If nothing else the virus crisis that's currently engulfing the entire planet, has revealed the political weakness of libertarian philosophy.

In case you're not up on your ideologies, libertarianism is basically a doctrine which preaches the value of minimal government and maximum individual freedom, while also promoting the superiority of the free market system.

Typically, it's considered a variant of conservatism, and is often associated with politicians such as Ronald Reagan, Barry Goldwater and Margaret Thatcher.

Yet even though libertarianism has made some headway in influencing the direction of mainstream politics, especially when it comes to issues such as legalizing cannabis, its focus on intellectual reasoning rather than on emotion, has always made libertarian ideology a hard sell when it comes to persuading the general public.

In other words, it's hard to get votes by saying something like, "Vote for me because I will reduce government services, so that all your needs will be met by the miraculous invisible hand of the free market system."

Nor will it help the libertarian cause if you urge skeptical voters to read The Road to Serfdom by Friedrich Hayek or Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged.

This is why even in the best of times few politicians in Canada ever openly embrace libertarian philosophy, other than perhaps to say they support cutting taxes.

Arguably, the last one to do so was Maxime Bernier, who came out with bold libertarian-style positions, such as doing away with Quebec's anti-free market supply management system, a stance which, many believe, cost him the Conservative party leadership in 2017.

Yet, if politicians rarely advance libertarian values in good times, in bad times they will sometimes vigorously oppose them.

Such is the case now with the Covid-19 crisis.

We saw, for instance, how Ontario's Progressive Conservative Premier Doug Ford recently lashed out against  a grocery store chain for  selling Lysol wipes at $29.99 per tube, a practice many refer to as  "price gouging."

Said Ford, "Nothing gets me more furious than someone taking advantage and price gouging the public that are in desperate need of these items.  And people have the nerve to actually jack up their prices to $30 a container for hand wipes?  It's beyond belief."

The Premier also promised to implement a provincial cabinet order with penalties for gouging.

Now, to a libertarian, Ford's reaction is sacrilege, since it's basically an attack on free markets.

For example, Steven Horwitz of the Fraser Institute, a libertarian-leaning think tank, recently noted that anti-price gouging laws "make matters worse by preventing prices from playing their irreplaceable role as the signal and incentive that people need to both carefully ration the existing limited supply of goods and bring new supplies to the market.  The best way to deal with the destruction of supplies or extraordinary increases in demand is to let prices do their job."

Meanwhile, while Ford is taking on the free market system, other Conservatives seem eager to accept government restrictions on individual liberty as a way of keeping us all safe.

In fact, former Conservative cabinet minister Rona Ambrose, tweeted this message to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau: "Canadians are ready for you to lead us further through this crisis.  It's time to declare a state of emergency in Canada and tell us to shelter in place, except for essential workers.  We are ready to do our part to save others.  We will not view it as an assault on our civil liberties, we will see it as assault on COVID 19."

Such language would make any libertarian's skin crawl.

It's not that Ambrose was calling upon government to take action during this crisis, (even a libertarian can probably see the need to limit some freedoms to battle COVID-19) it's that she's doing so with such enthusiastic gusto!

As a libertarian might point out, once government takes away your freedoms during a crisis, it's sometimes hard to get them back.

At any rate, I'm only bringing up the examples of Ford and Ambrose because as conservatives they're supposedly more sympathetic to libertarian thought, imagine how little support you will have for the concepts of smaller government and individual freedom in the Liberal and NDP camps.

Of course, the reality of the situation is that both Ford and Ambrose's anti-libertarian positions would likely be wildly popular not only with most conservatives but also with most Canadians.

Simply put, in times of crisis, people don't have much use for fancy economic theories or for abstract rights.

They just want governments to "do something" to keep them safe and if that means restricting freedoms and upending free markets, so be it.

This has always been the challenge facing libertarians and it looks like that challenge will only get steeper.

Photo Credit: Global News