I guess I can understand your distaste, if those are honestly the beliefs espoused by the self-proclaimed libertarians you’ve known.
I wonder what part of the country you’re from, to be around people who identify as libertarian and yet are so different from the libertarians in the region I grew up in.
“As long as you’re not hurting anyone else” seems to be the libertarian creed, if any one creed can apply to all of the people who call themselves libertarians. In this day and age, it can also be used to justify some environmental regulations. Since libertarians would obviously regulate deliberate poisoning, inadvertent poisoning via pollution also is worth regulating.
(As an aside: Paul ****ing Ryan called himself a libertarian?)
Unless you “violate the NAP” in which case all bets are off, you stepped on someone’s sneakers and your subjective infraction can involve serious reprisal.
Would you mind explaining what those disparities are? Because in the rest of your comment, I’m not seeing any at all.
You mention “antiquated” libertarian views as if what most people think of as Liberatian no longer holds true, and as if all of what new Libertarians now believe is the same as what people in the U.S. would think of as what the far left also believe. So far, I’m not understanding why these supposed new libertarians as you describe them are not indeed Green or socialist instead.
I’d love to hear about how the Ron Paul and Koch GOP/Libertarian/Bircher/AnCap intersection is no longer running the party, seeing as I see no evidence that this is the case.
Maybe some use Bitcoins instead of Liberty Dollars but I’m not seeing a material difference.
Seems to me that the whole push to portray “today’s libertarian” as someone today’s cool kidz would like to hang with is a trojan horse for the same old plutocrat-friendly fiscal policies. And I haven’t heard anything in this thread so far that changes my mind on that.
I’m not trying to fool anyone into thinking that libertarians are now consummate leftists - there are differences, though the breadth of those differences varies from person to person. I was accentuating the best points because I often agree with my libertarian friends, while I could never agree with people of the ilk that @bibliophile20 was describing, and I was trying to illustrate that there’s a broad spectrum.
A young “internet libertarian” is going to be much more liberal than an old secessionist, though both may consider themselves libertarian. The norm is changing because of the growing young population and shrinking old population, and so I would argue that libertarianism, as a whole, is shifting to the left.
As you know, libertarians are generally more liberal with gun rights, while liberals tend to be more conservative. I don’t think that’s changing, so there’s one difference.
And the real sticking point is social welfare programs, which are perceived as being very costly, and so many are opposed to some or all of them despite the fact that social welfare could be consistent with the socially liberal aspect of the ideology.
And did you read the “nazi” link? Gary Johnson said that businesses shouldn’t be able to discriminate against clientele because of religious beliefs, and someone asked whether people should be allowed to discriminate based on political views like in this example. This quote is taken out of context to make him sound like a nut (he is kind of a nut, but allowing someone to discriminate based on political views (e.g. a bakery owned by a Republican refusing to bake for a Democrat) is not something any of us want).
But political views do not make a protected class by law, so this IS notably bizarre.
The hilarious thing is that the libertarian party strongly endorses the “right to free association” aka the ability to practice racial segregation undeterred by any civil rights legislation.
That’s why your example is such a poor choice to further your argument. Gary Johnson is taking a clear step outside of traditional party lines by saying that discrimination isn’t ok, even in a business setting.
US right-Libertarian conceptions of “rights” are nearly always doublespeak attempts to lock plutocracy, corporate feudalism and white supremacy into the law.
The “rights” of bosses to exploit workers. The “rights” of industrialists to destroy the environment. The “rights” of corporations to screw consumers. The “rights” of theocrats to abuse women and GLBT folk. The “rights” of states to oppress racial minorities.
Yep! An Objectivist, no less, which, to avoid any “No True Scotsman” assumptions, are a libertarian philosophy, both by their own identification and by philosophical overlap. And, for a great many people, myself included, they are the public face and stereotype of how a libertarian believes and acts.
As it turns out, the definition of libertarian which I’ve always held true is apparently very much not that which is used by most. I still have an issue with assholes who are strictly self-proclaimed anythings, because half of the time they are, at best, the fringe. I’m not going to go into a no true Scotsman thing because you ruined the fun. And because it’s a waste of time and doesn’t help anything.
I really didn’t know that though, and to be honest, I’m not sure what an objectivist is. I’ll have to look it up.
I will entirely agree that the public face of libertarians almost always turns out to actually be the posterior.
At the risk of sounding like a “no true Scotsman” thing,
The whole ideology is fucked. I consider myself libertarian-adjacent, but everone who tries to keep the movement a thing compromises their humanity to get close to the arms-dealers and monopolists. I say fuck ALL that.
Any ideology would work in a mythical world where everyone is moral, and all ideologies have issues adapting to the real world. I realize that some have more issues adapting than others do, and I realize that I’ve been defending libertarianism to an extent. That’s only because of my perspective, where I’ve found that libertarians are people who actually care about the state of the world, and want to make it better. Perspective is where we live, but I recognize that mine does not align with that of the general populace on this topic.
I am not a libertarian, though I am amenable to many of their views, as you are. Nevertheless, I don’t think that all of those who identify as libertarian are sacrificing their principles to do so. Some of these people have had the same views and identities since before the Tea Party and the Republicans tried to adopt them ageist their wills. At this point, there are a lot of people who are insulted that they are considered by many to be in the same category as the assholes that most people think of when they refer to libertarians. Many of these people are trying to rescue the term from the abuse that it has suffered at the hands of “self-proclaimed” libertarians. I don’t hold it against prior who are trying to take a word back after it’s been demented.
