Why I fled libertarianism — and became a liberal

[freedom fighter jh]

12. Libertarians are visionary . . . and blind.

We all have our blind spots. Libertarians are distinguished by having different ones than the rest of us do.

On YouTube I heard a libertarian say he did not believe in the U.S. Constitution. Even though I do believe in the Constitution, I found his comment a refreshing break from all the Constitution worship you seem to hear in politics all the time. His statement seemed to free me to take a middle position: The Constitution is just the framework that our founders established, and later statespeople amended over the years, to serve as the basis of our government. Why can't we just look at it that way instead of trying to one-up each other about how much we love it?

Later, I heard the same speaker, at a conference (I was watching on YouTube again) complain about airport delays caused by the bad old government. He pointed out that he had flown a thousand miles in the same amount of time it had taken him to work his way through an airport. Fly is what you do when government is not involved. Trudge is what you do when government is involved.

Yo, genius, air travel owes its whole life to government. In aviation's early days, the Post Office created air mail service specifically to help the air travel industry get started. Now, air traffic is controlled by a government agency. If it were not controlled, airplanes would be smashing into each other all the time. Then people would not fly and there goes the airline industry. And it only makes sense that government should do the controlling, since the skies are public.

Libertarians seem to see things that people on neither the left nor the right can see, while missing what is obvious to everyone else. I believe we have something to gain by listening to what they have to say. Listening, that is, without signing on to their whole package.