"Economic Libertarian" Doesn't Make Any Sense

The way I've always understood the word "libertarian" is that it describes a philosophy espousing extremely low levels of interference by the government in the conduct of people's affairs. It opposes such interference in the economic sphere, and it opposes such interference in the personal sphere. Libertarianism, I've always thought, means a concurrent commitment to economic liberty, personal liberty, and civil liberty. The result is a political ideology which is, put in slightly crude terms, "right-wing" on economic issues and "left-wing" on social issues. That's what it's supposed to mean, anyway, if you take the word itself seriously. Of course, in modern American parlance that's not quite how people interpret this word.

Take, for instance, this post by Jonathan Chait about the Koch brothers' dispute with the Cato Institute. Here's the relevant excerpt, regarding the promotion of John Allison to the leader of Cato:

Allison's ascension is in keeping with the general trend of the Washington libertarian movement to define itself mainly in economic terms. ... It's not just economic libertarianism in general that moves the likes of Allison, but a specific belief that economic freedom is defined primarily as opposition to egalitarianism. (As opposed to focusing on something like the regulatory power of state and local business cartels.) Allison has called egalitarianism "the most destructive principle in our society." The general thrust of Rand-influenced libertarianism, which you see in the philosophy of Rand-influenced Republicans like Grover Norquist and Paul Ryan, is that the central evil in public life is the poor using the political system to gang up on the rich and redistribute their resources.

Now, I think this is a perfectly accurate description of what's going on here, and I'd bet that Chait is using the word "libertarian" to describe Allison, Norquist, etc. in a way that's at least slightly ironic or cynical. But still, the philosophy he's describing is what people mean nowadays when they use this word. A libertarian, by default, is someone primarily concerned with economic liberty, and in particular "freedom" from egalitarianism. That is not, on my understanding of what the words are actually supposed to mean, a libertarian. Calling it economic libertarianism, after all, means you're neglecting the social/cultural/civil libertarian component. Not necessarily repudiating it, mind you, but not putting any effort toward promoting it. But if you drop libertarianism's social-issues component, it becomes just a brand of economic conservativism. And if by "economic liberty" you don't mean, particularly, the kind of regulatory stuff Matt Yglesias likes to talk about, and Steven Calabresi likes to talk about, but rather just broad-brush opposition to redistribution of wealth (which is not, in my opinion, very much of a liberty issue at all), then it's not even a distinctive brand of economic conservativism. Anti-egalitarianism has been the driving force of economic conservativism for a good long while now. A think tank whose purpose is to promote anti-egalitarianism is not in any meaningful sense a libertarian think-tank, even if some of the people there might also tell you they have no serious problem with gay marriage. Can we please stop describing them as such?