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questions about libertarians

Badfish420

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what are the core principles that you stand for, on what side of the political spectrum do you sit. (libertarianism as a whole not personal leaning)
 
what are the core principles that you stand for, on what side of the political spectrum do you sit. (libertarianism as a whole not personal leaning)

There is something called the Nolan scale that explains this quite well.

It's a diagram for political beliefs. Most Americans think of the spectrum and right/left in a line. But add a second axis to that right/left spectrum, with liberty at the top and authoritarianism at the bottom.

On the right is economic freedom, on the left is personal freedom. Right-wingers want complete economic freedom, but want to invade personal life like forbidding gay or interracial marriage, or forcing people to go to church, or whatever. Saudi Arabia is extreme right.

On the left are those who believe in complete personal freedom, but want to invade our pocketbooks and redistribute wealth. At the extreme you get communists and people who want a command economy.

Authoritarians are at the bottom. They want no personal or economic freedom. These are nazis, fascists and the like.

At the top are libertarians, who believe in complete personal and economic freedom. People like Murray Rothbard and myself.
 
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your examples of the extreme are pathetic Guy. Madcow is a lesbian liberal not some sort of trotskyite marxist and Limbaugh is mid right at best. You also are not a libertarian but a contrarian communitarian. Your concept of economic freedom involves massive government redistribution of wealthy
 
your examples of the extreme are pathetic Guy. Madcow is a lesbian liberal not some sort of trotskyite marxist and Limbaugh is mid right at best. You also are not a libertarian but a contrarian communitarian. Your concept of economic freedom involves massive government redistribution of wealthy

You are absolutely correct, TD. I fixed it.
 
Guy explained it better than I could.

People think libertarians are just conservatives that hate Obama. No, we hate what he did, and quite frankly, what Bush did too, as far as spending is concerned. While Bush was center right, he wasn't high enough up with the economic freedom thing. To add to what Guy said, we aren't only for personal and economic freedom, we are for the constitution, and for very limited gov't, both in size and power.
 
so it would be fair to say that libertarians are fiscally conservative and socially liberal.
 
Actually, there is a lot here to answer.

First, that Libertarian chart, which is supposed to show one's position politically, is a real mess. Libertarians go out of their way to put down big government as being too complicated. And they are absolutely correct. However, they turn right around and come up with something overly complicated, like that chart. makes no sense to me.

I prefer the simple "Left - Center - Right" scale. It's universally accepted that Marxism, mainline Socialism, and Democratic Socialism, are Left Wing, so that is the best place to start. They are all Collectivist. And since Progressive is really nothing more than Fascism, we must also include Fascism in the Left. It's all Collectivism, where the State takes precedence over the Individual.

At the opposite side, the Right Wing, is Individualism, which is the exact opposite of Collectivism. THis includes Classic/Real Liberals(such as myself), "so called" Libertarians, and at the far right, anarchists.

And in the center would be Federalists, who believe in a mixture of centralized government and individual Liberty.

This is about as simple as it gets, and at the same time explains the entire political spectrum. Tell you what, look down at my Signature, and click on the link I have provided, and you will see just what I mean. It does a great job of explaining all this, with the possible exception of the Roman history part. I think they are a bit in Left Field there.

DontWorryBeHappy's Signature of "Intelligent liberal" is an oxymoron. is completely incorrect. Like most people, he follows the old FDR lie about what, and who, is a Liberal. Frederic von Hayek, Dr. Walter E. Williams, Dr. Milton Friedman, Thomas Jefferson, Lord Acton, Dr.James Buchannan(the economist), and a host of Liberty loving people are correctly called Liberals, because we believe in Individual Liberty.

Most people called Liberals today, are nowhere near being Liberals. It's a Lie perpetuated by FDR in the early 30s when he was campaigning for president. He grabbed the name and ran with it, and the rest is history. Now that he is finally being examined closely, the misuse of the word Liberal is also coming under scrutiny. Fifteen years ago, almost nobody realized this. But today, it is known by millions of informed people, and in another decade perhaps it will regain it's reputation as it well deserves.

In fact almost ALL Real Liberals are Informed Liberals, which is just the opposite of the Signature.
 
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Actually, there is a lot here to answer.

First, that Libertarian chart, which is supposed to show one's position politically, is a real mess. Libertarians go out of their way to put down big government as being too complicated. And they are absolutely correct. However, they turn right around and come up with something overly complicated, like that chart. makes no sense to me.

I prefer the simple "Left - Center - Right" scale. It's universally accepted that Marxism, mainline Socialism, and Democratic Socialism, are Left Wing, so that is the best place to start. They are all Collectivist. And since Progressive is really nothing more than Fascism, we must also include Fascism in the Left. It's all Collectivism, where the State takes precedence over the Individual.

At the opposite side, the Right Wing, is Individualism, which is the exact opposite of Collectivism. THis includes Classic/Real Liberals(such as myself), "so called" Libertarians, and at the far right, anarchists.

And in the center would be Federalists, who believe in a mixture of centralized government and individual Liberty.

This is about as simple as it gets, and at the same time explains the entire political spectrum. Tell you what, look down at my Signature, and click on the link I have provided, and you will see just what I mean. It does a great job of explaining all this, with the possible exception of the Roman history part. I think they are a bit in Left Field there.

DontWorryBeHappy's Signature of "Intelligent liberal" is an oxymoron. is completely incorrect. Like most people, he follows the old FDR lie about what, and who, is a Liberal. Frederic von Hayek, Dr. Walter E. Williams, Dr. Milton Friedman, Thomas Jefferson, Lord Acton, Dr.James Buchannan(the economist), and a host of Liberty loving people are correctly called Liberals, because we believe in Individual Liberty.

Most people called Liberals today, are nowhere near being Liberals. It's a Lie perpetuated by FDR in the early 30s when he was campaigning for president. He grabbed the name and ran with it, and the rest is history. Now that he is finally being examined closely, the misuse of the word Liberal is also coming under scrutiny. Fifteen years ago, almost nobody realized this. But today, it is known by millions of informed people, and in another decade perhaps it will regain it's reputation as it well deserves.

In fact almost ALL Real Liberals are Informed Liberals, which is just the opposite of the Signature.

you seem to have a deluded sense of what certain words mean. does 'liberal' mean fascist to you just because you are against liberalism, because thats how it looks.

right side of the spectrum is far from being holy and the left deffinitly does not include fascism, it is the extreme of right wing ideology, and your attempt to generalize beliefs into being black and white, good and evil, leftwing loonies and right wing enlightened, are as pathetic as your misunderstanding of your own ideology. for instance i identify as a liberal, and an anarcho-communist.

if you claim that the extreme of liberalism is the indivdual dominated by the state, then the extreme of the right wing woul be domination by the corporations. and i doubt most freedom loving libertarians wouldn't bother to make much of a distinction between one system of oppression and another.
 
you seem to have a deluded sense of what certain words mean. does 'liberal' mean fascist to you just because you are against liberalism, because thats how it looks.

right side of the spectrum is far from being holy and the left deffinitly does not include fascism, it is the extreme of right wing ideology, and your attempt to generalize beliefs into being black and white, good and evil, leftwing loonies and right wing enlightened, are as pathetic as your misunderstanding of your own ideology. for instance i identify as a liberal, and an anarcho-communist.

if you claim that the extreme of liberalism is the indivdual dominated by the state, then the extreme of the right wing woul be domination by the corporations. and i doubt most freedom loving libertarians wouldn't bother to make much of a distinction between one system of oppression and another.

The problem is that you, like most people, have fallen victim to FDR's stealing of the word Liberal, to cloak himself, since at the time the word Progressive has gotten a bad name. The correct definition of a Liberal is someone who believes in Individual Liberty. Today's 'so called' liberals, such as yourself, don't like Individual Liberty, unless the State authorizes it.

Here are some links, which will give you a better idea. Incidentially, we real Liberals are slowly reclaiming our good name, but it just takes time. In another decade, there will be no doubt, and you will be forced back to "Progressive", where you belong. And yes, the American Progressive movement is the forerunner of Fascism.
__________________-

Classic Liberalism

Classical Liberalism, Libertarianism,
and Individualism


Saving The Soul Of Classic Liberalism

The Culture Of Classic Liberalism

Liberalism and Limited Government

I, Liberal
In the Linguistically Challenged United States, the Word "Liberal" Is Misunderstood

Sheldon Richman

In October a few of us at FEE traveled all the way to Tbilisi, Georgia, one of the former Soviet Union’s imperial possessions, to put on a two-day student seminar in the political economy of freedom. Georgia is a scenic country with gracious people. We enjoyed warm hospitality throughout our visit. The Georgians are struggling to make the transition from socialism to liberty, and with the help of a solid core of freedom-philosophy advocates, they might just make it.

Aside from the countless amenities extended to us, it was also nice to be in a place where the word “liberal” is understood. In the linguistically challenged United States, to be a liberal is to favor the government over the individual. Before the word was hijacked in the Progressive Era by devotees of what Ludwig von Mises called “statolatry,” a liberal supported private property, free markets, and the rule of law as a bulwark against the state. The words “liberal” and “liberty” obviously share the same root. They originate in the Latin word for “free.”

But that’s all forgotten. Now that “liberal” is associated with bully government, it has become a dirty word, especially during elections, and no one wants it anymore—not even the advocates of bully government. The Economist on November 4 pointed out that it is derisory in Europe too, although over there it retains much of its original meaning.

I’d like to associate myself with what The Economist said:



The magazine went on to lament the absurd division of freedom into personal and economic varieties, one for the left and one for the right: “That separation explains how it can be that the same term is now used in different places to say opposite things. What is harder to explain is why ‘liberal’ has become such a term of abuse. When you understand that the tradition it springs from has changed the world so much for the better in the past two and a half centuries, you might have expected all sides to be claiming the label for their own exclusive use.”

There is no better person to turn to for insight into the changing notion of liberalism than Herbert Spencer, who examined the matter in “The New Toryism,” found in his 1884 collection The Man Versus the State (online, thanks to the Liberty Fund, at Spencer, The Man Versus The State, with Six Essays on Government, Society, and Freedom | Library of Economics and Liberty). Not so ironically, Spencer worked at The Economist from 1848 (five years after its founding) to 1853.

Spencer reminded his readers that two types of societies had long been in contention: the militant, or status-based, type versus the industrial, or contract-based, type. Advocates of the latter, who later became known as both Whigs and Liberals, accomplished the Herculean task of “resist[ing] and decreas[ing] the coercive power of the ruler over the subject.” After detailing this earth-shaking record, Spencer wrote, “t seems needful to remind everybody what Liberalism was in the past, that they may perceive its unlikeness to the so-called Liberalism of the present. . . . They have lost sight of the truth that in past times Liberalism habitually stood for individual freedom versus State-coercion.”

This raises the question Spencer wishes to answer: “How is it that Liberalism . . . has grown more and more coercive in its legislation?” It was a case of confused thinking. Later activists mistook Liberalism’s elimination of coercive government “hindrances to happiness” for the use of coercive government to achieve the good directly. “And seeking to gain it directly, they have used methods intrinsically opposed to those originally used.”

Today’s Economist editors wisely prefer that left and right continue to shun the word “liberal,” leaving it to “its original owner. That will free ‘liberal’ to be used exclusively from now on in its proper sense, as we shall continue to use it regardless.”
 
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