Mises: “Religious Right” Driving Libertarians from “TEA Party”

Jefferey Tucker from the Mises Institute writes

A new report documents the trend. What I do find annoying about these surveys is how they focus on values instead of policies. For example, it should not matter to a libertarian what a person believes about religion or morality so long as they do not want the government to do anything about it. Of course experience suggests that there is in fact no such wall of separation between values and policies in political practice. Libertarians have come to be suspicious of the religious right because experience suggests that these people do not value liberty more than their own vision of what society should be like. One might say that the opposite is true as well: The religious right is suspicious of libertarians because religious people doubt the libertarian commitment to using every means to achieve certain social and cultural results. It’s too bad that everyone can’t just agree to let people alone to do and believe what they wish provided they do not impose on others. Of course, if everyone accepted that proposition, the whole world would be libertarian.

However, there is actually a political party that will NOT “drive out” the libertarians. The Boston Tea Party (not to be confused with the “TEA” parties) was formed in 2006 with a one sentence platform, “The BTP supports reducing the size, scope and power of government at all levels and on all issues, and opposes increasing the size, scope and power of government at any level, for any purpose.” In October 2008, the party’s National Convention adopted the four point program of the Campaign for Liberty. The program called for an end to overseas occupation, a restoration of privacy and other liberties, no increase in the national debt, and a thorough review of the Federal Reserve. During the 2010 convention the Party adopted a new program to End the Wars of Aggression, End the Fed, End the War on Drugs, End the Abuses of Liberty, End the Immigration Fiasco.