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EducateWorthington.org

The 912 Project - Glenn Beck

912 Group of Central Ohio

Please let me know if you'd like your link added

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/IeGgV8Zj9LU&rel=0" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/IeGgV8Zj9LU&rel=0</a>

It's interesting that Stossel pins the label of 'big government' on liberals.

The corresponding label for libertarians would be minimum or minimal government.
Libertarianism is next to zero government on the political spectrum -- next to the anarchists.

Conservatives and liberals are more distant from the anarchists than the libertarians.

I don't think anyone who supports the Constitution can be called a libertarian. Libertarians would oppose a federal government -- they might be able to support the Continental Congress -- it had very little power.

But no libertarian could support the federal government as it was created in 1789.
No libertarian would support a government that couldn't be easily abolished.
No libertarian would support a government that made it difficult to opt out of.
No libertarian would support a government that could force it's will on the people.

Libertarians view government as a voluntary association of independent and free people.

It's rather like being a member of fraternity or the chamber of commerce. I can leave whenever I please.

Every libertarian would have supported the Whiskey Rebellion and the abolishment of the sort of the government that Washington and Hamiltan created.   

There are some real libertarians still around -- Napolitano, O'Rourk and Stossel aren't among them. They're just on the right wing of conservatism.

While you correctly discern Libertarian from Anarchist in the beginning, you essentially interchange the two later on.  Under your definition, a Libertarian has no concept of a public good and this is not the case.

"right wing of Conservatism"  Things aren't so linear as you make them to be.

While the quiz far from exhausts many political issues, I like the following chart, or at least better than left v. right.

Do I confuse libertarian with anarchist -- is a minimalist state in which the rulers have no authority to use force and the ruled retain their autonomy and have the ability to separate themselves from the rule of the state still be a state? Maybe not so, maybe I do confuse the two.

I tend to think that libertarians want to retain a larger degree of autonomy -- personal freedom than conservatives but not as much as the anarchists.
Is that all there is to it?


However, there are a lot of important distinctions to be made and this subject gets more complicated quickly.

You're right -- no adequate account of political beliefs can be captured by a linear model.
I don't think the chart you post is any help though either.

Stossel makes a point of defining the term 'libertarian'. I'm not sure Stossel ever defined what libertarianism is though other than to say it wants less government involvement than than the conservative. But just how much less?

 
I love the introductory interviews with people who don't have a clue.
That part was at least entertaining.
The problem is that O'Rourk, Napolitano, and Stossel don't seem to have a clue either. Maybe they do -- maybe they just needed more time.

O'Rourk, at the end, mentioned Hamilton's objection to the Bill of Rights - he botched the explanation but it could have been an opening to a better understanding of libertarianism.