LIBERALTARIANS. The blogosphere is abuzz today with discussion over Brink Lindsey's call for a grand alliance between Libertarians and Liberals. This is the sort of thing I always want to believe in, but can never actually imagine happening. Part of that is because Lindsey has a very specific vision of what liberals should -- or do -- care about. His actual proposal advocates "A refashioned liberalism that incorporated key libertarian concerns and insights could make possible a truly progressive politics once again -- not progressive in the sense of hewing to a particular set of preexisting left-wing commitments, but rather in the sense of attuning itself to the objective dynamics of U.S. social development.' There's a lot packed in there, and most of it shreds Lindsey's hoped-for alliance. As becomes clear a couple of grafs later, Lindsey believes capitalism a truly progressive force because the civil rights movement was really enabled by the mechanization of agriculture, feminism by the automation of housework, and sexual freedom by economic growth. It's this "social development" progressivism, rather than "nostalgia for the good old days of the Big Government/Big Labor/Big Business triumvirate," that Lindsey thinks a "Liberaltarian" coalition could enable. Leaving aside Lindsey's arguable interpretation of the dynamics behind social progress, what he's doing is redefining progressivism around social equality while seeking to quietly abandon its economic concerns. You see this when he gets into "the most difficult problem facing would-be fusionists," entitlement programs. On health care, for instance, what he argues for isn't a compromise at all, but the replacement of modern health insurance with a pay-as-you-go system. That isn't "Liberaltarian," it's libertarian. When he takes on taxation, he simply advocates a consumption tax -- no fusionism there. Nor does he get into the other economic problems that deeply concern most liberals: The decline in worker bargaining power, the decimation of the corporate welfare state, the race-to-the-bottom ethos of the service industry, racing inequality.
