Are these two guys really the public face of libertarianism?

It's been a relatively atypical six months in the usually schismatic world of libertarian politics. The surest sign of this uneasy truce between the Catoites and the Rockwellians occurred this summer when Cato invited Ron Paul to address their organization about his bill to audit the Federal Reserve. But more broadly speaking, there's also been a noticable decline in blogosphere chatter related to the feud. Old grudges do not die easily, but the once-daily stream of assaults has also dwindled to a trickle. Call it a libertarian Peace at Amiens, perhaps prompted by recognition of the larger Obama-Bernanke enemy.

It is likely no small coincidence that this brief warming between factions happened not long after one Tom G. Palmer scaled back his involvement in Cato. Palmer's still around Cato to be sure as a "Senior Fellow," but he's no longer their Vice President of Junketeering...er...International Programs as of around Inauguration Day of this year, when he assumed a similar position at the Atlas Economic Research Foundation.

Well, Palmer returned to Cato this week. Not to resume command, but to promote his new book "Realizing Freedom." This publication is a curious creature in its own right, and at passing glance it almost appears as if Palmer has finally achieved something that has thus far eluded his "academic" career - an original scholarly monograph on libertarianism. Such a work would be groundbreaking in the Vitae of Palmerland, where a motley assortment of Washington Post Op/Eds and guest columns for NationalReview.com appears in the place that most real academics reserve for their peer reviewed journal publications. But alas, a quick perusal of "Realizing Freedom" reveals it to consist of little more than repackaged versions of the very same Op/Eds, blog entries, and musings on old in-house newsletters of the various libertarian-minded groups he has associated with over the years. Such is also another great mystery of Palmerland - seldom has a libertarian "scholar" advanced so far on so little. But that story is for another time.

The object of more pressing concern is Palmer's little reading club presentation at Cato this week, aided by fellow traveller Tyler Cowen and sponsored by another familiar feuder, one David Boaz. Few aspects of the pseudo-intellectual speaking circuit are more irksome than self-promotion and Palmer's book fair is no exception particularly as he and his accolytes took the opportunity to reignite their feud with the Paul/Rockwell/Mises wing of the libertarian movement. Cowen fired the opening salvo, accomplishing in the process a curious merger between the mannerisms of Ned Brainard and the oratorical skills of Droopy Dog:

"I think the libertarian movement is about to split into a right wing libertarian movement that has decided to cast its lot with hard right Republicans and a movement more liberal, more secular, more historically minded, more socially tolerant, less keyed in to the political right."

It is no small claim to state that Cowen's logic is perplexed on several counts, some of which have been capably elaborated upon by the Mises Institute's Thomas Woods. Generally speaking, the Mises/Rockwell crowd is unlikely to find a home with "hard right Republicans" any time soon given their bitter divergence over the Bush Administration in general and, more specifically, the Iraq War. Nor is Ron Paul a standard bearer for the Republican right, which largely views him as an outsider as his presidential campaign illustrated. These are also intemperate words coming from the Catoite Palmer faction, which has done far more to integrate itself into the Republican Party mainstream than Rockwell, who views D.C. with open contempt...even to the point that Palmer has childishly mocked him for this contempt.

The greatest irony by far though is Cowen's intolerant indulgence in a message of "tolerance." The "tolerant" libertarian movement envisioned by Palmer and Cowen strangely has no room to for people like Paul or Rockwell. Indeed as additional eyewitness testimony from this week's PalmerFest at Cato reveals, these two have surprisingly little tolerance for core components of libertarian economic thought such as the Austrian Business Cycle theory. Cowen continued:

"I think we’re in a world right now that is growing very partisan and very rabid, and a lot of things which are called libertarian in the Libertarian Party, or what you might call the Lew Rockwell / Ron Paul camp, are to my eye not exactly where libertarianism should be, and I think Tom has been a very brave and articulate advocate of a reasonable libertarianism. And if I ask myself, “Does the book succeed in this endeavor?” I would say, “Yes.”"

The issue he raises is indeed an important one, but not with the answer he desires. As libertarians we must ask ourselves who we want for the public faces of our movement. We must decide who is to represent libertarian political ideas in the public sphere and show that they are indeed "reasonable."

While this writer sees merit in associating that task with Ron Paul, an accomplished elected official and capable speaker who appears on national media outlets on a near-daily basis, it is also prudent to ask where the other side fits into that picture. A socially awkward absent-minded professor may have much to contribute to libertarian scholarship, and indeed Cowen has. And every social movement has room for a crazy old uncle, even if he's a quirky intemperate lisping fellow like Palmer who devotes most of his energy to internecine disputes with other libertarians and whose very mannerisms tend to make saner minds around him uncomfortable. Whatever their roles may be though, it is difficult to see any meaningful advances for libertarianism from its present location on the extreme periphery of the policy sphere under the public tutelage of either of these two.