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Comment by dfranke | Hacker News Reader

You're right, it's definitely not. If you consider yourself a classical liberal, you probably shouldn't call yourself a libertarian at all, at least not when speaking to educated libertarians. While the two schools share a lot in common, their philosophical underpinnings are quite different: self-ownership versus "life, liberty, and property". In today's climate it makes perfect sense that the two groups should be political allies, but they shouldn't be conflated.

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libertarians are mostly very pro-free-market, and pro-small-government, as am I. I like Rand and Hayek. I can communicate these things better with the word 'libertarian' than with the word 'liberal' which few people understand in the way I'd mean it. I'm closer to right-wing than left-wing, by present day American standards. meh. avoiding labels requires a lot more words.

PS I'd upvote you if I could vote.

I've never quite understood people's aversion to being labeled. I'm happy to be labeled as a Rothbardian. My political thinking basically conforms to the framework laid out in The Ethics of Liberty. The fact that I accept the label doesn't mean that I accept every word that Rothbard ever wrote as gospel. I wouldn't expect any reasonable person to infer that I do, and nobody (reasonable or otherwise) has ever confronted me with such an accusation. Labels are just macros, and as such they're useful.

well didn't you basically just tell me to avoid the label libertarian because it's too misleading? i don't entirely agree, but thought you had a point. it is misleading. so are all the others. the only half-decent ones for me are pretty specific like Popperian.

I was just advising you to avoid the wrong label, not to avoid them altogether.

But I don't think libertarian is the wrong label (no worse than others). if "classical liberal" makes you think it is, maybe that is the wrong label?

I think libertarian is the wrong label, and classical liberal perhaps but not necessarily the correct one, if you identify more closely with Thomas Jefferson than with Robert Nozick.

I don't know early American philosophers very well offhand. But wikipedia says Jefferson sympathized with the French. The dates are around the time of the French Revolution. So, my guess is I dislike him. The French Revolution was really awful and revolutions in general are bad.

Bear in mind that the French Revolution began as something very different than what it became. Thomas Paine, arguably the most libertarian of any of the founding fathers, was one of the French Revolution's most ardent American supporters in its early days. After the revolution got hijacked by the Jacobins, Paine ended up in a French prison.

If you'd like, substitute Locke for Jefferson.

Thomas Paine I know about. I read his book about the French Revolution -- the reply to Burke. It's really bad stuff. He doesn't understand Burke at all, makes bad arguments carelessly, and throws in lots of insults. (I realize I'm being insulting. Besides the low quality thinking he made excuses for massive bloodshed as well as glorifying some of it. And I have detailed notes with which I could back this up.)

Interesting. If you sympathize with Burke then I have no idea where to place you. He's pretty much universally reviled by every modern school of thought that I'm familiar with.

Anyhow, we're quickly veering away from the topic and toward the right margin. We should probably take this to email. My email address is on the page linked in my profile.

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