A Duty of Government?: The libertarians agonize, and split, over the war

National Review, Oct 14, 2002 by Ramesh Ponnuru

To an outsider, it may not seem to matter much what libertarians think. They are a small and fractious group of people. At most, the libertarian opponents of war with Iraq have influenced two congressmen, Republicans Dick Armey and Ron Paul; and Armey is backing away from his previously expressed opposition. (Paul, meanwhile, is a gadfly, and a gullible one: He believes both in "Gulf War Syndrome" and in all the latter-day claims of Scott Ritter.)

But libertarians themselves should care a great deal about how this debate plays out. Protecting citizens from foreign threats is a fundamental task of government. A political philosophy that regularly yields absurd conclusions when it turns to that task cannot plausibly be held up as a guide to good government. The absurdity, indeed, threatens to discredit libertarianism's valid conclusions, such as that most of the domestic functions of the federal government should be eliminated. Which is why conservatives have a stake in this debate, too.