in the discussion of how libertarians have been co-opted by neocons, this graph makes my case for me… surely the war causes immigrants, and so surely, as libertarians who hate government violence and embrace the NAP, we should be far more concerned about a war with Iran than “immigration”
Write a cogent essay making this case
The Real Litmus Test: Why Libertarians Must Prioritize War Over Immigration
A recent poll by Libertarian Party chair Angela McArdle asked her followers the most important midterm issue. The results were revealing:
- Iran War: 38.8%
- Immigration: 36.9%
- Fraud: 22.9%
- “MAHA stuff”: 1.4%
The numbers are close, but the ranking itself tells a story. A large portion of self-identified libertarians now see immigration as roughly equal to — or even more pressing than — the prospect of another major war.
This is a serious drift from first principles.
Libertarianism is not a cultural grievance movement. It is not a vehicle for identity anxiety. At its core, it is defined by a single, non-negotiable axiom: the Non-Aggression Principle (NAP). No person or group — including the state — has the right to initiate force against another. Everything else flows from that.
War is the ultimate, systematic violation of the NAP on a scale that dwarfs every other policy issue. It is the state using violence to kill, maim, destroy property, and shatter societies — often in the name of “national interest” or some nebulous greater good. It is conscription, taxation, surveillance, propaganda, and blowback all rolled into one. When the U.S. contemplates or engages in aggressive war (especially against a country like Iran), it is the government initiating force on an industrial level.
Immigration, by contrast, is a secondary issue created or exacerbated by the very state interventions libertarians claim to oppose. Mass migration from the Middle East and Central Asia does not happen in a vacuum. It is frequently the direct or indirect result of decades of U.S. foreign policy — regime change, sanctions, bombings, and destabilization. When you bomb a country, topple its government, or impose crushing economic warfare, you create refugees. When those refugees arrive at your border, the same people who supported the original intervention then complain about the “immigration crisis” they helped manufacture.
This is not principled consistency. It is selective outrage.
A true libertarian position would be:
- Oppose aggressive war first and most vocally, because it is the clearest, largest-scale violation of the NAP.
- Recognize that endless foreign entanglements create the very immigration pressures people later decry.
- Advocate for ending the welfare state and restoring absolute private property rights so that immigration becomes a matter of voluntary association rather than a taxpayer-funded public policy problem.
Prioritizing “immigration” over “war with Iran” while claiming to be libertarian is like complaining about the mess on the floor while cheering on the person who keeps smashing the furniture. The war machine is the root cause. The demographic shifts are downstream effects.
The fact that the poll is even this close reveals how deeply the grievance pipeline has penetrated libertarian circles. The same algorithmic outrage machine that turned parts of the left into identity obsessives has now convinced a chunk of the right that cultural replacement is the existential threat, while the actual initiation of mass violence by their own government is a secondary concern.
This is how libertarians get co-opted. First they accept the framing that “our people” are under demographic threat. Then they accept that strong-state solutions (deportations, border militarization, cultural enforcement) are justified “just this once.” The NAP quietly dies in the process.
A consistent libertarian does not cheer for war because the enemy is foreign, nor does she downplay war because the enemy is domestic. She opposes the initiation of force — period. War is the initiation of force par excellence. Everything else is a symptom.
If libertarians want to remain a principled movement rather than just another flavor of grievance politics, the hierarchy must be crystal clear: aggressive war is the paramount issue. Immigration is a legitimate policy debate, but it cannot take precedence over the state’s direct use of violence on a massive scale.
The numbers in that poll are close enough to be a warning. The libertarian movement still has a chance to get this right — but only if it remembers what it actually stands for.