Have I been unfair to Libertarians?

Maybe

On and off I’ve been lamenting aloud (only, really, among friends) about the absence of a Libertarian outcry regarding the current American regime’s authoritarian actions. I reflected on that and then asked myself, “well, have libertarians really been silent?” So I did some “research” (you know – Google searches and prompting various AIs) and what I found was that there are prominent Libertarian voices, and especially organizations, who are dismayed about what the president is doing here in 2025.

That part of my criticism, therefore, was largely unfair. So, then, what’s my problem? Shouldn’t I just be happy with South Park dunking¹ on today’s politics?

I realized the disconnect was somewhere else – in how self-described Libertarians had acted and ultimately voted. My mind immediately went to an interview that Ezra Klein did with Martin Gurri, an Ex-CIA analyst who wrote a book in 2014 that became a sensation during the first Trump candidacy and administration because it dealt with the flow of information during political upheavals. But what I couldn’t get past in the interview was that Gurri was hyper-focused on the first amendment as an issue. Particularly, it seem to me that he was angry at Democrats because Facebook had blocked some of his posts – or something like that. He blamed Biden, and this caused him to vote for president for the first time (in decades?). He voted for Trump. I was shocked that he mostly blamed the Biden administration for something Facebook had done to him, but also how this one issue based on what felt like an immature sort of reaction to a personal affront led him to vote the way he did. I’ve certainly had these sorts of impulses. But I don’t think I’ve ever spun up a whole ideological struggle around a petty issue such as this, leading me to change a long-running pattern in my vote.

I decided to have Perplexity, the AI, round up some references to help me clarify my thinking on this question: was there a disconnect between what Libertarian organizations were saying and how the people who adopt their philosophy have reacted to the events of the past year or so? And the most interesting, I think, part for me was the following table, which I had it organize after coming to an understanding that the issues Libertarians say they care most about were only really applied to critiques of Kamala Harris, and not Donald Trump.

The table lists some issues dear to the hearts of Libertarians, how they viewed Kamala Harris through the lens of each issue, and how Trump faired on the same issue. And then a column on how big an error, if any, the disconnect between these analyses represented. The AI concluded on its own that Libertarian voters, in contrast to organizations and influencers, were more swayed by media narratives than by evidence or policies that were embraced by the two candidates.

DISCLAIMER ONE: If you’re offended because you’re a Libertarian, please don’t be. I’m not saying you can take any of these observations and apply them to an individual. Individuals may espouse some of the opinions below, or not. They may have voted for just about anyone. This is about the aggregate, not the individual.

DISCLAIMER TWO: I’m not offering this as a definitive analysis of how I am “right” about Libertarians. Clearly, when you prompt you get what you asked for. Instead, this “research” is research I did into my own thinking and my own perceptions, and the AI has connected it to references that may explain why I have come to the conclusions I have. I do think AI can make an argument for you, but I’m not saying I would view this that way necessarily. Yet, you might get something out of it, browsing and considering what Libertarian voters prioritized, and what, perhaps, they ignored. What do they find compelling? I think these are fair questions considering multiple authoritarian actions on the part of the federal government, which, according to Libertarian organizations themselves, are troubling.

Click here for the page on Perplexity’s site if you prefer to read it there, where it may be easier to follow up on every one of the references.

Libertarian Issues Analysis: Fears About Harris vs. Trump’s Record

The analysis reveals a striking pattern of analytical errors among libertarian voters during the 2024 election. On the majority of issues libertarians claim to care about most, they systematically misidentified which candidate posed the greater threat to libertarian principles.

Executive Summary

Major Finding: Libertarian voters made major errors in threat assessment on 7 out of 11 core libertarian issues (63.6%), often supporting the candidate whose record directly contradicted libertarian principles while opposing the candidate whose positions were more aligned with libertarian values.

Detailed Issue Analysis

Issue	Harris Fears (Libertarian Perspective)	Trump Actions Libertarians Ignored	Error Assessment
Free Speech & Censorship	Called for social media “oversight and regulation”; supported content moderation pressure	Threatened to “destroy careers” of pro-free speech legislators; called media “enemy of people”; punished law firms representing opponents	MAJOR ERROR - Ignored direct authoritarian threats
Economic Policy	Price control proposals compared to Venezuela	Massive protectionist tariffs; $28B farm bailouts; praised eminent domain abuse	MAJOR ERROR - Supported anti-free market candidate
Civil Asset Forfeiture	Actually had strong civil liberties Senate record	Threatened legislators wanting forfeiture reform; praised “legalized theft”	MAJOR ERROR - Completely backwards analysis
Death Penalty	Supported capital punishment as CA Attorney General	Executed 13 people in final months; wants expansion to non-homicide crimes	MINOR ERROR - Trump’s record far more extreme
Government Surveillance	Actually opposed surveillance expansion as Senator	Expanded NSA programs; renewed Section 702 with minimal restrictions	MAJOR ERROR - Complete reversal of reality
Property Rights	Standard Democratic land use positions	Decades of eminent domain abuse for personal profit; called Kelo “100% good”	MAJOR ERROR - Ignored fundamental violations
Foreign Policy	Supported NATO engagement; opposed rapid withdrawals	Assassinated Iranian general; increased drone strikes; deployed troops to Saudi Arabia	MODERATE ERROR - Bought rhetoric over actions
Trade Policy	Opposed tariffs; supported free trade agreements	Started China trade war; imposed 25% steel tariffs; expanded to 18% average rate	MAJOR ERROR - Abandoned free trade principles
Regulatory Capture	Standard Democratic financial regulation support	Appointed industry lobbyists to head agencies; created venture capital bailout fund	MODERATE ERROR - Trump’s cronyism more concerning
Executive Power	Supported expanded federal regulatory authority	Ignored congressional subpoenas; federalized DC police; claimed unlimited Article II power	MAJOR ERROR - Supported constitutional violations
Drug Policy	Mixed record but evolved toward reform	Kept Ulbricht promise but expanded death penalty for drug crimes	MIXED - One positive, many negatives

Key Patterns of Error

1. Evidence vs. Narrative

Libertarians often relied on partisan narratives rather than examining actual voting records and documented actions. This was particularly evident on surveillance and civil liberties, where Harris’s Senate record directly contradicted libertarian fears.²³

2. Strategic Miscalculation

Many libertarians acknowledged their reasoning was strategic rather than principled, but their strategic calculations were based on fundamentally flawed threat assessments. They feared hypothetical future harms while ignoring documented past violations of libertarian principles.

3. Single-Issue Tunnel Vision

The Ross Ulbricht pardon promise appears to have disproportionately influenced libertarian calculations, causing them to overlook Trump’s systematic opposition to libertarian principles on virtually every other issue.⁴⁵

4. Authoritarian Blind Spot

Libertarians showed a remarkable ability to minimize or rationalize authoritarian behavior when it came from a candidate they supported for other reasons, while amplifying relatively minor regulatory concerns from the opposition.

Most Egregious Errors

1. Trade Policy: Supporting the most protectionist candidate in modern American politics while fearing a free-trade supporter represents a complete abandonment of core libertarian economic principles.⁶⁷
2. Property Rights: Ignoring decades of documented eminent domain abuse for personal profit while having no concerns about standard Democratic land use policies.⁸⁹
3. Executive Power: Supporting a candidate who systematically violated constitutional limits while fearing standard regulatory authority.¹⁰¹¹
4. Surveillance: Completely reversing the actual records of both candidates on government surveillance programs.¹²²

The Dave Smith Factor

Comedian Dave Smith’s journey from Trump supporter to calling for his impeachment by June 2025 illustrates how quickly libertarian strategic calculations can collapse when confronted with governing reality. His reversal suggests that many libertarian voters were engaging in wishful thinking rather than realistic threat assessment.¹³¹⁴

Institutional vs. Voter Analysis

The contrast between libertarian organizational responses and voter behavior is striking. Organizations like the Cato Institute, Reason Magazine, and the Competitive Enterprise Institute maintained principled opposition based on documented evidence, while many libertarian voters were swayed by campaign promises and partisan narratives.¹⁵¹⁶¹⁷

Conclusion

This analysis suggests that libertarian voters in 2024 were heavily influenced by partisan political calculations and media narratives that caused them to systematically misidentify threats to libertarian principles. Rather than conducting evidence-based analysis of candidate records and policy positions, many libertarians appeared to engage in motivated reasoning to justify supporting Trump despite his anti-libertarian record.

The pattern reveals a significant gap between libertarian intellectual institutions, which maintained principled consistency, and libertarian voters, who were willing to compromise core principles for perceived strategic gains based on flawed threat assessments.¹⁸

Full references are on the Perplexity Page.

⁂

1. An aside here, South Park, as long as I’ve seen it, hasn’t had any sort of political valence as far as I could tell, not even Libertarian. My assessment has always been that they want to be seen as above it all – smarter than anyone who has any concern for politics. In a way, they tell their audience “here’s the center, and you’re smart for not caring about this other stuff like those loony political tryhards. So viewers get to feel smart and above it all. The reason the cartoon has so long been associated with right-wing politics is that identifying the center as your de facto position always reinforces the privileges and assumptions of the status quo, so it is naturally against progress. In other words, the center is inherently “conservative.” It’s why you’re now seeing a lot of anti-Trump stiff on South Park. MAGA is anything but conservative; it’s a radical movement to make change that is wildly unpopular on an issue by issue basis. The conservative center, as far as this sort of satire goes, favors people who are upset about what Trump is doing. ↩

2. https://assets.aclu.org/live/uploads/2024/08/Memo_Harris_Surveillance_240828.pdf ↩ ↩²

3. https://www.aclu.org/harris-on-surveillance ↩

4. https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/maga-meter-tracking-donald-trumps-2024-promises/promise/1661/commute-the-sentence-of-silk-road-website-operator/article/3142/ ↩

5. https://www.kut.org/politics/2025-01-21/trump-pardons-ross-ulbricht-creator-of-the-silk-road-dark-web-marketplace ↩

6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tariffs_in_the_first_Trump_administration ↩

7. https://www.npr.org/2025/08/04/nx-s1-5487592/global-economy-tariffs-inflation-prices ↩

8. https://www.cato.org/commentary/donald-trumps-eminent-domain-love-nearly-cost-widow-her-house ↩

9. https://www.congress.gov/115/meeting/house/105801/documents/HMTG-115-JU10-20170330-SD004.pdf ↩

10. https://www.citizensforethics.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/CREW.Countering-Authoritarianism.Policy-Report.2024.pdf ↩

11. https://www.cato.org/blog/trump-keeps-defying-established-law-why ↩

12. https://www.aclu.org/news/national-security/trump-administration-hiding-crucial-report-nsa ↩

13. https://www.the-independent.com/arts-entertainment/tv/news/joe-rogan-trump-impeachment-dave-smith-b2771765.html ↩

14. https://www.reddit.com/r/samharris/comments/1lcwfnp/dave_smith_apologizes_for_his_trump_support_calls/ ↩

15. https://www.cato.org/news-releases/cato-institute-analysis-key-actions-president-trumps-first-100-days ↩

16. https://reason.com/2025/08/07/trumps-war-on-economic-data-is-a-dangerous-move-for-magas-own-agenda/ ↩

17. https://www.cato.org/blog/100-days-testing-limits-presidential-power ↩

18. https://thehill.com/homenews/4686347-trump-draws-mixed-reactions-as-he-urges-libertarians-combine-with-us/ ↩