He’s Still Kicking!
Just a quick Happy Birthday to Laurence, general grand poobah of our little libertarian cul… group. Congrats!
Filed under: General
Possibly related entries
- Re: Which Comes First?
- The “One-Party State” Thing
- Back In South Africa
- Is the Party Over?
- Why Don’t We Bomb Sudan?
Thankyou :)
‘libertarian?’ ... I kinda thought your blog carried a more ‘conservative’ label. But OK, and welcome!, and then may I ask ‘Commentary’ in general, or any of you as an individual … would you care to plump for minarcho-libertarian (few ‘public goods’, little taxation & regulation) or anarcho-libertarian (even policing/courts/currency/etc provided in the uncoerced competitive private market)?
Happy birthday Laurence!
On a side note, John, your ‘Argument for War’ world view is about as libertarian as a dog-eared copy of Das Kapital in a bureaucrat’s handbag. You do yourself and real libertarians no favours by professing to be one.
Heh, I’m amused by the fact that merely mentioning the “l-word” is enough to stir up controversy.
Just to clarify: Commentary has no set ideological slant, although we’re all somewhere on “the right”, broadly defined. Wayne is a moderate libertarian, I know Darren likes to classify himself as a classical liberal, and I’ve always self-identified as a Burkean conservative. I’m pretty sure I’ve never claimed to be anything else.
That said, I have great respect for libertarian ideas, and I often find that I have more in common with libertarians than I do with some of my fellow conservatives. This is especially true when you’re talking about the more moderate, minarchist variety of libertarians, and the more populist variety of conservatives. I would probably agree with your average libertarian on most public policy issues. I guess you might call me a “fusionist” in the mould of Frank Meyer.
Philosophically, however, I don’t think you can be a classic liberal or a libertarian without having a lot of faith in human reason, and this is probably the main area where I break from libertarians. I’m not a rationalist – at least not when it comes to politics – and I believe in the importance of prescription and tradition. This is ultimately what makes me a conservative.
If it’ll make you happy, Colin, then perhaps I should clarify that I don’t see myself as particularly libertarian. At least, I haven’t for a while now. However, I do know that my views on this site are significantly more… inflammatory than the normal fare we see, so I can’t answer for the rest of this site’s contributors.
5 Comments. Sorry, no more comments will be accepted on this post.