Correct, though never "right"

A short sentence that will piss off many, then an explanation: A true libertarian will eventually sound like a "progressive".

That came to mind while watching Logan Ferre explain to democratic activists that 1) true libertarians are not pot-smoking republicans & 2) the GOP does NOT want to "dismantle government".

I respect what people like Logan are doing with the Freedom Democrats thing. Not only because I agree with it*, but because a progressive-minded libertarianism would be more in tune with what the initial history of classical liberalism was. Think about the origin of the "left/right" terminology: the supporters of the aristocracy sat on the right side, while anyone who opposed the status quo sat on the Left. This included the first libertarians.

Before there was representative government, the State manifested itself in literally one person: the King. The trappings of royalty are commonly portrayed in literature to the point where even people who have never seen royalty know what it is. Yet, there was one question that we have forgotten the answer to: Where did the King get all that jewelery in the first place?

Simple: he stole it.

Now, this doesn't mean the King personally went around with a sword demanding money, of course not. Rather, they had people who fought for them in the hopes of getting some of that gold for their own benefit. It didn't matter what they had to do, they could anihilate entire populations, raping the women & killing the men & enslaving the children, all was worth getting scraps. Either you worked for royalty or you paid tribute, there was no door #3.

That tribute -- money paid to basically grovel before someone who hadn't worked for a living -- was the original tax. Fast forward to today, and things haven't changed much, have they?

Look at many of the names that pop up among politicians. Observe what fields they largely come from, where their money comes from, how they act, how they even talk: they are not you, never were & never will be. Tick off the names of many of the Big Shots in the corporate world & you can find an alleged "Statesman" or two or twelve in their pocket. It's an assumption, but an educated one: pull the power of the State out from under them, and many of these people would go broke, and in the long run that would be a good thing. As such, there really is no need for a "left" or "right" modifier for libertarianism, as left-libertarian would be redundent & right-libertarian would be contradictory. Libertarianism rejects the status quo & cheers its downfall, so at the LEAST it is center-left**.

It is a tragic failure of american education that despite so much history showing that unearned wealth benefits from an expansive government the "progressives" in the US explicitly argue in favor of it. Promoting the idea that an institution that inherently owes its health to being able to stroke the fattest wallets is positive for the proverbial Common Man is akin to arguing that Bin Laden himself should run a daycare for Jewish children.


On a lighter note: In that thread on Kos' site, one commentor made a remark along the lines of "a libertarian is a liberal that's been mugged by the State". I would've put it more like "a libertarian is a liberal that only wants to disarm politicians"...

(* - my view of the "two" parties in the long run is that both should collapse, in the meantime the root views of each do not necessarily occupy the same depth: Economics can be argued about, "god" cannot. There are zealots of each side, of course, but there should be all possible effort to reach out to anyone who exhibits a sense of reason, and as of late I suspect the sides are not equal among the grassroots.)

(** - In the original sense of the term. The more you dislike the current state of things, the more Left you are in that way. The closest a libertarian can get to ambivalence, let alone acceptance, is a longer timeline for revolt, as anything right of ambivalence starts saying "maybe we shouldn't change". In earlier entries, when I spoke of being "on the Right" I solely referred to economics, and only in the sense of people that actually believe the standard stump speech, I'll try not to make that confusion in the future.)