Over at the American Scene, Jim Manzi provides a helpful internal account of the social-conservatism and libertarian alliance (fusionism).
What this means for traditionalists is that the best they can hope for is a national government with minimum scope of authority, because it will tend to use whatever authority it has for ends that they don’t like.
As I’ve argued previously, I think that a proper understanding of libertarian thought should call for restraint in imposing uniform national rules, even some rules designed to prevent localities from restricting some individual autonomy.
This alliance weakened a bit under Bush, hence talk of liberaltarians. Libertarians are big on the net, not so big in the electorate, so this isn't really a pressing problem, but it is worth discussing briefly. The local restrictions on individual autonomy is key, without those I can't imagine the social conservatives being that excited about the alliance. Many things liberals want aren't the opposite of traditional values, same-sex marriage is in many ways a conservative thing and it in no way restricts the availability of opposite-sex marriages. To really get excited about something, you either need to be personally repressed or get the chance to repress someone else.
To me, this sounds like a recipe for the Republicans going further down the road of becoming a Southern regional party, assuming social conservatives don't change how they feel about immigration. I can't imagine the libertarians would be that excited about the social restrictions where they live, so the alliance would really rely on geographical separation. Since libertarians aren't a major voting block, their influence in other regions would be limited.
So, can't say I'm particularly worried about their alliance continuing on this basis. Probably good for most of the country, bad for the South, and there's no restrictions on internal migration in the U.S. I tend to see economic populism as the approach that has both more peril and potential.
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