When the flag changes but the principle holds

Reason magazine reports something that ought to hearten anyone who has ever bet on an idea over a faction: libertarians, written off as a spent force in the age of nationalist populism, are — on several of the second Trump administration's defining policy questions — 'punching above their weight.' I did not live to see this era, so I cannot speak to its particulars. But I know something about ideas that refuse to stay buried.

The lesson of my own Philadelphia years is this: a principle gains its surest footing not when it is fashionable but when it is useful. We did not win the argument for paper money by waving a pamphlet; we won it by demonstrating, ledger by ledger, that a colony strangled for specie could not pay its tradesmen, build its roads, or fund its militia. The argument succeeded because ordinary people felt its absence in their pockets.

Libertarianism, at its core, is a household argument dressed in philosophical clothes. It says: before you permit a government to act, ask what the working farmer or the small merchant will actually pay or lose when that action is in force. That question does not expire with any particular political cycle. It is as pertinent now as it was when I was setting type in a Philadelphia printshop and calculating the true cost of a London-imposed duty.

The danger I would counsel against — and here I speak from disposition, not from any memory of modern events I could not have witnessed — is the temptation to mistake a tactical win for a settled victory. An idea that wins inside an administration it did not choose is a guest, not the host. The moment the administration's interest shifts, the idea may find itself shown to the door. Vigilance, as I was fond of noting in one form or another, is not a one-time purchase.

For the practical citizen reading this: the best libertarian act available to any individual is the one that requires no legislative majority at all — to manage your own affairs with such industry and frugality that you need as little from any government, and owe as little to any creditor, as is humanly possible. Every household that carries no unnecessary debt, keeps honest accounts, and produces more than it consumes is, in its small way, a working argument for the principle that Reason says is still very much alive. Start there, and let the factions sort themselves out.