Libertarian Cato Blogger Endorses Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal

By John Aloysius Farrell, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

Maybe it's the Rand Paul effect. But the libertarians of the Right, so cowed in recent years by the social conservatives, seem to be finding their voice when it comes to recognizing the civil liberties of gay Americans.

Ted Olson is out in California, lunching with Nancy Reagan and fighting for gay marriage. Antonin Scalia took the side of gay rights activists the other day at the USSC. And, as Congress debates just how (freely, or closeted) gay Americans will serve in the armed forces, the Cato Institute has endorsed a legislative compromise ending the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy.

Well, it's true you have to dig a bit to find it. And it may be the view of just this particular blogger. But there it is, on the web site.

Of the two big libertarian lobbying groups, Cato generally worries more about property, and the ACLU more about privacy. But if American libertarians are going to intelligently, and successfully, resist the bureaucrats and commissars of government and industry, and the snoops and church ladies among us, it will require some cooperation, and more of this kind of brave-ish intellectual consistency.

I don't see a grand alliance forming any time soon (when was the last time you heard the ACLU speak out against oppressive regulation or taxation?) but it is there, as an option, for our kids. Bravo, Cato.

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