A lib-lib Romance: don't count liberals and libertarians as hitched just yet.

'LIBERTARIAN" has become something of a feel-good word lately. Markos Moulitsas, the guru behind the Daily Kos, penned an essay not too long ago making the case for the "libertarian Democrat." His analysis is thin gruel, but what's interesting is that arguably the most partisan left-wing Democrat in America is eager to claim the libertarian label for his side. At the same time, mainstream liberals have been proclaiming that they always loved and respected those supposedly libertarian conservatives of yesteryear, like Reagan and Goldwater.

Meanwhile, on the right, many conservatives eager to distinguish themselves from the messiness of the Bush administration and the unrepentant jobbery of the congressional GOP now use the word "libertarian" like an alibi: "Hey man, I didn't do it. I'm a libertarian."

Perhaps sensing an opportunity here, professional libertarians are flexing their muscle. The Cato Institute put out a paper holding that some 15 percent of voters are libertarian and that, more important, they are the much-coveted "swing voters" who decide elections. And in a number of very close elections in November, many libertarians seemed almost giddy that they might have been responsible for the defeat of Republicans.

In its most basic form, the libertarian complaint should be familiar by now: From Terri Schiavo to diarrheic spending, the GOP has betrayed its commitment to limited government. So, the libertarians reason, why not "experiment" with the Democrats a bit? They expand government too, but at least they're more liberty-loving when it comes to drugs, sex, abortion, etc.

The problem here is that "libertarian" is a shmoo-like word but libertarians are not shmoo-like people (shmoos being the magical creatures from Lil' Abner who could take any form and be anything). Everyone likes to think he's in favor of maximizing freedom. But in reality most folks want to maximize only the freedoms they like. I often ask self-described libertarians if they support government censorship of hardcore pornography on Saturday-morning broadcast television. If they say yes, then they aren't really pure libertarians. If they say no, I congratulate them on their consistency and tell them why their political ambitions are doomed.

"Libertarian-leaning" people are often quite severe about which "freedoms" they want liberalized and which they don't. Indeed, they're often single-issue voters. Just ask the folks at Libertarians for Life. Meanwhile, some doctrinaire libertarians are fixated on legalizing drugs, others on gay marriage, and some, amazingly enough, on defending the moral legitimacy of the Confederacy. A bloc of centrist swing voters this ain't. The point is that most of the talk about "libertarians" switching sides has been exactly that, talk.

Until now. Brink Lindsey, a vice president at the Cato Institute and one of the sharpest libertarian wonks in Washington, upped the ante from flirtatious jibber-jabber to genuine philosophical wooing. In a recent issue of The New Republic, Lindsey restates the familiar libertarian gripes, but goes on to argue that the fusionist project launched by Frank Meyer in these pages five decades ago has essentially run its course. "Fusionism" was the label (coined by L. Brent Bozell) to describe Meyer's view that the ends of traditional morality could be reached only by libertarian means: Virtue not freely chosen cannot be virtuous, he argued.

Lindsey goes further still. He argues that, empirically speaking, fusionism was a mistake for libertarians from the get-go. An "honest survey of the past half-century shows a much better match between libertarian means and progressive ends." He proposes "a refashioned liberalism that incorporate[s] key libertarian concerns and insights" and "make[s] possible a truly progressive politics once again." This politics, as he envisions it, is "not progressive in the sense of hewing to a particular set of preexisting left-wing commitments, but ... joins together under one banner the causes of both cultural and economic progress."

What makes Lindsey's overture significant is that he comes from the branch of libertarianism that actually matters: economics. Economic libertarians, under the leadership of Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, have been so successful in the conservative movement--and the conservative movement has been so successful because of them--that "economic conservative" and "libertarian" have long been synonyms. But here's Lindsey, an economic libertarian par excellence, trying to convince liberals that free markets are "progressive." He wants liberals to accept the fact that libertarian means achieve liberal cultural ends. Rich societies become more tolerant of sexual freedom and civil rights, and invest more in education and the environment--and societies become rich by following the advice of the Friedmans and Hayeks. Lindsey proposes finding common ground with liberals on issues from agriculture subsidies (which are bad for the environment) to tax reform. His policy proposals would warm the cockles of any NR editor's heart, and we should wish him luck.

Nonetheless, the tension between conservatives and libertarians is not as one-sided as he and others would have us believe. Libertarianism was once primarily concerned with negative liberty--i.e. delineating a zone free of government intrusion. Meyer's libertarianism was primarily concerned with the ability of the individual to find the virtuous path within "an objective moral order based on ontological foundations" best expressed in Western civilization. As such, fusionism was less a coalitional doctrine than a metaphysical imperative. But these days, phrases like "objective moral order" will get you knocked off Cato's Kwanzaa-card list. Liberty's virtue is no longer that it supports the virtuous. Rather, according to today's leading libertarians, economic freedom's virtue lies in its ability to provide everybody the custom-made lifestyle of his choice.

Virginia Postrel, the former editor of Reason, wrote an engaging ode to consumerism in The Substance of Style. In The Future and Its Enemies, she made a compelling case for change and cultural evolution without heed to tradition. Her successor at Reason, Nick Gillespie, has moved the magazine even more sharply toward cultural libertarianism. There's still reverence for the free market, but mostly for its creative destruction of tradition. My close friend (and Reason's science correspondent) Ronald Bailey has thrown his eggs into the basket of biotechnology, celebrating its potential for individualized eugenic betterment as "liberation biology." Cato's Will Wilkinson seeks to graft liberal philosopher John Rawls onto Hayek to form something called "Rawlsekianism." And Lindsey's next book certainly doesn't sound like it shares Meyer's preoccupation with philosophical imperatives. It's called The Age of Abundance: How Prosperity Transformed America's Politics and Culture.

This emphasis on the liberating power of technology and wealth--i.e., materialism and positive liberty--represents an enormous philosophical transformation within libertarianism that echoes, albeit faintly, elements of the economic liberalism of John Dewey and FDR. It also shows that today's libertarians have a different view of the 1960s than their forefathers, such as Meyer. Evaluating the ideas within this burgeoning enterprise would require another essay, and a very long one. But three preliminary points are worth mentioning. First, a new left-leaning fusionism is a long way off. The flaws in Lindsey's dream are Aesopian: The scorpion had to sting the frog because that is what scorpions do; liberals have to engage in economic social engineering because that is what they do. Second, sure, lib-lib tactical alliances are possible, but conservatives would be idiotic to whine excessively about them. After all, the true sign of your movement's success is when your opponents start copying you.

Lastly, if the conservative-libertarian union is in trouble, it's not solely because conservatives have strayed from their vows. Marriages tend to dissolve when both parties "grow apart," and libertarians have been doing quite a bit of growing themselves. "You've changed" is a fair accusation from both sides, though "I don't even know you anymore" is surely an exaggeration. Perhaps the real lesson here is that conservatives and libertarians need to recommit themselves to the fusionist project. In other words: Let's seek counseling.