If you mean pure libertarianism as advanced by the Libertarian Party, you’re right. But moderate libertarianism is already the mainstream. And always gaining, because that’s the way open-mindedness works. The public becomes more and more tolerant on every front. Heck, Krugman was complaining about it just last year, he couldn’t understand why the public was so tolerant of obscene accumulations of wealth. Well, when you teach the public to be tolerant towards everything else, they aren’t going to make arbitrary exceptions. The liberal movement of the New Deal to the Great Society was reliant on societal outrage, and the Democrats didn’t mind redirecting the old hatreds into economic populism. Now that most of those old intolerant ideas are out of the mainstream, we have a rather chill, permissive society.
Oh puh-leeze! Got any examples of “moderate liberatarianism” that support this statement?
Then, we’ll never see a President Paul, or President Ryan, or a President Anybody At All Whose Base Chants Insane Shit Like “End The Fed!”
Gay marriage, marijuana legalization, support for lower taxes and spending, the list goes on. There are very few issues where the public favors more government power at the expense of the individual. Where the LP goes wrong is in taking the whole concept too far.
Perhaps. We’re less likely to see a President Warren. The best thing that could happen to the GOP would be for her to bump Clinton.
BTW, since we’re talking about 2016, how about Howard Dean? He’s one of those guys who talks like a left-wing Democrat but governed as a centrist. And we know he has experience and competence. Has the base pretty much given up on him or is he still viable as a Hillary Clinton alternative?
Not a good example. Think about it. The Libertarian policy on marriage would be to withdraw all state recognition of it, and abolish all legal incidents of it, as anything different from a private commercial contract. To redefine marriage only with respect to what gender-pairs may enter into it is not anti-libertarian, but neither does it serve even any moderate libertarian agenda. Your position is all about freedom, not equality.
True, but, OTOH, the public does favor a more expansive government role in many areas, e.g., health-care: Note – as has been pointed out to you many times – that many of those who oppose the Obama plan oppose it because it does not go far enough and they want a plan with a real public option or, better still, real single-payer.
What’s that have to do with anything, BobLibDem? adaher was talking about candidates like Rand Paul. Who said anything about libertarians?
Yeah, single payer as long as they get to keep their private insurance.
Sure, if you want to pay extra to get private insurance instead of the universal public option, that’s fine. Myself, though, I think I’d be quite satisfied with the same plan that senators have.
I’m sure you’d like the same pay they get too, plus free mailing privileges. But the whole country can’t be treated like the Senate.
The reason we don’t ever get single payer is because to fund it you’d need to take what people pay in premiums now and use it to fund the system. THEN, they could go and buy supplemental if they want. That’s not a very popular idea. Unions would of course be exempt.
No, considerably less, because the rent-seeking behavior of the insurance companies would be cut out of the loop, and governmental inefficiency in this field is apparently no worse than corporate. Compare health-care costs per capita in Canada and the U.S.
Then why is it so popular in other countries?
Why?
Because of the OpalCat Rule of Threes. adaher needed to completely make up another bullshit strawman argument that he could refute.
C’mon, you aren’t a newbie here. You should know these things without needing to be told, you silly liberal. 
To the extent that the public favors reducing restrictions on the policies above, they are agreeing with liberal, not libertarian, positions. There is no widespread shift towards the Pauls or the Rubios because despite their obvious hoodwinking of the GOP base and people like you into thinking they are libertarian, they are far right politicians with few libertarian leanings who seek to use a faux libertarian position to promote their right wing authoritarian agendas
Gay marriage and pot legalization are obvious Democratic-leaning platforms. Lower taxes and spending are, on the surface, seeming libertarian, but ask any one of those people about their health care and you’ll have people espousing the laughably contradictory line “Get your government hands off my Medicare!”
Moderate libertarianism doesn’t really exist, or if it does, exists only in the form of small government Republican authoritarians, and they only promote that stance because it allows their friends in the industry to suck more public money into their private coffers. Its been said before that those who are against the government cannot effectively participate in it, which is why you see all these refusals to consider bills, refusals to give Obama “a win”, and obstructionism. These are people who don’t believe in the government that’s a partnership between ideologies, but only a dictatorship to their unassailable cause that cannot ever be compromised. Liberal ideas are mainstream, conservative ones increasingly not, and libertarian ones never were
I see gay marriage as a civil rights issue, not a libertarian one. Don’t forget that the Pauls, Ron and Rand, wouldn’t have voted for the Civil Rights Act and don’t have a problem with restaurants keeping the darkies away. Marijuana might be just where the liberal and libertarian Venn diagrams intersect. Yeah, it’s in your circle but mine, too. Lower taxes and spending, I see that as where the conservative and libertarian circles intersect.
Don’t forget gun rights, another issue where the public became more permissive over time. In the 1960s and 70s, Republicans could support gun control and often did. Now even Democrats duck and cover, recent attempt to capitalize on headlines notwithstanding.
I just don’t think you can find a single issue where the public is not more permissive than it was in the past.
The real dream ticket at least for Democrats is Hillary Clinton and Brian Schweitzer. Clinton appeals to virtually all aspects of the Democratic base (women, blacks, Hispanics, urbanities etc.) while attracting plenty of centrist upper middle class/professional moderate/swing voters and Southern white voters while Schweitzer helps energize the Progressives on the left of the party and attracts some marginal constituencies such as gun owners and other populist types by not being a sanctimonious nuisance like Kusinich or Nader. [1]
[1] Come to think of it, many of the most progressive Democrats also stand for gun rights. Besides Governor Schweitzer, Senator Feingold was also pro-Second Amendment while Vermont has led the nation in gun rights legislation.
Schweitzer’s formidable as well, but I wonder if Democrats have just forgotten small state governors as Presidential candidates. Seems like they go for name recognition now.
Czarcasm,
YOU are doing it wrong. A story does not have to quote the source but should
furnish an info source to the reader. a LINK is a connection to an online source,
not a connection to the offline press. Twixter got it right that we should make the
story or the report from our own opinions and ideas.
If I refer the reader to a dated article in the press, this gives the reader a basis
in FACT for my story. This assures the reader I am not a lunatic but someone who
is going to add ideas and opinions to something printed by a professional
journalist or academic authority. There is no requirement that I have to separate
facts from inferences based on the facts. What YOU have to furnish as a reader
is the mentality to evaluate the validity or “truthfulness” of what I report.
Ludovic,
“Starting a thread in good faith” is a meaningless concept unless there is some
rule or instruction about the objective of the original poster. Don’t we have lonely people here who simply want to start an online conversation? Don’t we have
angry people who simply want to piss someone off by asserting something
outrageous ?
My objective as a USENET survivor is to say something that will generate discussion and commentary. The humor and the brilliance of the remarks is my payoff for starting it. As for your complaint that OP’s should not “run away” from their threads. Well, take a look at this thread! After about post #40 you have a few guys tweeting to each other about minor league political personalities.
This is why I usually drop out of a thread around post #30 or #40. Capeesh ?