Classical liberals/libertarians?

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Where would U.S. President Coolidge be put on this spectrum?

Definitely on the right. Many libertarians, and young conservatives, love Coolidge for these reasons: a man of few words, vetoes, and staunch laissez-faire policy in office.

"I want the people of America to be able to work less for the government -- and more for themselves.
I want them to have the rewards of their own industry. This is the chief meaning of freedom."
-Calvin Coolidge.
Speech on Taxes, Liberty, and the Philosophy of Government delivered on 11 August 1924.

Jefferson said much of the same things, but was a Democrat (perhaps libertarianism is no respecter of partisans). Because Coolidge was cousin to Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Harlan Fiske Stone (both cousins of mine), they seemed to work well with each other.

It would have been nice if Coolidge's laissez-faire-ism worked. I'd rather live with a certain harmony.

But other forces ruined it for Laissez-faire......beyond his control.

Libertarian is probably what I most identify as politically. I'm for minimum government and maximum liberty, but I feel that those minimums and maximums are always up for debate and I'm always willing to change my position.

But yeah, I would consider myself (at least in large part to be) a classic liberal. Socially liberal, fiscally conservative.

I find a lot of the hardcore libertarians to be intolerable (just like hardcore cons and liberals). Screaming "TAXATION IS THEFT" like a bunch of children, ugh.

They are essentially the Moral Majority or Code Pink crowds. I would, however, agree with an altered version of the scream as "Federal taxation is theft." Shifting the United States back to a state-based excise tax system (and abandoning income taxes) would give competition to some states while others lose competition.

For sure, and the conversation on how much government and taxation is appropriate is a very interesting one.

But when I hear some of these guys screaming about "TAXATION IS THEFT, IT'S TAKING MY MONEY BY FORCE AND COERCION!! ! THE GOVERNMENT DOESN'T HAVE A RIGHT TO ANY OF MY MONEY" I'm just like... okay dude haha. They're just inverted Communists to me.

That's a problem that other libertarians see as well. We have these folks that go about saying just that, and then tell other libertarians that they're not libertarian since they don't agree on everything. Frankly, many of us are tired of those people, haha.



I agree -- I don't think the Federal government has a right to tax individuals. I see that as a right exclusive to the states, as it was originally.

Nothing you've said here is new to me, except for the term "Zinnist" which Google seems to think is either the German word for tin or a misspelling of "Zionist". I would disagree with much of it (the term "neoliberal" pre-dates Reagan and Thatcher and traditionally referred to people closer to Obama and Clinton; your view is extremely US-centric while classic liberalism was very much a European philosophy; your left-right scale is wonkish and unconventional and ahistorical).

If you want to understand the classic liberal mindset then try reading On Liberty by John Stuart Mill. It often comes packaged with The Subjugation of Women. You could also try things like Two Treatises of Government by John Locke and its sister, Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes (which provides much foundational liberal thought but comes to some conclusions that the likes of Locke and Mill would firmly reject - where there's contradiction, go with Locke), The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, A Vindication of the Rights of Women by Mary Wollstonecraft, Common Sense by Thomas Paine, and Discourse on Inequality by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. A lot of that stuff is really good, but a lot of it is bloody terrible. Even Mill has a weird fascination with the opera and "high art". Still, it's all important foundational stuff and was very influential in the birth of liberalism. Read them, or just summaries, and it will be clear that classic liberals were not "libertarians" in the modern political sense. Most of them did hold values that in the context of their time were progressive.

Rather than Wilson and Hoover, I would point to people like Abraham Lincoln, Henry George, William Gladstone, John Maynard Keynes, Alexander Rüstow, H.H. Asquith, David Lloyd George, Millicent Fawcett, Walter Eucken, Martin Luther King, and finally Milton Friedman as essential transitional figures between classic liberalism and modern liberalism (in addition to FDR). You could potentially throw in Tony Blair and Bill Clinton but I think they're too authoritarian, while Obama is too recent and Merkel is only coincidentally liberal. I appreciate that I'm open to a charge of hypocrisy there as I'm skewing quite heavily to British political figures.

Per paragraph:

1. Yes, my views are centered around the US because I do not meddle in the politics of any countries besides the US and Korea (I'm mixed), and some case studies. As for Zinnist, that is not a common term -- it's been thrown around think tanks and by some figures to describe, to an extent, modern liberalism in America. Named after Howard Zinn, the one who we credit for revisionist history in America. My left-right scale uses the philosophical spectrum, which isn't really used much outside the U.S. To say it's wonkish is absurd, in my opinion, since it has very logical grounds, whereas the one that is popular among Europeans or the American left, is truly the wonkish one since it's inconsistent and bent for political purposes (i.e. puts anything they hate on the "far-right" -- e.g. national socialists, who, are indeed socialist and did implement collectivist philosophy into their socioeconomic platform, so it makes no sense to lump them in with those who believe in small government). There's also the political spectrum that is based off of policy, which will vary place to place.
I know some Europeans use the philosophical spectrum, since I've seen them use it (such as the creator of politicalcompass.org, though theirs is a bit weird and heavily Marxist-biased).
Classical liberalism was alive and well in the United States -- to imply or suggest that it is solely a European philosophy is very, very wrong. The United States was a country birthed from the Enlightenment. Yes, the Enlightenment came from Europe and the philosophers did as well -- the land that would become the US had not been colonized for that long.

2. I've read Two Treatises of Government, Common Sense, and read a chunk of Common Sense. I've also read countless essays from various people from various points in time. I understand the classical liberal mindset, I am a classical liberal -- I interact with think tanks full of classical liberals. Frankly, I don't understand your view at all -- you're the first person I've encountered that's claimed that modern classical liberals are not classical liberals, and that classical liberals should be advocating for modern feminism and workers' rights (from what I understand, the implication you made in your previous post was of modern contexts of feminism and workers' rights).
Hobbes, from what I've read of him, holds the philosophical foundation for what makes the left-wing of the philosophical spectrum (man is inherently evil and needs a strong central authority to protect one from oneself).

3. I don't think you understand that modern liberals are not, by any means, liberal in the traditional sense -- it's evident we're coming from two different viewpoints here. From my viewpoint, classical liberals advocate for
minimal government and great individual liberty. Modern liberals are very collectivist.

I still remain firm that libertarians follow classical liberalism, using the exact same philosophy. I will emphasize this: don't mix up Libertarian with libertarian, far too many people do. Capitalized 'L' refers to the party in America, which has abandoned principle for the party.


Edit:
I never covered your examples given per person; but, I will say: by no means are FDR, Clinton, and Obama, liberty-loving individualists. Very staunch collectivists. Also, FDR followed Hoover's footsteps in his policies.

Bravo! Well said!

Indeed; it is good for a nation to remind itself that the "right to be let alone" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_privacy ) influences all other natural rights. In my opinion, it is the primary right as it addresses personal privacy.

That's what makes it wonkish. You're imposing your own "logical" scale over the one that is widely used. The common one makes little sense, yes, but it's what people actually use.

If you want a logical underpinning for the left-right scale then you could try thinking of it in terms of hierarchy.
- The far right think it is good for superior groups to subject inferior groups.
- The centre-right think that hierarchy is a natural, and perhaps even desireable, consequence of people of different abilities working together to achieve the best outcomes.
- The centre-left want to flatten hierarchies a bit, but also accept that some aspects are natural, emergent, and not entirely undesirable if they achieve things.
- The far-left are completely anti-hierarchy.

Obviously most people don't consciously think of it in those terms, but it makes more sense to work with what people do think of than to try and impose your own definition and tell people that they're wrong for disagreeing.

You don't understand Nazism. There was mass privatisation and corrupt links between industry and government. It certainly wasn't capitalism (especially when you throw in the autarky and disrespect for property rights) but it also certainly wasn't socialism.

There are so many different ways to classify a political philosophy that any binary system is inevitably going to lump opposing systems together.

It is a weird compass, but it still puts right-authoritarians to the right.

I call your system, and practically every system, "ahistoric" in how it treats classic liberals because they generally considered themselves left-wing, to the extent that they had any conception of the idea.

Perhaps. I don't know you. I do know that there are a lot of people out there who are in no sense "liberal" who claim that they are classic liberals when called out on their ethnic nationalism ("I'm a classic liberal BUILD THE WALL!"). For avoidance of future doubt, I'll call those people "fake classic liberals", the forebearers of liberalism as "historic liberals", and the minarchists you associate with can stay as "classic liberals".

I mean it's highly possible that we have different understandings of what constitutes worker's rights and feminism.

Liberalism is the philosophy which values maximising liberty. This means giving people the legal rights they need to protect themselves from tyranny in all its forms. Sometimes these legal rights are viewed as a reflection of natural rights.

In the workplace, people have the right to safe working conditions, to be paid on time, not have unreasonable deductions from their pay, be given reasonable adjustments for disability, etc.

In terms of feminism, people should have the same rights regardless of gender. This includes rights which one gender is usually deprived of, such as the right to own property or the right go about your life without being sexually harassed. This is very much something which historic liberals were aware of - most apparent in the case of Mill, of course.

Someone who says "I don't think we should take reasonable steps to increase the chances that men and women are given the same pay for the same work" is not staying true to historic liberal orthodoxy or to liberal principles, either on worker's rights or feminism.

That's not a bad takeaway although again I'd dispute that that's a uniquely left-wing viewpoint; many right-wingers, including most right-liberals, would agree with aspects of it. Hobbes makes the case for essential parts of the liberal state like the importance of taxation and the social contract. I certainly wouldn't want to live in his dream state, which would be authoritarian as heck, but it's still an important work.


Yes. You live in a country with no real liberal tradition; the closest you have are Third Way types with liberal sympathies. I live in a country with a strong liberal tradition which still puts liberals into Parliament and put liberals in government as recently as 2015.

Parties like the FDP, the Lib Dems, MoDem, Alliance of Northern Ireland, Venstre of Norway, D66, and Ciudadanos are genuinely liberal. Hopefully En Marche will turn out to be too. Contrastingly, neither the Democrats nor the Republicans are more than passingly concerned with liberalism, both being very broad coalitions of disparate views.
That's a very America-centric view. I'd also argue that modern liberals, and even ordinary modern Democrats, are considerably more socially liberal than any historic liberal and at least as socially liberal as "classic liberals". By way of example, would a classic liberal stand up for the rights of a trans schoolchild to use the toilet of their choice, or would they say that schools, an apparatus of the state, should be allowed to dictate which toilet a child uses? My observation when this was a hot-button issue was that it was the progressives who supported the liberal option, while self-identified classic liberals supported the state overreach.

The other question is what does "minimal" mean? Nobody says that they want the government to be bigger than it needs to be, they just disagree on how big the government needs to be.


That's the big problem with libertarianism: their philosophy hasn't evolved for 150 years.
Historic liberals had the excuse that they had to imagine a better tomorrow and postulate what would work. Of course they were wrong about lots of things. Libertarians just end up being wrong, but it's OK because they agree with someone who died before public education was a thing? Before we knew about the tragedy of the commons or excludability? Before the Great Depression, before the failure of fascism and socialism, before the invention of the internet - and yet by some magic we're led to believe that this philosophy was right about everything?

If you can't look at the last 150 year and say "OK, education is a good thing, communism is a bad thing, and we need to properly deal with externalities" then why should anyone pay attention to you?



Clinton's policy platform in 2016 was basically a liberal wet dream. Obama was less liberal but still appointed some great liberal judges, introduced the ACA, signed the Paris Agreement, pursued TTIP and TPP, and made all sorts of incremental liberal improvements.

In most nations (including the United States) where there are many competing political parties, the majority of such parties exist to present and support ideals, but not, as a practical matter, get elected to office. These parties are satisfied with the status quo because they serve a social purpose by holding those who are elected to office to account, both contemporarily and historically. Is there no advantage to societies that these idealistic parties offer?

In short: your view of liberty is very different, to which I wouldn't call it liberty. Perhaps your views present more liberty than most of your fellow Europeans, but in regards to the United States, I would say your view of liberty is more or less collectivist as opposed to individualist.

Also, I studied the economics of the Third Reich. Government controlled companies that are private in name only, that's the short of it.

As for your political compass, you use the one that is based off of arbitrary standards, in which the "far right" features collectivist socialists, libertarians, and a odd mix of whatever other groups that the modern left disagrees with. Meanwhile, the one I use, the one many use but isn't mainstream, is based off of philosophy. Philosophy doesn't change, policy and opinion does -- that is how a philosophical spectrum is more logical, and it's not just my logic. There's a lot to this world we do not know, as we are all ignorant; and in this case, you are not aware of other methods of analyzing politics. I take a philosophical approach, looking at the philosophy behind policy; you seem to take the more common approach of accepting what is given at the surface (not to be confused with an offense) and following abit more emotionally (i.e. use of the arbitrary compass -- which, is not completely arbitrary, but it's quite arbitrary in many aspects in regards to its application).

From what I gather, you seem to find liberty in collectivism, which is contradictory. Would you be up for discussion, comparing our views, for further or better understanding? Trying to find some/more common ground as that is essential to all discussion.