Leading to the 2024 election I made the observation that this election was going to be interesting to see just what people who called themselves libertarians were really interested in. Was it libertarianism as a concept or was it just certain policies that they wanted to see implemented that the libertarian movement agreed with them on. And what positions they were willing to give up to achieve those that they wanted to see implemented. This election did not disappoint as people very publicly showed us.
A lot of the right-wing populist part of the liberty movement ended up embracing Donald Trump because he also holds a lot of right-wing populist ideas. Or to be more precise, speaks to the populist’s concerns with a lot of vagueness and assurances that he ‘feels their pain’. At the end of the day, he’ll do what he thinks is best because as we’ve learned through a long examination of his psyche, he doesn’t feel he needs to research things or think much about them, his instinct is always correct. So, he makes promises and assurances that he routinely reneges on. A promise from Donald Trump isn’t worth the paper it is written on.
But knowing this, many right-wing populists felt that they could get something out of a Donald Trump presidency. So, they made deals and convinced themselves that they had to support his election to get those promises fulfilled. These included the release of Ross Ulbrecht from prison and a libertarian in the cabinet. It’s too early to say on the first one, but the second one looks to be already broken as Trump’s cabinet has been ‘filled’ and no libertarian exists anywhere.
You see, Trump has far bigger goals in mind and all he wanted was to get the power he needed to implement them. Those goals are to rule the country at his whim, unheeded by the people who were more concerned about the Constitution and the future of the Republican party that stalled many of his decisions in his first term. And the liberty movement was just a means to an end with no real power or anything to offer him once he got elected. Many of us tried to warn against this obvious inevitability but were scorned and laughed at, called leftists, degenerates, unserious, etc.
Now that the inevitability of this situation is starting to weigh heavily on those aspirations the expected rationalizations of why they chose to support Trump start to appear. For those that were not really interested in liberty to begin with and were just right-wing populists that got sucked in to Trump’s populist rhetoric, they have nothing to rationalize. They are quite happy with the outcome. But for the people who only supported Trump because they thought they would get something out of his presidency there is a real effort to reframe their decision in a way that still gives them the high ground, at least to themselves.
One such example can be found here by Brian Nichols. In this article, Brian writes from a moral high ground he has created for himself, that he is ‘getting the work done’ as opposed to all those silly unserious libertarians who consider themselves the ‘Purity Police’. Still talking down to anyone who didn’t fall for the promises like he did, he gives us a list of the accomplishments that he helped achieved for liberty by supporting Donald Trump’s election. Let’s see what we got according to him.
Cryptocurrency adoption
This is an interesting accomplishment because this is achievable without government at all. In fact, the whole idea behind cryptocurrency is to operate outside of the government completely. I have no idea what he means by accomplishment other than maybe the government starting to use cryptocurrencies itself, which means it will now be regulating them and that doesn’t seem to me to be the kind of liberty accomplishment that cryptocurrencies were supposed to give us.
De-escalation of International Conflicts
Well, Trump’s second term hasn’t started yet, but if we go by the first time this has definitely not been achieved. There has been this talking point that ‘Trump started no new wars’ but it wasn’t for lack of trying. He bombed more people than Bush and Obama did before him combined, bragging about using the MOAB (Mother of All Bombs) on enemies. He took us to the brink of war with Iran but they stepped down and he has promised to ‘Finish Iran’ if elected again. He also says he would end Russia’s war against Ukraine but doesn’t give any specifics on how this would be accomplished. It is hard to see an out there that doesn’t end with Russia becoming more powerful, gaining control of a large portion of Ukraine’s natural assets, while it starts working up moving its eye towards Georgia. Unless he decides to fully commit behind Ukraine to push Russia back out of its borders, but that definitely wouldn’t be a ‘peaceful solution’. In fact, there are a number of International Conflicts that have been ‘on hold’ for years because the United States has been keeping them from escalating, a pull back from the international stage, as many people like Brian want him to do, would likely enflame them. China v Tibet, Taiwan, Hong Kong and its genocide of the Uyghurs. North and South Korea, Russia’s stated goal of reuniting the Soviet Union under Russian control, Israel v Palestine, etc, etc… Retreating to isolationism may be what some want and are expecting, but there is likely no chance that will happen. Trump believes he is the only one who can ‘deal with these situations’ and will likely be sticking the US’ nose into these conflicts more, not less. This is a lot of wishcasting by people who want something and just believes that Trump wants it to.
Increased Visibility of Liberty-minded Thinking among Business Leaders
Seriously what does he mean by this? How does Trump being elected achieve this goal exactly? Brian offers no actual explanation, it just exists in his mind so it must be true. Do we see business leaders calling for more open borders? No. Do we see more business leaders looking to end the regulations they rely upon to keep opposition to a minimum? No. This is baffling to me personally.
Real Policy Shifts Toward Freedom
Again, no examples so we have to extrapolate what he might be thinking here. For instance I know there is a lot of talk about the elimination of the Department of Education, but do they seriously think that Trump is going to give up power to implement all the policies that his real advisors are pushing for? Without the DoE how would he be able to enact policies to all schools to ‘keep them from being indoctrination centers’? It would give the states control over the education systems in their states and that would mean many states would implement policies that his advisors don’t want. It’s naïve to think that Trump is wanting all of this power by filling his cabinet with people loyal to him and has already promised to re-introduce his executive order redefining Schedule F, allowing him to ‘clean out the deep state’ by firing possibly tens of thousands of career executive branch workers and replacing them with his own people who have loyalty to him, not the Constitution, without then having that power at his disposal. It's a lack of understanding about the very nature of the person they supported. And the DOGE? It won’t be an actual government body, will issue a report in six months that will then be largely ignored. It has no power, no ability to enact the ‘gutting’ that people are expecting. I would be surprised to see it amounting to much of anything as Trump and Musk start to butt heads and their egos clash. Let’s put that in the ‘we shall see’ column.
But, let’s say for the sake of argument those things come to pass. At what cost to liberty did it require? There are definite policy promises that Trump did make that are far more likely to happen and by supporting Trump in this election, they have helped ensure that those anti-liberty policies also get implemented. Such as