'Libertarian' Is Just Another Word for (Classical) Liberal

"Libertarianism" is very much a part of what is now known as "classical" liberalism — the influential free-market ideology of the nineteenth century whose effects and legacy are still felt today.

[Lord_Volkner]

I prefer to call 'socialism' by the name 'oppositism' because everything in socialism is called the opposite of what it is.
Even the name 'socialism' is opposite of what it actually is. There's no system more anti-social.

[_red]

And "anarcho-capitalist" is just another word for BAMF.

[nicolasgjenganger]

not really, liberals incl. the classic ones always were etatists.


“One gratifying aspect of our rise to some prominence is that, for the first time in my memory, we, ‘our side, ’ had captured a crucial word from the enemy . . . ‘Libertarians’ . . . had long been simply a polite word for left-wing anarchists, that is for anti-private property anarchists, either of the communist or syndicalist variety. But now we had taken it over...”

― Murray N. Rothbard, The Betrayal Of The American Right

[robertgraham]

Thank you for paying attention, for seeing the forest and the trees.

[nickb]

I prefer "Voluntaryist" myself

[libertarianrevolution]

I have to wonder if when the Libertarian Party was formed back in 1971, if it should have chosen a different name, because even though the word libertarian has permeated teh culture to an extent, and even though there are more self identified libertarians out there than ever (note that this has NOT translated to dues paying membership growth for the Libertarian Party), there are still lots of people out there who mistakenly think that libertarian means left wing liberal/progressive, as in somebody like a Democrat or a Green or a member of one of the parties that has the word socialist in its name.

[marty]

A real life example of 'newspeak' at work would be with the word 'liberal'.

[noriberea]

A Libertarian is a Budist with an attitude - Nassim Taleb dixit.

[CarrotCakeMake]

Excellent presentation. Would love to hear more.

[KRGruner]

Yes, I used to think that way, and called myself a libertarian once, but no longer. I am a conservative liberal, period. Libertarianism is a weak, incomplete, and insufficient ideology on which to found a viable society. From a strictly economic point of view, of course, liberalism and libertarianism are identical for all practical purposes (except for the anarcho-capitalist strand of libertarianism, which is irrelevant in any case), but there is more to life than economics. The notion that a complex-adaptive system like human society can function on the basis of a single rule like "do as you wish as long as you don't hurt others" (+ "respect private property, " I suppose) is intellectually (and scientifically) bankrupt. The fact that the only way the internal mechanisms required for the stability of a complex-adaptive system can evolve is through an evolutionary process (trial and error over long periods of time) ensure that any non-conservative approach to the problem will fail. All revolutionary attempts at "transforming" society MUST fail, whether they are socialist/collectivist or individualist in nature. Now, it turns out of course that individualism (=liberalism) works best, and we (well, the geniuses among us such as Bastiat, Mises, Hayek, and so on...) can figure out (after the fact) why that might be, but one should keep this in mind: it only works best at the scale of the impersonal-transaction catalaxy that characterizes the modern world. In general, as Nassim Taleb correctly points out, the smaller the scale of the group and degree of personal connectedness, the more collectivist tendencies are appropriate. I certainly do NOT act within my family (close or extended) according to classical liberal or libertarian principles. To summarize: libertarianism is a dead end ideology, unless you redefine it in such a way as to make it indistinguishable from a form of conservative individualist (liberal) philosophy. Liberal is opposed to Collectivist, NOT Conservative. Conservative is opposed to Progressive/Revolutionary. Let's get this right.

[eldwdubu]

All you need to know that the Koch brothers are libertarians... therefore libertarians offer nothing that is decent or good. Don’t let this propaganda video change what libertarians are really all about. When you boil it down it’s Might Makes Right