No, libertarianism is itself a limited label and identity. The liberty
movement is much larger and includes conservatarians and about one half of the
Tea Party people, objectivists, anarchists, anarcho-capitalists, and many civil
libertarians from the left. The liberty energy on college campuses is
palpable. It is emerging as a potent force to combat all of the leftist isms.
Young men, especially are waking up to liberty as a personal philosophy.
Liberty is reemerging as the antidote to corporatist/statism.
I don't disagree that the harder edges of the movement have some growing up to
do.
Kevin
I see value in what you are saying but I think you may be missing the
emerging power of the liberty movement, especially among youth. I notice a
large age gap on this issue. Older folks like us may be stuck in some old ways
of thinking. As I have exposed myself to the liberty community it has become
apparent that this is a vibrant and growing coalition.
Do you mean libertarian? I'm a polling junkie and I can assure you, there is
not widespread support for much of that platform. There is on a handful of
issues, but not on the libertarian perspective in general. This coming from a
former card carrying libertarian.
The libertarian perspective is to centrists like liberals are to communists,
or conservatives are to theocrats. Yes, centrists are generally more socially
liberal and fiscally conservative, but libertarians take those stances orders
of magnitude farther down the spectrum than centrists do. While I think the
libertarian inspired World's Smallest Political Quiz is ruefully innaccurate in
that it's far too simplistic, the map it plots people on makes a lot of
sense... where centrists and libertarians are both between the left and right,
but libertarians are plotted differently.
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Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community
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Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org
--
Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community
<[email protected]>
Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism
Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org
