"Craziest SOB"

Thomas Massie figured out the Trump phenomenon very early on, and more clearly than most. Massie is a dedicated Ron Paul/Rand Paul libertarian who ran as a Republican and will have served eight terms in Congress from northern Kentucky by the time he leaves office in January.

Like many current Trump supporters I know, he opposed Trump right up until the GOP nomination in 2016. Back then, when he still felt free to state his beliefs openly, Massie made an observation that struck me as unusually perceptive and prompted me to write today:

“All this time, I thought they were voting for libertarian Republicans. But after some soul searching I realized when they voted for Rand and Ron and me in these primaries, they weren’t voting for libertarian ideas—they were voting for the craziest son of a bitch in the race. And Donald Trump won best in class, as we had up until he came along.”

That insight struck me as a key to understanding much of Republican politics dating back to the Goldwater era and the “Southern Strategy.” What many libertarians interpreted as ideological support for limited government and individual liberty turned out, in many cases, to be something very different: a backlash against the social and political order created by the New Deal, the Great Society, and the courts and reform movements of the twentieth century, expressed through recurring waves of populist resentment embodied by figures like Goldwater, Wallace, Reagan, and ultimately Trump.

As for the real libertarians, I have known several dating back to the 1970s, including Jim Clarkson, a local political gadfly here in Rome who championed our effort to establish a new newspaper. The libertarians I have known were true believers, much like Massie himself. I have always respected their consistency and dedication, even when I disagreed with them.

But I believe individual liberty has to be balanced with strong safeguards for the general welfare. I believe in the Preamble and its six principles of republican government. I believe in King’s idea of the Beloved Community. Margaret Mead once said that the earliest archaeological evidence of civilization was not a weapon or a tool, but a healed human femur — proof that someone who had been broken was cared for long enough to heal. Whether or not the story is literally true, the insight behind it matters. Civilization begins when human beings recognize obligations to one another. Without the shared protections and mutual responsibilities that enabled mankind not merely to survive but to flourish, liberty eventually collapses into the unchecked power of the strong over the weak. A society that recognizes only individual freedom, with no concern for the common good, risks losing both.

A femur that healed about 3000 years ago in Egypt.