As I’ve said many times before, I have been a Democrat and a liberal to varying degrees all my life. (I think I was more ‘moderate’ when I was younger, FWIW.)
But for the longest, longest time I have wondered. Is the libertarian movement conservative? And rightwing?
Because I don’t know about the rest of you. But I try to find the good in everything and everyone. And I really have a lot of respect for this movement. Up to a point, at least 
.
I don’t. I consider Libertarians the worst sort of self-centered, hypocritical assholes.
So yeah, definitely right wing.
It’s basically about defending and extendingthe institution of private property, and maximising the advantages of property-owner at the expense of the common good, where the two are in tension. Yes, it’s conservative.
I’m not certain what a “conservative” is. My sense, from my experience, is that it’s largely people who like to quote the Old Testament for their political stance.
Libertarianism really has zip to do with that. The alliance between the two groups seem, really, to just be the libertarian-leaning Republicans taking advantage of the conservatives for bulk vote numbers. In return, the conservatives get people to run for office who are more electable than they. Though, that’s of limited utility as the libertarians largely don’t do what their electorate ask for.
The simple version is that they are socially liberal and economically conservative, in principle, but in practice often toss the social stuff under the economic bus.
Analyzing it as an anarchist (yes I am one), they tend to treat the rest of the structure we call government with an anarchist’s dismissive contempt (“we don’t need that shit!”) but they oddly view money as if it literally grew on trees, was a resource that the money-owning folks cultivated in their back yards and harvested with their bare hands and personally OWN by god. They don’t acknowledge that government prints money, that the existence of money is a subset of what a government does.
And as a social progressive, I’m annoyed that most of the name-brand libertarians who have carried the torch for the Libertarian Party have been anti-abortion folks. That sours the whole notion of them being social liberals right there.
So, that all beggars the question as to where the old-school libertarians are hanging out at. You’d think they would be horrified at the GOP proposals to outlaw this or that social practice, to limit voting rights, etc.
Or maybe such types were in actuality akin to unicorns, despite their public pronouncements. Those who hung in said circles, or considered themselves such at some point, can be free to correct me.
They’re mostly looking for the freedom from government so they can freely oppress others without consequences.
It depends if they view property rights as inherent or imposed by the government.
Political scientist and textbook author Kenneth Janda argues that people create governments for many reasons, that can all be classified into three main areas:
(1) We expect government to establish and maintain order: An orderly, lawful, and peaceful society.
(2) We expect government to protect liberty: Peoples’ rights and freedom to do as they wish.
(3) We expect government to promote equality among people. (This, he considers a relatively recent expectation, historically.)
But these expectations are in conflict with each other: The need for order requires that we have rules, which restrict peoples’ freedom to do as they please. And expectation of equality also conflicts with liberty, as people must treat people equally even against their wishes (e.g., anti-discrimination laws).
Thus, Janda organizes political ideologies along two perpendicular axes:
Ideologies are defined as Liberal, Conservative, Libertarian, or Populist according to the priorities that one places on these conflicting motives.
Conservatives are those who believe that
Order > Liberty > Equality.
Liberals are those who believe that
Equality > Liberty > Order
People who believe that
Liberty > (Equality and Order)
are Libertarians.
People who believe that
(Equality and Order) > Liberty
he calls Populists.
Note that Liberty conflicts with both Equality and Order, but Equality and Order don’t directly conflict with each other. Thus, there are only four distinct orderings of these priorities rather than six, thus the classification of ideologies into just four, not six, ideologies.
Discussion of these ideas (Not by Janda himself, but discusses Janda).
The two-axis graph of ideologies:
An additional comment about Janda’s four-square classification: Note that Libertarians and Conservatives both agree that Liberty > Equality, but disagree whether Liberty > Order or Order > Liberty.
The drift of “Conservatives” today, and Republicans, is largely toward so-called “Liberty” uber alles, what they call “Freedom” (and what we Libs of the Dope commonly call “Freedumb”): ETA: Freedom to have guns and shoot whatever or whoever you feel like shooting. Freedom to skip the vaxes and masks and spread disease. Freedom to shut down school boards and Ottawa with raucous, even violent, protests. These are extreme Libertarian poses, not really traditional Conservative law-and-order stuff.
There is much debate in the public sphere over whether today’s “Conservatives” are really conservative, as they seem to be abandoning a lot of traditional conservative ideals. This chart shows why: Today’s “Conservatives” are drifting ever farther toward Janda’s “Libertarian” quarter.
Thanks; it strikes me that that’s not a bad way to look at it, and a good answer to the OP’s question.
This is especially true with Trumpsters. They call themselves “conservative,” but they’re anything but. When I told my Trumpster friend that Trump increased the federal debt, he justified it. Because, Trump. I think a more accurate description is that they’re populists. Principled conservatives can’t stand Trump. Unfortunately they’re a minority, and are routinely shouted-down by the populists.
Frank Zappa often referred to himself as a conservative. In his autobiography, he says “I want a smaller, less intrusive government and lower taxes. What, you too?” I know Dave Barry often described himself as a Libertarian as well. Both of them came by it honestly, I think, railing against an overreaching police state in the former’s case (Zappa got thrown in jail on bogus pornography charges) and bureaucratic waste in the latter’s.
I voted Libertarian (throwing away my vote, I know), once, in my mid-twenties. At the time, I identified with the idea of government just staying out of the way when it came to things that didn’t hurt anyone else. Then a year or so later I happened to catch a U.S. Libertarian convention on TV, and watched someone rail against the existence of seatbelts. And from then on, every time I heard the philosophy, it was coming from some loon who thought that asking people to not run red lights or stub their cigarettes out on children’s foreheads was the sign of a fascist government. Absolutism, as it often does, ruined an idea what had, at its core, some basic truths. And the part of the “right” that values a lack of regulation and oversight when it comes to business latched onto it. So did the Randians, oddly enough, though (yes, I went through an Objectivist phase for a few months…a downy lad I was and twee) Rand thought Libertarians were nihilists.
Particularly through the last two years of COVID, the Libertarians have just been on the side of “I got mine, screw everyone else” and I can’t even be bothered with them.
“libertarian” just means a political worldview that seeks to maximize personal liberty and minimize the power of the state. The devil is in the details of what one defines as “liberty”.
Historically, libertarianism was a left-wing movement. They saw capital and the state as inimical to liberty. This vision sought to maximize liberty for as many people as possible.
In the 20th century, libertarianism reordered itself to prioritizing individual property ownership as the most sacred liberty. At least in America this has supplanted left-libertarianism so much that most people are shocked to hear that communist libertarians exist (or once did, anyway).
Libertarians in America love to pretend that they’ve risen above the pedestrian left-right political polarity, but in reality they’re extreme right-wingers. They’re willing to make some strategic ideological concessions on marginal culture-war issues (such as drugs) so that they can triple down on absolutism around property rights, free speech, and the individual right to wield violence.
I used to move in some of these circles before I gained adult political sensibilities, and it seemed to me that an absurdly high number of these guys are just idiots who got themselves into trouble for nonpayment of alimony, taxes, and child support, and thence developed an entire political philosophy about why they shouldn’t have to do that.
Are those necessarily concessions, or just consistency?
Same; I have also voted libertarian. And then discovered they are their own worse enemy. So many loons. Your typical libertarian has contempt for anything having to do with health & safety. Because, you know, liberty. Their hearts might be in a right place, but their brains sure aren’t. Many of them are also anti-science, which also means they believe in ridiculous conspiracy theories.
It’s both, but more concessions. Most of these guys started their political journey as big political fans of state violence to fight their culture-war battles. But if you corner one in a debate, they toss the culture-war stuff overboard so as not to be defeated by their own principles.
Yes, they do love to preen about their ideological consistency. But most of them vote Republican. Make of that what you will.
Gary Johnson (as Libertarian Governor of NM) vetoed every bill passed by the legislature. The next day he un-vetoed one that had been sponsored by his wife.
Some libertarians are liberal, but I’ve found most to fit the description of “irresponsible conservative:” They want all the perks of a government that is fully funded with taxes as currently is, but without having to pay the personal prices.