3 ms·
This is fair comment. I'm also a libertarian and wouldn't really consider myself to be "right". I suppose most Americans would consider me to be left on socia
by jnbiche 10y ago
This is fair comment. I'm also a libertarian and wouldn't really consider myself to be "right". I suppose most Americans would consider me to be left on social issues and somewhat right on economic issues.
On the other hand, in my experience, libertarians are pretty far from being liberals, and even farther from being typical Democrats. Personally, I share even less with typical Democrats than with typical (non-Trump and non-Evangelical) Republicans. I do share a lot of social beliefs with people who consider themselves to be liberals first and foremost, and agree with them about some of this nation's greatest challenges. I've found typical Democrats to be against drug legalization and only with great hesitation have started supporting LGBT rights, when most libertarians were supporting gay rights 40 years ago (in the sense that gays rights mean that gays have the same rights as everyone else, because what people do in the privacy of their homes is not the government's business).
Anyway, I think it's fair to say that there's support for BI from two different parts, if not sides, of the political spectrum.
But fair point about there being left libertarians and right libertarians, I don't really disagree. I mean, Chomsky calls himself a libertarian, but is definitely "of the left" (and I happen to disagree with him on a lot of issues, yet share some of his core beliefs about the dangers of government and authoritarianism). I'll take more care in the future.
- throwaway2016a 10y ago> On the other hand, in my experience, libertarians are pretty far from being liberals, and even farther from being typical Democrats. To be fair I think "The Libertarian Left" would also be miss-leading. We defy the left and right labels :)