Perhaps Friday’s wiretapping accusation will make doubters out of the true believers, but don’t bet on it.

The only thing that is more surprising than Donald Trump’s electoral victory might be how quickly so many people who were, or should be, Trump critics, have turned into supporters. This support is particularly shocking from people in the libertarian and liberty-loving conservative movements.

During the primary and general election season, many of these people were part of the Never Trump movement or supported Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson.

Yet now that Trump is president, and the Republicans have consolidated their control over Congress, too many of these people are working hard to find the good in him even though he’s doing exactly the things he said he’d do and that they opposed.

“ My view is that many conservatives and libertarians hate the left more than they love liberty. ”

After his conciliatory speech to Congress last week, his critics ironically became less critical because he “acted presidential,” without changing anything substantive. He still spent his first six weeks supporting the authorization of torture, suggesting Muslim registries, moving to close the border to refugees, placing a travel ban on citizens from several countries, empowering U.S. border guards to unlawfully detain American citizens, initiating document checks on domestic flights, attempting to muzzle critical media, taking steps to build a Mexican wall, considering sending federal troops into the streets of Chicago, and threatening to undo decades of peace and prosperity-enhancing global trade.

He has shown a broad disregard for the rule of law and the Constitution, two things that liberty-lovers profess to care about a great deal.

Self-proclaimed liberty lovers respond by saying that he has also proposed economic deregulation and reform and made a good Supreme Court appointment, so perhaps we should give him a chance.

However, these initiatives have clearly been secondary to his efforts to expand the power of the federal government in the ways listed above. And even if his economic program were to be in the direction of more liberty, a small tax cut, freezing the minimum wage, or reducing business regulation are an order of magnitude less morally important than policies that undermine basic constitutional and human rights and the rule of law.

Statue of Liberty Plunged Into Darkness

The question, then, is why liberty lovers seem so willing to accept the trade-off of a few crumbs of economic liberty for other policies that violate principles that they supposedly believe in very deeply?

My view is that many conservatives and libertarians hate the left more than they love liberty, and too many of them focus exclusively on the United States.

Their hatred of the left is evident in the claim that “Clinton would have been worse.” No, she wouldn’t have. Clinton might have expanded the regulatory state, but there would be no revival of torture, no wall, no registry, no trade war, no attempt to muzzle the media, and at least some talk of the importance of the Constitution.

Hillary Clinton has many flaws from a libertarian perspective, and some schadenfreude about the left’s shock at her defeat is understandable, but the array of fundamental threats to liberty Trump and his supporters embody strongly outweighs Clinton’s many flaws.

Liberty lovers should never let their frustrations with the left become more important than preserving the liberal order.

The focus on the U.S. causes liberty lovers to ignore the enormous gains to the rest of the world from being able to trade with Americans and emigrate or obtain refugee status. Freeing up the global movement of goods, services, and people is the single most-valuable thing we could do to reduce global poverty and improve the lives of billions. We will lose these opportunities by raising trade and immigration barriers, and the losses will be far greater than the gains that would come — if they even happen — from marginal reductions in taxes or regulation.

As an example, school choice for poor Americans is important. Far more valuable to the rest of the world is the opportunity to sell goods and services in the U.S. market or migrate here for work.

Those who love liberty should never accept the kinds of fundamental restrictions on the rights of humans to peacefully provide for themselves and their families. They should reject the massive expansion of discretionary state power that Trump is demanding in exchange for the promise of tax cuts and deregulation.

Liberty lovers need to be clearer about the true cost of their even mild support for Trump. If one loves liberty, one should love it for all humans, not just Americans.