“We are ideological cousins sprung from common ancestry,” McGill political science professor and libertarian Jacob Levy GS ’99 said.
Ideologically, the two groups agree on a sense of liberty, but they disagree about the specifics of what the term means, sociology professor Paul Starr said.
Libertarians give the highest priorities to property rights, whereas liberals give greater weight to constitutional rights, Starr said.
A second liberal panelist, The Nation’s Washington, D.C., editor Christopher Hayes, noted that the meaning of the term “liberal” has changed as the political landscape in the United States has been torn apart and reformed over the past few years.
“There are demographic changes in the liberal coalition,” Hayes explained.
Hayes noted that the current administration’s handling of three issues have led to a liberal-libertarian alliance: the growth of the “national security state,” immigration and economic policy.
There is one significant factor, however, that differentiates liberals from libertarians, namely “the role of government in creating and managing markets,” Wilson School professor Douglas Massey GS ’77 explained.
Nevertheless, Massey said that he believes libertarians should naturally ally with liberals. “I had always been asking the question ‘what’s with the libertarians hanging out with the Republicans when they’re going against their beliefs?’ ”
Cato Institute vice president for research Brink Lindsey outlined his transition from a “conservative sympathizer” who voted for Ronald Reagan in 1980 to a liberal ally who voted for the Democratic Party in the 2006 midterm elections.
Libertarians are no longer dependable Republicans as they were in decades past, he said. “Liberals might not want us or need us, but it doesn’t matter because we’re coming anyway,” he added.
Lindsey noted, however, that improving the overall state of the nation and extending health insurance benefits are more important to both libertarians and liberals than sticking adamantly to their own beliefs.
Will Wilkinson, a research fellow and managing editor for the online forum Cato Unbound, was the final libertarian speaker and agreed with Lindsey that libertarians are beginning to identify more with the Democratic Party.
Tax policy is at the bottom of the priorities list for libertarians, Wilkinson explained, noting that even wealthy libertarians support Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) because of his social policies, despite his plans to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans.
Brown University political science professor John Tomasi, a neutral commentator who said he considers himself a libertarian, said that both parties should come together and think about the welfare of the state more than their own opinions.
“I agree with almost everything that everyone said on each side,” Tomasi said.
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