No. Sometimes intervention may be required to keep the market free and fair, for example if one party engages in illegal acts, or to investigate and regulate monopolies and cartels. But basically, I believe that government should interfere as little as possible.
There are libertarians who mostly vote Democratic and there are libertarians who mostly vote Republican. Each group figures that voting for the Libertarian candidate (who might be closer to their own position) would be pointless since the candidate has no chance of getting elected. (I don’t want to argue about whether that’s a correct opinion.) They have instead decided to vote for the candidate with a chance of winning who’s closer to their own position. Even the people who call themselves libertarian have somewhat of a range of opinions. Furthermore, while the 2-dimensional way of classifying political opinions, while it’s better than a 1-dimensional spectrum, is still inadequate. Indeed, it doesn’t matter how many dimensions you use in a chart. No chart small enough to fit on a page (even if it was an n-dimensional page) is good enough to classify political opinions.
Libertarians, small-l and big-L (ideally), all think that the government should default to being small and unobtrusive, simply one tool of many for solving society’s problems. The main rifts in the party are how much shrinkage different people really want to see happen, and what they most want shrunken.
Some libertarians want a near-anarchist state. They desire privitization of things like fire departments, highway construction and repair, nearly all civic services, and, indeed, everything but a small military for national defense (not to be used in local policing), a police and court system to resolve internal disputes, and the minimum of bureaucracy needed to keep that small rump government functioning.
Others desire a relatively minor reduction in all aspects of government, and generally want more power to revert to state and local legislatures, and ultimately to the people. They would keep most of the current services, but would reduce governmental intervention and decrease taxes. This was once a recognizably Republican platform, but that party has shifted over time. The main difference between this species of libertarianism and the prior form of Republicanism is that libertarians aren’t usually described as social conservatives', and would not want to push a religious agenda on any government. That is, there is no Libertarian Moral Majority’ in the Republican sense of the phrase.
The rest of us fall somewhere in between, and some (well, me) can vacillate between both relative extremes depending upon current events.
So, which one is more liberal, and which is more conservative? Mu. Your question comes from false assumptions and cannot be answered.
I’m a small-l liberatarian, but I’ll admit this last election is the first time I’ve ever dared to vote big-L Libertarian. State Supreme Court position. Would have been good.
I always vote Republic for important things, though, since the Libertarians will never win. And yes, I even vote for bad Republicans because I vote philosophy. I usually like to think that in general, libertarians are more aligned with the Republican party, because much of what they stand for is what Republicans are all about.
I tend to vote Democrat for the same reasons. I’m more concerned with social issues than fiscal, and I cannot stomach the Moral Majority position Republicans have been taking of late.
(I used to be more-or-less Republican, but the recent swing to the Religious Right has completely turned me off the party.)
I suppose the point of all this is that we do exist in a two-party system, and everyone has to pick and choose between the two main camps regardless of the full breadth and scope of their political opinions.
Though I’ve been a libertarian for over 40 years, I was a member of the party only briefly, back in the 60s. Feh.
Since I’m gay, I have a real hard time voting for Republicans, especially one who wants the Constitution to declare me a second-class citizen (it’s bad enough that I live in Ohio). So I usually wind up voting for a Democrat, though it’s sort of like stepping in dog poop and learning to live with the smell.
I don’t think you’ll find two libertarians who agree on everything (not that there’s anything wrong with that).
That is true. I am a registed big “L” libertarian although I think that much of what the official party pushes is just plain nutty. Libertarians, myself included, tend to go for the Republican ticket when it comes to voting for a viable candidate. I have had some really interesting conversations with long-time Democratics and liberals in general who are amazed that libertarians do not consider them the obvious choice when it comes to voting for a candaidate or a philosophy that believes in “liberties”.
Although my response is rather involved, it essentially boils down to the fact that Republicans are supposed to be about smaller government as are libertarians. Some people mistakenly believe that libertarians would be very attracted to social programs that support social liberalism that Democrats tend to support. That is not generally true. Libertarians believe that the government should do little to nothing in the way of passing laws or forcing social issues. Active government programs to support social goals are not a part of libertarian philosophy. Social liberties are obtained simply by stripping away restrictive laws and letting it be.
Most Democrats identify as Liberal, although some identify as moderate or even Conservative. This is not a false assumption, it is fact.
Most Republicans identify as Conservative, although, there are moderate and even Liberal Conservatives. Again, this is fact.
I was asking if Libertarians or libertarians also used these labels. Not an assumption, just a question.
Anyway though, all of the other posts have answered my question.
'Scuse me while i wipe the tears of mirth.
It was my understanding that most libertarians were opposed to:
[ul]
[li]an excessively large military[/li][li]fiscal irresponsibility (this includes issues of spending, not just of taxation)[/li][li]limitations on freedom of speech and assembly[/li][li]excessive government intrusion into private life[/li][li]corporate welfare and political pork-barreling[/li][li]increases in general government size and scope[/li][/ul]
Now, i’m perfectly willing to concede that a libertarian might not find much to like about the Democrats, but it’s sheer fantasy to assert that the Republicans, in terms of their actual policy implementation, are even remotely aligned with libertarian principles.
Maybe your sentence needs a few words added: “I usually like to think that in general, libertarians are more aligned with the Republican party, because much of what they stand for is what Republicans claim to be all about.”
And therein lies the key issue.
They claim to be, and they are supposed to be, but their performance over the past decades suggests that they are anything but supporters of small government.
At least that’s true of the Republican Party on a national level. There may well be some state and local level Republicans who actually follow some libertarian principles, rather than mouthing empty platitudes.
It identified me as a Liberal, but the red dot was really close to Libertarian.
Your PERSONAL issues Score is 60%.
Your ECONOMIC issues Score is 70%.
Oh, and it labled me a CENTRIST.
Neat trick, especially since the libertarian party wasn’t created until December 1971.
See, that’s what happens when you quote out of context. As I said (on the national level) my vote is purely philosophical. If you consider the philosophy of the Republicans vs. that of the Democrats, you arrive at a problem – they (the Dems) have no philosophy. It’s a coalition of a buch of little, tiny groups that all want something for themselves but have no way to get it without banding together.
For you traditional Dems, I’m not referrring to your old Democratic Party. Take a step back and see what the Party is in the last 15-20 years versus your Camelot.
Oops, forgot to add:
Your PERSONAL issues Score is 90%.
Your ECONOMIC issues Score is 100%.
(May need a military draft in a real emergency, so I lose 10%. Bummer).
A libertarian would see it this way: In an emergency you would not need a draft, because people would be lining up to protect their homeland.
You only need a draft if the war is unpopular, and a liberarian would say that unpopular wars simply should not be fought: If you need to force people to go, nobody should be going at all.
I don’t quite understand what you mean by this. Do you mean that you vote Republican because their rhetoric is more libertarian than that of the Democratic party? If so, this seems rather obtuse.
Do you walk into the voting booth and say to yourself, “Well, the Republicans have grown the size of the government, they’re constantly trying to legislate morality, spending is out of control, the military is too big, corporate welfare is as bad as it’s ever been, and they just passed the Patriot Act, but they claim to be the party of small government and of freedom, so i guess i should vote for them”?
You are, of course, perfectly entitled to vote for whomever you choose, but i really don’t understand how anyone who scored 100% on economic issues and 90% on personal issues could muster even “philosophical” support for the Republicans. As far as i can tell, on a national level the Republicans’ sole claim to the allegiance of libertarians over the past four years was the tax cut. I’m having trouble thinking of a single other large policy decision that libertarians support. And this evaluation doesn’t just come straight out of my head, either. It is based on sporadic reading of libertarian publications like Liberty magazine, Reason, and the online reports of the Cato Institute.
Again, i want to emphasize that i’m not making some back-handed play for the Democrats here. Despite my own leftist, democratic socialist leanings (100% personal; 30% economic), i understand why libertarians often have little time for the Democrats. What i don’t understand is how any libertarian with a pair of eyes and reasonable control of his or her faculties would support the Republicans on a natinal level over the past two decades.
I have only one possible explanation. Despite my opposition to many aspects of libertarianism, especially its economic agenda, i’ve had a certain admiration for the absolutism of the commitment to a particular notion of freedom. Libertarians have, at a certain level, a moral high ground because they don’t have to argue for social and political freedom while defending economic coercion (like a lot of liberals and leftists), and they don’t have to argue for economic freeedom while defending social and political coercion (like many conservatives). Libertarians, in theory at least, want the whole package, and this has the virtue of consistency.
The only explanation i can come up with for why libertarians might support the Republicans on a national level is that i am, in fact, wrong about this consistency. Rather, it seems that, despite their lip-service to freedom as a general concept, some libertarians are all about the money, and the tax cut trumps all other concerns about freedom.
That was going to be my next observation.
I can offer a little insight into the beliefs of a few libertarians on this issue (definitely not all, and I’m not speaking for anyone).
My former extremely extremely mild preference for Republicans was, I thought, fairly pragmatic. The Democrats wanted institutions in place that I cannot subvert as easily as the institutions the Republicans wanted in place.
It is easy to avoid repercussions for having gay sex, or for smoking a joint. Laws against them are 100% stupid, but a little care can make circumventing said laws easy.
It is difficult to avoid repercussions for not paying taxes. The spending the Democrats wanted to do was unacceptable, and it takes too much care and too much risk to circumvent the tax code.
That was my basic reasoning. Now, I say that money is only money, but our bodies, minds, and hearts need freedom more than our wallets do. Throw in some ranting about fundies and you have my new political platform.