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Please don't hold all libertarians accountable for Lew Rockwell. Some of us are "classical liberals" in the style of the Enlightenment. The libertarian movement
by curi 19y ago
Please don't hold all libertarians accountable for Lew Rockwell. Some of us are "classical liberals" in the style of the Enlightenment. The libertarian movement is far from a perfect fit, but it's closer than the other parties.
- dfranke 19y agoYou're right, it's definitely not. If you consider yourself a classical liberal, you probably shouldn't call yourself a libertarian at all, at least not when speaking to educated libertarians. While the two schools share a lot in common, their philosophical underpinnings are quite different: self-ownership versus "life, liberty, and property". In today's climate it makes perfect sense that the two groups should be political allies, but they shouldn't be conflated.
- curi 19y agolibertarians are mostly very pro-free-market, and pro-small-government, as am I. I like Rand and Hayek. I can communicate these things better with the word 'libertarian' than with the word 'liberal' which few people understand in the way I'd mean it. I'm closer to right-wing than left-wing, by present day American standards. meh. avoiding labels requires a lot more words. PS I'd upvote you if I could vote.
- dfranke 19y agoI've never quite understood people's aversion to being labeled. I'm happy to be labeled as a Rothbardian. My political thinking basically conforms to the framework laid out in The Ethics of Liberty. The fact that I accept the label doesn't mean that I accept every word that Rothbard ever wrote as gospel. I wouldn't expect any reasonable person to infer that I do, and nobody (reasonable or otherwise) has ever confronted me with such an accusation. Labels are just macros, and as such they're useful.
- curi 19y agowell didn't you basically just tell me to avoid the label libertarian because it's too misleading? i don't entirely agree, but thought you had a point. it is misleading. so are all the others. the only half-decent ones for me are pretty specific like Popperian.
- dfranke 19y agoI was just advising you to avoid the wrong label, not to avoid them altogether.
- curi 19y agoBut I don't think libertarian is the wrong label (no worse than others). if "classical liberal" makes you think it is, maybe that is the wrong label?
- dfranke 19y agoI think libertarian is the wrong label, and classical liberal perhaps but not necessarily the correct one, if you identify more closely with Thomas Jefferson than with Robert Nozick.
- curi 19y agoI don't know early American philosophers very well offhand. But wikipedia says Jefferson sympathized with the French. The dates are around the time of the French Revolution. So, my guess is I dislike him. The French Revolution was really awful and revolutions in general are bad.
- dfranke 19y agoBear in mind that the French Revolution began as something very different than what it became. Thomas Paine, arguably the most libertarian of any of the founding fathers, was one of the French Revolution's most ardent American supporters in its early days. After the revolution got hijacked by the Jacobins, Paine ended up in a French prison. If you'd like, substitute Locke for Jefferson.