[lbo-talk] How to explain things to (right-wing) libertarians

[andie nachgeborenen]

Last week I went to a conference on white collar crime
at by Georgetown U. Law Center that was co-sponsored
by the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute --
the latter being right wing libertarians. Give me the
right wing libertarians any day! The Heritage gang
would start whining about overcrimalization, vague
laws, excessive sentences, innocent victims, and
counterproductive effects. (Amazing how sympathy for
criminal defendants rises in some quarters when their
name ends with "Inc." or they used be the CEO of one!)
The real heavy hitters at the conference, liberal law
profs, said, you could say the same thing about street
criminal law. The Heritage people would waffle. The
Cato people said, yes indeed! 

TJG is right that US usage is confusing almost
everywhere else, where "liberal" means what we call
"libertarian,"  "libertarian" means "left wing
anarchist," and "conservative" means "stupid and proud
of it."* We don't actually have any conservatives in
America, just "liberals" (right wing libertarians) and
"moderates" -- formerly was, "liberals," which means
people who are scared to be social democrats, i.e., in
America, "communists."

*John Stuart Mill called the Tories "the stupid
party." Mill started out as a liberal and ended up as
a market socialist.

--- Tayssir John Gabbour <tayssir.john at googlemail.com>
wrote:


> "How To Explain Things to Libertarians"
> Chris Clarke February 23rd, 2007
>
<http://pandagon.net/2007/02/23/how-to-explain-things-to-libertarians/>
> 
> Eventually, it happens to all of us. You'll be
> talking to someone,
> online or in person, who seems completely normal.
> Then all of a
> sudden, out of nowhere, the person will say
> something really weird,
> like "You can't fix a problem like underpaid public
> school teachers by
> just throwing money at them!" or "Why do they need
> tax-funded traffic
> lights at this corner? All the cross-traffic's
> already stopped, which
> shows the Free Market works!" or "Hitler was a
> Communist! They called
> themselves the 'National Socialists' for a reason!"
> 
> You, my friend, have just made the unpleasant
> discovery that you've
> been talking to a Libertarian.
> 
> [...]
> 
> 
> Tayssir
> 
> --
> (Incidentally, the first known use of the political
> term "libertarian"
> was in 1857 by a French anarcho-communist. In 1955,
> right-wingers in
> the US co-opted the term, in response to the
> Progressive movement
> co-opting "liberal." This fact tends to pacify
> right-wing libertarians
> when they start grumbling that liberalism means
> something else.)
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