this post was submitted on 03 Feb 2024
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Anyone else hate that the Gadsden flag has been appropriated by ultra-libertarian jingoists? It's an awesome-looking flag with a cool history and symbolism, but I feel like I couldn't fly it without looking like a twat.
Ultra-libertarian Jingoist? I'm as confused by that combination of words as I am the flags on the truck.
Ultra libertarian == I’m free to be whatever I want to be despite your freedoms
Jingoist == my country is the best ever no matter what you say
“Ultra libertarian + Jingoist” == fuck you im a nationalist and don’t know civics
Well, no. A fundamental of libertarianism is that one's liberty doesn't encroach on others' liberty, since obviously that would be taking away liberty, ergo anti-libertarian.
If someone claims to be "ultra libertarian"—an entirely different thing—and does this, they would ironically be in direct opposition of the thing they claim to be associated with; on it's most fundamental level, no less.
So you haven't paid attention to those who call themselves libertarians for the past 20+ years? Their entire m o is restricting others' liberties in favor of their own. And I'm not conflating conservatives and libertarians accidentally, I'm pointing out libertarians in practice.
Hitler also called his party socialist (maybe even believed in that himself), yet you'd find it hard to find people who agrees on that
Surprisingly you can find people arguing that Hitler and his party were actually left wing (because they used the word socialist) both online and off. My usual response is to consider the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
Yeah well that's another thing. Same way as many lefties are bashing borderline fash right as libertarians just because they claim so, many on the right claim Hitler was a socialist to throw dirt on socialism.
In both of these cases, I honestly believe it's the 2nd group that's actually harming the name of an ideology more than the first.
No you're not.
You're calling out a specific group mislabeling themselves and falling for it.
Since libertarianism is a long, established, and large ideology in human society with a wealth of knowledge, information, figures, and history, I'd encourage you to take a few seconds to look it up and delve into all that knowledge, rather than just go with what some redneck somewhere has touted to you.
In actual fact, an ultra libertarian would be encompassing ideologies like anarchism and far-left libertarianism.
That's not my opinion, that's just literally what it is and you can go Google that. Stop listening to idiots and falling for their words, lest you'll start misunderstanding just as they do and terms or ideas otherwise disassociated with them will get tarnished, ruined, and misappropriately loathed. That's kind of an end goal of misinformation. Don't fall for it and don't spread it here, even if it's not intentional.
You’re arguing ~~pedantics~~ semantics here and words change meanings over time. Libertarian, whether you like it or not, now also represents that particular group of people.
If we're arguing semantics over a group of people, what they stand for & what the definition is, the label coming to represent a group of undesirables that you must now accept whether you like it or not....damn near everyone should be ashamed. ¯\(°_o)/¯
Oh you're totally correct on the academic definitions. For instance I'm a leftist social libertarian. But I don't tell most people that because when they think libertarian, they think of guys that drive trucks like in the post.
Like it or not, and I don't, the definition has changed in common language.
Just like how liberal now means something completely divorced from the original meaning for the vast majority of people. You can spend all day trying to explain that liberalism actually is a conservative ideology, but people aren't going to stop using liberal to describe people left of the US Democrats.
It feels like you are being willfully naive of the real world and languages' etymology in practice, and hiding within academia, whether on purpose or not.
Are you sure it's me being willfully naive of the real world? The real world seems to be ipretty fucking clear on this one and has been for a very long time.
Its not academia. It's just a couple wiggles of your fingers I'm lazy, so here's just the first three to get you started...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism
https://www.libertarianism.org/what-is-a-libertarian
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/libertarianism/
So, as you can see, your etymology at work—not that the morphemes could ever be confusing on such a term. If your view is otherwise, well that's my example of the power of disinformation and misinformation. Literally deceived into believing something that is incorrect by listening to incorrect people. Be careful of it.
So is Ayn Rand a libertarian or a mislabeled scotsman?
She's a dead fascist. The only good kind.
how does libertarinism keep corporations from exploiting workers?
Depends on the scale of it, but in an extreme libertarian view, it would not. It would say the natural order of things would play out and that micro-society would end up in a balance where workers get enough of what they want and the corporation would get enough of what they want. No state or body should get involved unless one side involved them or they were requested in as a mediator. And that libertarian would expect that it essentially, eventually, "sorts itself out".
Though, since extremes of all social ideologies are completely naive to human nature, you'd find the majority of libertarianism ideas would be focused on protecting freedoms which is often more sensibly done with a government, but one that listens and is not corrupted or swayed by either side.
It's interesting as this kind of thing can see libertarians fight each other over contradiction—the concept of a free market, for example. But I think the majority of them are more or less a bunch of Adam Smiths and his views were very libertarian while also sanely criticising libertarianism and where it does not work or does need to involvement of state or some form of authority, essentially to save people from themselves.
Te word "libertarian" was redefined by an-caps to mean Ultra-neo-liberalism. It has no real connections with the origin of the term except for an-caps insisting on calling themselves anarchists.
There was some unusual person here the other day claiming to be pro anarchy but had views starkly opposing libertarian ones... They seemed to be all for not being told what to do, but their concern for liberty didn't seem to extend beyond themselves. My assumption would be that in a state of anarchy, they'd quickly be taking everything off everyone, then trying to establish an authority to try ensure other people didn't take their stuff. Sitting in a beautiful colonial mansion, exercising their freedom to own other people, thinking how cool anarchy ended up being for them, while blissfully unaware of the pitchforks and torches marching onto their property to the beat of anarchist chants.
Don’t libertarians believe in abolishing public institutions like public schools? That’s encroaching on my children’s liberty to educate themselves affordably. Or without a public fire department it’s kind of hard to have the liberty to not die in a house fire.
Libertarianism is a joke.
No. While it's a spectrum, much of that spectrum is actually more for equal distribution in society and opposed to ideas like private ownership and capitalism, to a degree, since these unequally take away access or privilege for some and not for others. Thus, not everyone has the same liberties because one part of society has blocked or encroached another part.
The fundamental idea is not to gain something, rather it's not to lose anything,
The exception to this is the somewhat unique and new right-wing libertarian branches that appeared in the US which are sort of more from a minarchism idea, so it's more focused on not being regulated or controlled by a state. This is where free market concepts really took off, for example. The traditional libertarian views which, being much more mature and prevalent in the rest of the world, encompass society as much and originates from the left with stances of socialism, social balance, and of course the that any government is in service to the people and not an authority over them. This is why they are more for protecting liberty, rather than using it, and a state's role is this. Basically, don't let arseholes get loose and shit on everyone, because they will.
This is sort of like the same phenomena of the politically correct (not in the PC sense but in the sense of like, what is and isn't like, correct in the realm of political discourse. Like definitions of semantics and shit) definition of liberalism that leftists have to kind of churn through and give, every time someone says liberals and leftists are the same thing, and then it's explained in some sort of hackneyed way usually that "on the global scale of leftism actually you're wrong sweetie", when realistically the better way to describe it is that liberalism isn't necessarily left or right wing because it's kind of a mercenary ideology that leaves up a free market which may either be left or right wing, depending on circumstance.
And then everyone gets confused by that distinction between liberalism and leftism, and just go back to using the words how they were using them to begin with, and calling people libtards, despite themselves wanting a free market more than their opposition (usually). So what I mean to say is that your definition is technically correct by all given definitions, and is the only one that makes sense, right, but, despite that, when most people refer to libertarians, they're referring to this exact type of twat who drives a yuge truck, is generally obsessed with firearms, may or may not be a pedophile who doesn't like the age of consent, may or may not be an austerity hawk, and believes in the NAP as some sort of holy preventative doctrine that you can build a society on. Hackneyed, conservative-flavored anarchism, basically. That strain of conservatism where they actually believed Reagan when he said the enemy was the government. That's what people mean when they say someone's a libertarian, and it's usually also what people mean when they self-define as a libertarian.
It's not a technically correct or logically coherent definition, but it's the one that's worked it's way into common cultural parlance.
Yeah, Ultra Libertarian Jingoist, in the way I defined it as it pertains to the comment that was made, perfectly describes the cognitive dissonance you’re explaining too.
The above leans heavily on the idea that the political spectrum is a loop and swaying to either side too heavily incurs bias that eventually warps the initial intention
Because things weren't already confusing enough