Hello, new commenter.
I live in Michigan. All three branches of the state government are controlled by Republicans. Not Libertarians. How do we know? Because they’re anti-gay, anti-abortion and pro-warondrugs.
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Ah, but they cut taxes, so that’s enough for the local Libertarians!
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Then they turn around and raise every fee they can find. Somehow, that’s not a tax because reasons.
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Remember how Kansas, the Great Tea Party Libertarian Experiment, ended up crashing their economy so hard that they had to resort to auctioning off sex toys?
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Libertarians are fine with all of those so long as it’s the individual states versus The State oppressing people.
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Yep. Property rights are the only human rights that matter, as well.
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Unless those property rights are somehow damaged by pollution or climate change. In which case, the Libertarians show their hypocrisy and go “Acid rain? Sea level rise? That can’t be possible. The Market would never allow negative externalities such as that, so it can’t be possible! My coal-fired electrical plant’s emissions can’t be proven to have had a negative effect on your private fishing business, so I don’t owe you anything for trespass on your private property!”
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“Meatballs” Seriously, I can’t remember. I’ll try to find its name.
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I almost choked on my iced coffee; best comment so far today…
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At the risk of sounding like a “no true Scotsman” thing, you shouldn’t stereotype like that, as you’re lumping a few different groups together. Right here, you’re mixing libertarians with “Constitutionalists”, who are the ones who really push for state regulation of all things. TeaGOP shitbags like Michelle Blockhead are also not libertarians in any sense of the word. They are fiscal and social ultraconservatives, while libertarians are socially liberal, fiscally conservative. As with everything, each category holds a range of constituents, but these are all separate groups.
True, but, despite the rhetoric, Libertarian votes are easily bought by appealing to their “fiscal conservative” side over their socially liberal side, because socially liberal policies cost them money. Meanwhile, well…
(really they should be called “Propertarians”, because they’re more concerned with property and the ownership thereof, than they are with liberty)
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I think Libertarians support the freedom of States to defund socially liberal programs.
Which makes them socially liberal to the extent that they really don’t give a shit, as long as it doesn’t involve spending tax dollars.
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Who comprise a large part of self-ascribed libertarians and persons active in the party.
If the corporatists, States Rights-ers, Birchers, and literal white supremacists weren’t so active the party would be much much more popular. It’s not an unfair view.
Unrelated: Fiscally I'm A Right-Wing Nutjob, But On Social Issues I'm Fucking Insanely Liberal
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Fft, what other “liberty” matters?
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I’m at a total loss here. I have always found you to be well-informed, but your generalizations and the comics you’re posting are both bizarre to me.
I have known many libertarians, as I grew up in a hotbed, and all of them have put their social liberalism far ahead of fiscal conservativeness. The ones that I have known actively try to be literal egalitarians, as well as being pro-drug legalization and anti-war. They believe in reasonable taxation, meaning that they recognize that things like public schools and roads are a must, but they get seriously ticked off when they see their tax dollars going towards an overblown “defense” budget.
And where are you getting the idea that they consider property more valuable than liberty? I cannot fathom that statement.
None of them vote for the Republican candidate, and most vote for a third party candidate, often the Green Party, though there are some obvious idealogical disparities.
I’m not trying to claim that all libertarians fit with the ones I’ve known, and I’m aware that the ones I’ve known don’t consistently follow traditional (read: antiquated) libertarian views. I just want to illustrate that there are a lot of people out there who are more closely aligned with libertarianism than any other political ideology, and yet would agree with the regulars on this BBS on most issues, especially with respect to human rights.
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Are these not the same types that would walk by a burning house with people inside and proclaim “not my problem” and continue to walk? F these wack nuts!
Good points. AND if you are a liberal, one should consider the fact that you share may more views than you would with a conservative and attempt to make them at the very least allies, vs opponents.
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Individuals aren’t the party establishment and I don’t believe all are the same. By that reasoning, I don’t believe most libertarians are quite as socially liberal as they purport beyond tolerating gay persons, most are against many essential social/collective programs and of questionable “fiscal conservatism” as well.
I could vote for a principled local candidate. I wouldn’t support any national Libertarian again. Voted once, I have no desire to ever do so and no candidate is popping up to change my mind about the matter.
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Then you’ve been far luckier in your associations than I have; I’ve met one libertarian that is anywhere near that degree of reasonable and willing to compromise. The vast majority that I’ve met, interacted with, and viewed the aftermath of are right-wing wingnuts who are blatant, near-sociopathic hypocrites. And that’s not even counting the Anarcho-Capitalists and Objectivists who are even worse.
Ayn Rand. Paul Ryan. Bitcoiners. Alt-righters that were libertarians until they realized that their views of capitalism and democracy are incompatible and jettisoned the equality aspect. Climate change denialists. Etc.
Well, then, they should speak up more, like you’re doing, because the vast majority of vocal libertarians are the social equivalent of spoiled teenagers throwing a tantrum that their parents are enforcing household chores and responsibilities.
Heck, speaking of libertarian tantrums about responsibility…
I’ll put it this way. I was a libertarian for a while, back in my mid-20s, (albeit only for a few months). And I still hold many principles that are libertarian in nature.
Problem is, to borrow a wonderfully direct quote from Charles Stross, “Libertarianism is like Leninism: a fascinating, internally consistent political theory with some good underlying points that, regrettably, makes prescriptions about how to run human society that can only work if we replace real messy human beings with frictionless spherical humanoids of uniform density (because it relies on simplifying assumptions about human behaviour which are unfortunately wrong).“
So, I kept running into too many of those simplified assumptions that the devout libertarian is supposed to gloss over and ignore the implications of. And I didn’t. And I kept getting answers on the level of special pleading of, “Oh, competition will make it work out!”
Externalities, for one, both good and bad–libertarianism has no way to have people care about anyone else around them. For libertarians, environmental degradation is simply a cost of doing business. And credentials and certifications for things such as health care and food are rather invaluable if someone wants to avoid, oh dying from food poisoning or at the hands of someone who just threw on a lab-coat and stethoscope.
Vaccines are also another classic example of where libertarianism fails to account for the real world, as herd immunity will not be something that a libertarian will value over their own “purity” if they hold anti-vaxxer attitudes.
Heck, one of those libertarian principles that I still hold is the belief for absolute personal bodily autonomy–with the caveat that that bodily autonomy must acknowledge biological realities and public health considerations such as vaccines and herd immunity. Basically, if you want to inject, snort, surgically modify, chemically alter, or otherwise do something with your body, go ahead as far as I’m concerned–so long as you aren’t hurting someone else to do it, which is where the vaccines come in. The community also has the right to also make a few additions to your immune system so that we have as few weak links as possible.
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