How to turn me into a libertarian: the rise of the out-lefting left

[icehorse]

The problem is, the moderate liberal will be chewed up by the far left. It is kind of happening before our eyes. The Libertarian position, conversely, might actually give you something to hold onto, even though you'd think it's as good as air. The left can't put a bar where there's nowhere to set it

I see it happening too, although I sometimes wonder how prevalent it is. Do you have a sense of the frequency of getting chewed up?

 

[Heyo]

Overton.

Auto-text?!

Bad memory for spelling. And names don't get automatically spell checked.

 

[Heyo]

As I see it...
Libertarians aren't going to win office & have much power.

The curse of the two party system. We had a liberal/libertarian party (FDP) that was "klein aber gemein" (small but mean). Always the smaller partner in a coalition but getting more done than their votes indicated. (And they saved us from more than one attempt to remove civil rights.)

 

[Tambourine]

As I see it...
Libertarians aren't going to win office & have much power.
But we might be able to influence others toward public policies
that lean more libertarian than they would without us.

They sure have a long list of success stories in the form of governments around the world slashing welfare and social policies.

If that's someone's priority, then I guess supporting that ideology only makes sense.

 

[Revoltingest]

They sure have a long list of success stories in the form of governments around the world slashing welfare and social policies.

If that's someone's priority, then I guess supporting that ideology only makes sense.

It's hard to argue with all your examples.
Do you oppose having both social & economic liberty?

 

[amorphous_constellation]

Do you oppose having both social & economic liberty?

I think I wrote this op as a protest on the social end of these things first.. I don't know if economic liberty always would follow that in a positive correlation, though perhaps in some cases.

 

[amorphous_constellation]

I see it happening too, although I sometimes wonder how prevalent it is. Do you have a sense of the frequency of getting chewed up?

My sense is that this may be the case..

 

[Revoltingest]

I think I wrote this op as a protest on the social end of these things first.. I don't know if economic liberty always would follow that in a positive correlation, though perhaps in some cases.

Liberals (as a group, but not every one) appear to be weak
on both social & economic liberty. But they've progressed on
gay marriage, & are now progressing on police & justice reforms.

 

[amorphous_constellation]

You can't really run away from such problem, you will find it everywhere.

Maybe it kind of depends on what kind of society we are talking about. We tend to live in increasingly large, globalized, and interconnected societies. Maybe this creates the economic platform that allows the fringe to grow, as everyone can afford to pay less attention to their immediate neighbors, as the illusion is created that you no longer have to work directly with then, or pay attention to what they're doing.

 

[amorphous_constellation]

Liberals (as a group, but not every one) appear to be weak
on both social & economic liberty. But they've progressed on
gay marriage, & are now progressing on police & justice reforms.

So would you make the argument that on contemporary championed issues, they are actually catching up to you?

 

[amorphous_constellation]

Now overall in history fro the Western world we have been moving to the left since the old Greek city states.

Do you have any insight on ancient greek society? I don't really know a lot about it, besides what was written in the new testament. Why specifically would you say that this is true?

 

[Revoltingest]

So would you make the argument that on contemporary championed issues, they are actually catching up to you?

So it seems.
But they also backslide, eg, free speech (cancel culture).

 

[amorphous_constellation]

So it seems.
But they also backslide, eg, free speech (cancel culture).

It becomes something where a championed issue seems to become a dogmatic bar-line, the freedom you get is reverse engineered back into an authoritarian foundation , it seems

 

[Revoltingest]

It becomes something where a championed issue seems to become a dogmatic bar-line, the freedom you get is reverse engineered back into an authoritarian foundation , it seems

People seem to lust after security & protection. Without
a philosophical basis in liberty, the left seems vulnerable
to voters wanting restrictions on themselves.

 

[amorphous_constellation]

What you think of as "far left" is moderate in other countries and it once was in the US. The right used that tactic, to always demand the just ridiculous to compromise "in the middle", to move the Overtone window more and more to the right.
Progressives have to demand all the cake to get half of it.

My instinct as an american is that this might not entirely be true, but I don't really know for sure. It seems like we set many trends, and world is watching us all the time. The stuff we do tends to be 'super-sized,' and people seem to explore the limits of political behavior in the western context.

That said, it's all anecdotal to me in actuality, as I live in flyover country, where medieval towns are surrounded by hundred mile corn fields and nothing happens

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Do you have any insight on ancient greek society? I don't really know a lot about it, besides what was written in the new testament. Why specifically would you say that this is true?

Well, because they had no kings or otherwise top-down authority, they had to figure out where then does authority come from. That is the short version. The longer is, that they started with, that those, who had authority in their democracies, were native Greek able-bodied free landowning men. They had rights including the right to be a free individual.

In short if rights and authority don't come from the top, you have to figure out where they then come from and what authority is.

Regards
Mikkel