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Are you a classical liberal/libertarian?
Yes. 48%  48%  [ 12 ]
No. 52%  52%  [ 13 ]
Total votes : 25

Hyeokgeose
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11 Nov 2017, 5:09 pm

Hey,

Wondering how many other users here are classical liberals/libertarians. By that, I don't necessarily mean the Libertarian Party -- I myself am not affiliated with the party (since I'm a Turning Point USA activist, I'm registered with the GOP), but I have a libertarian set of beliefs.


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11 Nov 2017, 5:27 pm

I am a Jeffersonian constitutionalist (a.k.a. libertarian).


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11 Nov 2017, 6:34 pm

I'm one. It's the American Way. :D


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eric76
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11 Nov 2017, 8:41 pm

I consider myself to be a Classical Liberal.

For a brief time I thought I might be a Libertarian, but it quickly became obvious that the Libertarian Party takes the position to ridiculous extremes.



Hyeokgeose
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11 Nov 2017, 10:21 pm

eric76 wrote:
I consider myself to be a Classical Liberal.

For a brief time I thought I might be a Libertarian, but it quickly became obvious that the Libertarian Party takes the position to ridiculous extremes.


Depending on the issue, I can agree to an extent.


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11 Nov 2017, 10:51 pm

Nope, I am not. I am a modern day liberal, along the lines of FDR, and Bernie Sanders.


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12 Nov 2017, 1:47 pm

I don't quite know where I stand anymore these days.

I would say that I am for people's rights to do whatever they like in private so long as they aren't crossing the line toward infringing on another's rights. At the same time though I am somewhat squishy on the economic issue - ie. I don't see the work world being the welfare system of the future and people's ability to keep up with both the education demands and automation may force us to rethink everything from asserting one's right to live by working at one end to perhaps pushing demand to reduce complexity in competing tech languages and platforms for the sake of stability, uniformity, and ease of maintenance.

As for large or small government - I really feel like that topic's been politicized as badly as global warming and it's difficult to tell just how much of what we have is necessary vs. bureaucratic rent-seeking. Less is better, if given two equal outcomes, but we're also in a world where situations change and while certain things need to stay the same others need to be able to to adapt to new emergencies. Heck, sometimes I do wonder if the complexity of our legal code and bureaucracies maybe be greater than 50% an issue of our government trying to mimic the type of adaptive ecosystem that capitalism generates.

To that end I'd say that if there is a lot of waste and rent-seeking to any degree that's not within a constantly self-producing margin I could see libertarian ideals tapping us back into balance but again - the more I think about it I'm feeling less confident these days that I really know all of the ins and outs of our federal government and what's needed vs. what's superfluous and self-justifying. Hopefully there are some good Intelligence Squared debates or college professorial panels on Youtube that get into the nuts and bolts of this kind of thing properly because IMHO clarity on it is really important.


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11 Dec 2017, 3:37 pm

I am rather close to libertarianism but I develop my own version of it, with more in-depth mathematical approaches and careful analysis of logical systems. As I am familiar with the conflict between science and pseudo-science I reject all the climate skepticism of many libertarians as an expression of crude amateurism and denialism of scientific facts.
Usual libertarians focus on hopelessly trying to get the state restrict its own role, expecting the chaos of the resulting void to be the best possible world. As for me I don't expect anything from the state to such a point that I don't even expect the decision from the state to restrict its own action to constitute any big deal of progress (with exceptions but...). Instead of this I focus on the possibilities of progress that can be done independently, ignoring existing states (regarding them as the nothingness they already are). Namely by IT, creating a new online social network... yes I dream of a new online currency but no I don't like bitcoin which I regard as totally ridiculous, taking us at least a century backwards in terms of financial modernity. Because modernity and usefulness requires intelligence and competence, while cryptographers have their nose so deeply stuck into their lines of code and their cryptographic algorithms as a substitute of financial competence that they inadvertently dropped out of the window once century of discoveries and progress in matters of good working of financial systems when trying to reinvent the wheel about how a money should work. Instability problems ? They happily think it's not a bug but a feature just because they can't understand the question...
If only programmers would like to join the work (mainly using vuejs/nodejs for now) it would be great.



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11 Dec 2017, 3:41 pm

Classical liberal describes me fairly well, so yes.

My biggest gripe with modern liberals, is that they often value politeness over truth, or tone over substance.



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11 Dec 2017, 4:09 pm

A great site to learn about many aspects of classical liberalism is http://www.learnliberty.org/


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The_Walrus
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12 Dec 2017, 1:12 pm

In another thread I said that a lot of modern extremists like to paint themselves as "classic liberals" because they either don't know what it is or they want to gain the credibility of having a semi-respectable ideology without actually changing their views.

You can't be a classic liberal if you believe in immigration controls.
You can't be a classic liberal if you believe in trade barriers.
There's no pride in being a classic liberal if you're not a feminist, if you don't support worker's rights, and if you don't want to liberalise the justice system. Some classic liberals had pretty shoddy views on some of theses things but I'm sure if you transported most of them to the modern day then they'd re-assess and change their minds.
If by "classic liberal" you mean "I'm pro-market and pro-liberty" then great, that's basically my ideology; if we disagree on one or two things then that doesn't mean you aren't a liberal. But if you mean "my views are at least 100 years out of date" then sorry, you're not a classic liberal.
In my experience, most centre-right liberal types do not call themselves classic liberals, they call themselves neoliberals or ordoliberals or Orange Bookers or just plain liberals. The people who take pride in being "classic liberals" would more accurately be called "regressive liberals".



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12 Dec 2017, 2:21 pm

^^Modern feminists want gender quotas, that goes directly against classic liberal ideals.



Hyeokgeose
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12 Dec 2017, 8:22 pm

The_Walrus wrote:
In another thread I said that a lot of modern extremists like to paint themselves as "classic liberals" because they either don't know what it is or they want to gain the credibility of having a semi-respectable ideology without actually changing their views.

You can't be a classic liberal if you believe in immigration controls.
You can't be a classic liberal if you believe in trade barriers.
There's no pride in being a classic liberal if you're not a feminist, if you don't support worker's rights, and if you don't want to liberalise the justice system. Some classic liberals had pretty shoddy views on some of theses things but I'm sure if you transported most of them to the modern day then they'd re-assess and change their minds.
If by "classic liberal" you mean "I'm pro-market and pro-liberty" then great, that's basically my ideology; if we disagree on one or two things then that doesn't mean you aren't a liberal. But if you mean "my views are at least 100 years out of date" then sorry, you're not a classic liberal.
In my experience, most centre-right liberal types do not call themselves classic liberals, they call themselves neoliberals or ordoliberals or Orange Bookers or just plain liberals. The people who take pride in being "classic liberals" would more accurately be called "regressive liberals".


Classical liberalism is under the umbrella term of libertarianism. On the philosophical spectrum that we use, we have collectivist ideologies on the left side of a plane and individualist ideologies on the right side. At the farthest left end would be communism (which of course has more specific ideologies under it), and at the farthest right end would be anarcho-capitalism (can be disputed). Some where on the far right, one would find classical liberalism, which to me (and thus far, those I've talked to from some political think tanks), would be the individualist philosophy that dominated the United States during the Enlightenment. So, it's more of a philosophical term as opposed to utilizing out-dated platforms; thus, we apply individualist philosophy from the Enlightenment to modern times. In short, we aren't feminists, socialists, etc. We advocate for a small federal government that is decentralized, and advocate for states' rights. I would say we revitalize "The Spirit of 1776" (per the name of my work-in-progress blog, hehe).

Neoliberals come from the Reagan-era Republicans, or also known as today's conservatives (Reagan, Thatcher -- those folks). Modern liberals refer to figures such as Zinnists (Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton), and I would include Wilson, FDR, and Hoover with them (ultimately, they're the fathers of "progressive" policy).

A good book to understand classical liberals would be "The Libertarian Mind" by David Boaz. Libertarianism is the modern term for a classical liberal. Don't confuse it with the Libertarian Party -- many do that. Unfortunately, the Libertarian Party has abandoned principles over time, just like the two mainstream parties, and in my opinion, should not call itself the Libertarian Party anymore -- or at least, the "[Closest-you'll-get-to-a] Libertarian Party."


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-Stefán Karl Stefánsson
10 July, 1975 - 21 August, 2018.


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12 Dec 2017, 11:36 pm

Hyeokgeose wrote:
The_Walrus wrote:
In another thread I said that a lot of modern extremists like to paint themselves as "classic liberals" because they either don't know what it is or they want to gain the credibility of having a semi-respectable ideology without actually changing their views.

You can't be a classic liberal if you believe in immigration controls.
You can't be a classic liberal if you believe in trade barriers.
There's no pride in being a classic liberal if you're not a feminist, if you don't support worker's rights, and if you don't want to liberalise the justice system. Some classic liberals had pretty shoddy views on some of theses things but I'm sure if you transported most of them to the modern day then they'd re-assess and change their minds.
If by "classic liberal" you mean "I'm pro-market and pro-liberty" then great, that's basically my ideology; if we disagree on one or two things then that doesn't mean you aren't a liberal. But if you mean "my views are at least 100 years out of date" then sorry, you're not a classic liberal.
In my experience, most centre-right liberal types do not call themselves classic liberals, they call themselves neoliberals or ordoliberals or Orange Bookers or just plain liberals. The people who take pride in being "classic liberals" would more accurately be called "regressive liberals".


Classical liberalism is under the umbrella term of libertarianism. On the philosophical spectrum that we use, we have collectivist ideologies on the left side of a plane and individualist ideologies on the right side. At the farthest left end would be communism (which of course has more specific ideologies under it), and at the farthest right end would be anarcho-capitalism (can be disputed). Some where on the far right, one would find classical liberalism, which to me (and thus far, those I've talked to from some political think tanks), would be the individualist philosophy that dominated the United States during the Enlightenment. So, it's more of a philosophical term as opposed to utilizing out-dated platforms; thus, we apply individualist philosophy from the Enlightenment to modern times. In short, we aren't feminists, socialists, etc. We advocate for a small federal government that is decentralized, and advocate for states' rights. I would say we revitalize "The Spirit of 1776" (per the name of my work-in-progress blog, hehe).

Neoliberals come from the Reagan-era Republicans, or also known as today's conservatives (Reagan, Thatcher -- those folks). Modern liberals refer to figures such as Zinnists (Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton), and I would include Wilson, FDR, and Hoover with them (ultimately, they're the fathers of "progressive" policy).

A good book to understand classical liberals would be "The Libertarian Mind" by David Boaz. Libertarianism is the modern term for a classical liberal. Don't confuse it with the Libertarian Party -- many do that. Unfortunately, the Libertarian Party has abandoned principles over time, just like the two mainstream parties, and in my opinion, should not call itself the Libertarian Party anymore -- or at least, the "[Closest-you'll-get-to-a] Libertarian Party."


You can keep Wilson.


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techstepgenr8tion
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12 Dec 2017, 11:51 pm

I hadn't heard of Melissa Chen before, this sounds like an interesting segment and she's already getting into the classical liberal title around 3:00 - essentially suggesting that anything pro-enlightenment is getting seen as racist now because the enlightenment was a white revolution, it fueled white academia and white thought, hence western imperialism and racism. She's obviously not a proponent of that interpretation but it's her extraction of what's happening in the reactionary and identitarian pseudo-left these days (or at least it would be pseudo or really a non-left 'left' by Brenden O'Niel's thinking).


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13 Dec 2017, 1:06 am

I consider myself to be a Classical Liberal. I only vote Libertarian because they are closest to me, but I generally consider them to be clowns.