Indeed. IIRC, the protagonist wound up in the military because he was a slacker whose only useful skills were “young and healthy.”
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I thought that was Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War?
Working to defend the rights of people whose political beliefs you disagree with is not inconsistent with (most forms of) progressivism. Also, Greenwald is better known as a civil libertarian than as a progressive.
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Just for clarification, Libertarians are not “right-wing”. They are centrists, wanting both liberals and conservatives to leave them the hell alone: Get out of bedroom, keep religion out of government, don’t pass laws that violate our rights, and no favoritism. If it is consensual, if it doesn’t harm someone, then it isn’t anyone’s business especially the government’s.
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Haven’t read that yet. It’s on my list.
From looking at the Wikipedia page of Forever War, Armor is much more specifically aimed at Starship Troopers. Humans are/were fighting Ants in The Antwar. Our interstellar civilization is set up like Plato’s Republic. There’s no wacky mind control, just a lot of grinding armor-suit-on-giant-ant combat in flashbacks between the PTSD of the veterans of the now.
No, libertarianism is in opposition to statism. Centrism is about economic policy and usually shows a desire for a mixed economy. You can get libertarian socialists and libertarian capitalists, with libertarian centrists in between. The USA shows a strong bias towards the libertarian capitalists who are undeniably right wing though.
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Oops. Typo. Centerists, as in moderate, but moderate is insufficient; you can have liberal Libertarians and Conservative Libertarians. Though, admittedly, a significant number of Libertarians are also Centrists. But what is surprising to people are that some Libertarians can be diametrically opposite on the X-axis: a strong Conservative versus a strong Liberal, and yet still agree that government should not impose those beliefs.
Unfortunately, left-winger and right-wingers want you to forget that there is more than an X-axis for political leanings. This is because there is a Y-axis too: how much freedom or how much government control is confining the populous. The American politicians - both Liberals and Conservatives - have been increasingly drawn toward the ‘government control’ end of the Y-Axis, which is your Statism, and Libertarians are toward the freedom end of the Y-axis.
Regarding bias, the USA does not show a strong bias toward capitalists. The U.S. media show a strong bias toward Libertarian capitalists, whether it be talking heads or ‘social-justice’ Liberals unhappy with Libertarian viewpoints of limited taxation and removal of ‘entitlements’. Those are the voices you hear most, but they don’t represent the American population any more than a Fire & Brimstone Baptist preacher represents Christians in general.
Most Libertarians are not completely opposed to government role. Nor are they completely against welfare; those people who truly need help should get it while those who are able to work should not be sucking from the public teat for longer than necessary. But both viewpoints are in opposition to Statists on both sides of the X-axis of the political spectrum.
Interestingly, as illustrated in the first paragraph above, Libertarians may hold viewpoints that mirror the extremists. The difference is that Libertarians are against the government making laws that force those viewpoints. For example, you might have a Christian Libertarian who thinks that being homosexual is an abomination because it is against his religious belief, and yet be completely against laws that affect homosexuals because it is a violation of their Constitutional rights. The quote “I may not agree with what you say, but I shall defend to my death your right to say it” sums up a great deal of Libertarianism.
But if you want a one-sentence quote that sums up Libertarianism, you’ll find this one works pretty well: “Mind your own business and leave us the hell alone.”
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That somewhat matches US conscientious objector policies of the time. My father was a chemical researcher, and got drafted to develop chemical weapons during the Korean war, but wouldn’t carry a gun. My father-in-law would have been 4F during WWII (flat feet) but the doctor doing the exam knew his politics, so he ended up 1A, and did CO labor camp instead of fighting. It’s still slavery. I was at the tail end of the Vietnam debacle, and drew a high enough lottery number that I didn’t even end up getting an Army physical out of the deal, but it still felt like playing Bingo with Shirley Jackson.
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I get the feeling that we agree about the bigger picture but are arguing about the details, possibly because my frame of reference is the UK and Europe.
Using the political compass x/y scale you have Stalin at the far statist or authoritarian left corner, anarchist Catalonia at the far libertarian left corner, Pinochet at the far statist right corner and presumably Ayn Rand at the far libertarian right corner. Most people come somwhere in between those points, but a lot of powerful political parties are somewhere in the statist right section (nowhere near as bad as Pinochet though)
In the UK the current Labour party policies are to the right of Edward Heath’s Conservative government in the 70s, but to the left of the current Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition government. The Liberal Democrats were a libertarian centrist party, but they moved to the right after the Orange Book and seem have commited political suicide during their time in the coalition government.The Labour Party seem to be making a push for disillusioned Lib-Dem voters by having more socially libertarian policies, whether they will stay libertarian if they become the government remains to be seen, The Green Parties (England and Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland have seperate parties) are Libertarian left/socialist, but they only have one MP and have minority control of one local council (both in Brighton). UKIP claim to be libertarian, but tend to be more authoritarian than the other parties. I could carry on. but there are 11 political parties currently elected to the UK parliament (10 have taken their seats, Sinn Fein are abstentionist) and this is turning into a wall of text as it is.
Personally I am a libertarian socialist and libertarian communist. In my teens I became disillusioned with the UK Labour Party shortly after Tory Blair became leader of the party in 1994 (John Smith would have had a similar effect eventually), I briefly considered myself lib-com before identifing with the left wing of the Green Party in my 20s (still lib-soc). Now I’m in my 30s I am back to identifying as lib-com and still trying to work out if I am an anarchist (My opinion changes from day to day).
I have not had that much connection with the US libertarian centre or right except on the internet and in my experience the US libertarian right outnumbers the US libertarian left (who tend to go to the same political sites as I do) who seem to outnumber the US libertartian centre (I talk to people who are the UK libertarian centre on a regular basis IRL). I would really like to be proven wrong about this.
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I have a feeling you’re right.
The political compass is a larger version of the World’s Smallest Political Quiz and uses a different layout: primarily, the Y-axis is inverted. Seeing the graphs of both makes it much easier. 
By the way, I took the Compass and am almost exactly center in the Libertarian quadrant.
Regarding politicos being as bad as Pinochet, I’m not so sure American neo-conservatives aren’t as bad. If they aren’t, they’re on a bullet train headed that way.
On the whole, the western European culture has moved toward socialism. In some ways that’s a good thing, but the side effect is that it is statist-based. I suppose that is the fundamental differences between the coalition of very small states (countries) and one enormous yet isolated state.
Best,
Robert~
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