Ask Dr. Ruwart

Dr. Mary Ruwart is a leading expert in libertarian communication. In this column she offers short answers to real questions about libertarianism. To submit questions to Dr. Ruwart, see end of column.

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Is compromising libertarian principles necessary to spread libertarian ideas?

QUESTION: I’ve been frustrated by some libertarians who think that “compromising” libertarian principles is the best way to get the libertarian message accepted by the public, on issues including mandatory health insurance and campaign finance restrictions. When I disagree with them, I am derided as a “purist.” How do I answer them?

MY SHORT ANSWER: Those who advocate mandatory health insurance and other government programs usually do so because they believe that freedom doesn’t work, at least on that particular issue.

Ask your fellow libertarians if they truly believe the government solution they advocate is better. If they do, provide them with the facts and figures showing how liberty trumps government every time.

Tax-supported government programs, like mandatory health insurance, invariably give us less than the free market would. For example, every country with mandatory health insurance has long lines for the expensive procedures, even if they are life-saving. In Britain, those over 55 years old are often denied kidney dialysis outright, so that the available spots can be given to younger people. Canadian heart patients flock to the U.S. for cardiac surgery, rather than die waiting in line. Patients who would get life-saving treatment in the U.S. are told to go home and prepare to die. You can find a great deal of documentation on this particular issue at www.ncpa.org and www.heartland.org.

You can get hundreds of examples proving that liberty, not coercion, provides the best outcome on this and many other issues from my book Healing Our World, available either from the Advocates (updated 2003 edition) or as a free download from www.ruwart.com (the older 1992 edition).

If your friends already believe that liberty provides the better solution, ask them how they can, in good conscience, encourage voters to adopt something that will harm them. If they answer that the end justifies the means, you can use arguments — like the ones in Healing Our World — to show how the means ultimately dictate the ends.

Instead of compromising libertarian principles, they can work to craft a persuasive way to present their arguments. The Advocates for Self-Government web site is full of resources to help anyone do just that.

Libertarians often believe that they can’t be effective unless they are elected. However, consider the effectiveness of U.S. socialists in the twentieth century. Even though only a few explicit socialists and Socialist Party members were elected in the past century, most of the major economic planks of the 1928 Socialist Party platform were quickly adopted by the Democrats and Republicans and became, to a major degree, U.S. law.

“In our opinion, the Socialist Party was the most influential political party in the United States in the first decades of the 20th Century,” wrote renowned libertarian economists Milton and Rose Friedman in their 1980 book, Free to Choose.

Maybe we should be less focused on election outcomes and more focused on winning hearts and minds, something that we can’t do by comprising our message. We wouldn’t want to win the “battles,” only to lose the “war!”

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Got questions? Dr. Ruwart has answers! If you’d like answers to YOUR “tough questions” on libertarian issues, email Dr. Ruwart at: ruwart@theAdvocates.org

Due to volume, Dr. Ruwart can’t personally acknowledge all emails. But we’ll run the best questions and answers in upcoming issues.

Dr. Ruwart’s previous Liberator Online answers are archived in searchable form at: http://www.TheAdvocates.org/ruwart/categories_list.php

Dr. Ruwart’s outstanding books “Healing Our World” and “Short Answers to the Tough Questions” are available from the Advocates: http://www.TheAdvocates.org/Merchant2/merchant.mv