TIME published an article this week entitled “Libertarians Rising.” In it, Michael Kinsley attempts to flatter the movement by suggesting they are a growing force in American politics. He writes:

The chance of the two political parties realigning so conveniently is slim. But the party that does well in the future will be the one that makes the better guess about where to place its bets. My money’s on the libertarians. People were shocked a couple of weeks ago when Ron Paul–one of those mysterious Republicans who seem to be running for President because everyone needs a hobby–raised $5 million from July through September, mostly on the Internet. Paul is a libertarian. In fact, he was the Libertarian Party presidential candidate in 1988. The computer revolution has bred a generation of smart loners, many of them rich and some of them complacently Darwinian, convinced that they don’t need society–nor should anyone else. They are going to be an increasingly powerful force in politics.

While I agree, rather naively I suppose, that libertarians will become a more powerful force in American politics over the next decade or so, I take issue with his depiction of libertarians as “convinced they don’t need society.” There are certainly rugged individualists in our ranks, but there are also plenty of us who believe humans are social beings.

Kinsley calls the latter an opposing force to libertarians, called communitarianism:

And what is the opposite of libertarianism? Libertarians would say fascism. But in the American political context, it is something infinitely milder that calls itself communitarianism. The term is not as familiar, and communitarians are far less organized as a movement than libertarians, ironically enough. But in general communitarians emphasize society rather than the individual and believe that group responsibilities (to family, community, nation, the globe) should trump individual rights.

This dichotomy is flat wrong. There are plenty of communitarian-ish libertarians, but the difference is libertarians believe the “good society” is one in which individuals (rather than government) decide for themselves what their “group responsibilities” will be. The community and the individual are not at odds if people are allowed to chose which communities they want to join. Kinsley’s view of communitarianism is even a little fascist because it suggests that communitarians must believe the government should enforce community obligations because individuals can’t be trusted to behave appropriately without being forced to do so.

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