Column archiving, and a little nuance-adding

I recently stepped down as the DI's opinions editor, but I'll still be writing a column each Friday. Here's the thrust of my argument in today's column.

Libertarians will always place more weight on individual freedom; left-liberals will always favor steps to ensure greater political and economic equality. The two camps will always clash on questions of the role of government.

And that’s fine.

Anything other than a détente on such core ideological questions would precipitate an impasse. And rhetoric and visceral distaste for one another would have to be set aside.

So, fellow leftists — drop the libertarian bashing. And libertarians — repress your own anti-leftist bomb throwing.

An alliance between us that was unencumbered by petty squabbling would do wonders for our nation’s politics.

I'd also like to add a little nuance to my argument, in light of some of the responses I've received in the comment section. My contention isn't that if libertarians and leftists helped push through policies they agreed upon (cutting the defense budget, shrinking the footprint of the military abroad, tamping down on corporatism, ending the war on drugs, etc.,) they would then agree where to go from there. That's obviously not the case. They have different ideological proclivities.

The left-libertarian coalition strategy I've suggested should be seen as a reaction to the current political paradigm. It shouldn't be viewed as the end game for either ideological camp. What unites left-liberals and libertarians, in other words, is what policies our government should be enacting right now. If leftists and libertarians mounted a huge push to significantly cut military spending, for example, they'd disagree about what to do with the money (left-liberals would likely want to funnel it into education or health care, while libertarians would probably want to pay down the debt or give everyone a tax cut.) But at least in my mind, we'd still be in a better place. Right now, we're still mired in an insidious political status quo. And, in my estimation, it will take cross-ideological coalition building to free ourselves from it.

Here are my first two columns of the semester:

"Finding the country's conscience," Jan. 28

"Advancing democracy," Jan. 21

You can read some of my older pieces here.