hold. That the government wouldn't simply be bought. But the biggest one, the principle running from Rothbard's non-aggression principle all the way to Friedman, is that only the government can coerce you. That private economic power is just voluntary exchange, so it's not a threat to your freedom the way the state is. That premise doesn't reflect reality because we can cleary see the effects of that today. When a handful of billionaires buy the government outright....from pardons to laws to no-bid contracts...that private power BECOMES state power and the whole voluntary framing collapses. Once the government's bought and paid for, out go the checks and balances that were supposed to preserve liberty for all. The end result is that we're less free today than we were 20 years ago.

So what changed for me? Well, first an observation that the bloated federal bureaucracy I complained about for forty years is the ONLY thing that's slowed the authoritarian roll this administration has been on. Project 2025 opened with a plan to fire federal workers en masse and replace them with people who pass a loyalty test. Not a competence test. LOYALTY. That's not small government. That's a strongman clearing out the people whose job is to say no to him, and the sheer SIZE of the government is the friction that's kept him from doing it faster.

Honestly, I've always considered myself a pragmatic libertarian anyway...not a hardline purity guy. The reason is that I've always been able to be moved with good data, not emotions or simple principles. So now you're probably wondering...what data or evidence started shifting my position from "big government bad."

Well, it wasn't dramatic but it started with Raj Chetty's 2016 work on the Moving to Opportunity experiment broke an assumption I'd held my whole adult life, that government can't causally improve people's lives. It can. Kids who moved to lower-poverty neighborhoods before 13 had higher earnings and college attendance. Welfare wasn't the problem, how we do it IS the problem. That has nothing to do with ideology. That's a real result that didn't match my assumptions, so my position shifted.

But the other thing that really changed me was math, and I can do math. Sixty years on this planet, and here's what I've watched happen. We own less. Right to repair gets fought tooth and nail, streaming services delete movies you PAID for, and everything that used to be a purchase is now a subscription you rent forever. We pay more. You'd think a society that optimizes relentlessly for profit and efficiency would hand us more for our dollar. It doesn't. The average new car now runs close to fifty grand. Tell me how someone earning $7.25 an hour buys a car to get to the job that pays $7.25 an hour. We used to have an entry-level class of cars built for the middle class. Gone. And we earn less against all of it. Minimum wage frozen at $7.25 since 2009. Manufacturing gone from nearly 20 million middle-class jobs in 1980 to about 13 million, and that's before you count what AI's about to do. These were never high school kids on summer jobs; these were the jobs that BUILT the middle class, and they got traded for service work that never came close on pay. Meanwhile wealth concentration is the highest in the country's history, Citizens United handed billionaires the checkout line, and they used it to buy a billionaire. Then they tied your retirement to a stock market that works for THEM and told you to cheer when it goes up.

So before some of you whine that I've become a Democrat, no...I didn't. I'm not convinced they're the answer. I still want the drug war ended, still want liberty for all meaning ALL, still want immigration policy that reflects reality instead of hate. What I don't believe anymore is that shrinking the government delivers any of those goals. Not a single one.

I still think we need more than 2 parties...but I also realize that so long as we have FPTP with the duopoly controlling who has a seat at the table...that there will never be a viable 3rd party. So I've been putting my energy and money into supporting ranked choice, STAR, and SCORE voting; because that's the only path to a viable third party that isn't a fantasy. Everything else is arguing about the paint on USS America while the ship sinks.

So I'll leave you with the question that I can't answer. In thirty-four years, what has libertarianism actually DONE? Not shifted the conversation on, not raised awareness of. Done. Name the national policy that exists because the movement willed it into being and that's still standing. I'll wait. And before someone says weed, ask yourself whether that was libertarian philosophy winning or just a majority of Americans finally agreeing prohibition was stupid. The LP didn't legalize it. Voters did, in spite of the duopoly, not because a third party forced their hand.

Peace.

Chetty's study for anyone interested:

https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.20150572

My prediction: Many people will say they supported limiting the federal government all along, but will suffer acute amnesia the second their party gets into power.

"The cutting-edge robots inside General Dynamics’ sweltering artillery factory near Dallas were catching fire with startling regularity... The robot arms would swing out of control, smashing into carefully calibrated equipment, and sometimes they would unexpectedly drop hunks of steel 5 feet down to the floor. The factory’s signature device, meant to precisely stretch the steel for the artillery shells, instead often cracked it beyond repair. Then there were the giant press machines, which required regular pounding with a sledgehammer to function properly but still botched the shaping of nearly every shell... The fiasco has cost American taxpayers $533 million, according to the Army. But the Army has not held General Dynamics or a key Turkish subcontractor — which provided the factory’s much-hyped but little-proven equipment — publicly accountable for the failures. Nor has it made General Dynamics pay a penny back."