June 9, 2017 For a volume edited by Benjamin Powell on the prospects for libertarianism Manifesto for a New American Liberalism, or How to Be a Humane Libertarian Deirdre Nansen McCloskey1 I make the case for a new and humane American “libertarianism.” Outside the United States libertarianism is still called plain "liberalism," as in the usage of the president of France, Emmanuel Macron, with no “neo-” about it. That's the L-word I’ll use here. The economist Daniel Klein calls it "Liberalism 1.0," or, channeling the old C. S. Lewis book Mere Christianity on the minimum commitments of faith (1942-44, 1952), "mere Liberalism."2 David Boaz of the Cato Institute wrote a lucid guide, Libertarianism—A Primer (1997), reshaped in 2015 as The Libertarian Mind. I wish David had called it The Liberal Mind. In desperate summary for you Americans, Liberalism 1.0 is Democratic in social policy and Republican in economic policy and non-interventionist in foreign policy. It is in fact mainly against "policy," which has to be performed, if there is to be a policy at all, through the government's monopoly of violence. (To confirm this experimentally, try not paying your taxes; then try to escape from prison.) Liberals 1.0 believe that having little or no policy is a good policy. 1 Distinguished Professor of Economics and of History, Professor of English and Professor of Communication, University of Illinois at Chicago, Emerita. Email:
[email protected]. Website: deirdremccloskey.org. The essay is a much-revised version of the introduction to a book manuscript, How to Be a Humane Libertarians: Essays in a New American Liberalism.