“…Those of us who place a high value on human liberty, and who are professionally engaged in the social sciences — in economics, in politics, in jurisprudence — find ourselves in a minority (and it sometimes seems a hopeless minority) in ideology. There is a great vogue in the United States today for “liberalism.” Every American leftist calls himself a liberal! The irony of the situation is that we, we in this room, are the true liberals, in the etymological and only worthy sense of that noble word. We are the true adherents of liberty. Both words — liberal and liberty — come from the same root. We are the ones who believe in limited government, in the maximization of liberty for the individual and the minimization of coercion to the lowest point compatible with law and order. It is because we are true liberals that we believe in free trade, free markets, free enterprise, private property in the means of production; in brief, that we are for capitalism and against socialism. Yet this is the philosophy, the true philosophy of progress, that is now called not only conservatism, but reaction, the Radical Right, extremism, Birchism, and only Bill Buckley here knows how many other terrible things it’s called."
https://medium.com/@hayekian/why-hans-herman-hoppes-alt-right-speech-was-awful-fa7b0f987e72
Etymological: relating to the origin and historical development of words and their meanings.
What do you guys think?
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[–] we_kill_creativity ago
Yeah, the word liberal, like much of our language, has been bastardized. I think the stupidly simplistic left-right paradigm doesn't even begin to encompass the complete picture of possible political persuasions, nor the subtlety of how different they can be. I consider myself to be somewhere in the realm of Libertarian-ism and anarcho-capitolism. I tell people I'm a limited government liberal though to keep it simple and get a conversation started.
True liberalism has only to do with how you think, than what you think. The actual process of your thoughts, not the outcome of them. Therefor, you could come to the conclusion that there should be no minimum wage after having liberally considered the idea. Yes, you can be both "right wing" and liberal.
[–] Lurker22 [S] ago
Bastardized is the word.
For "a limited government liberal..."
Agree with your second paragraph completely. Right on point, "right-wing" and liberal.
I won't be saying it much, but I might direct libs towards looking up the definition of what they consider themselves.