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Comment by scrollaway | Hacker News Reader

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Please don't post ideological flamebait to HN. This is just what we don't need here. Whether you intended to or not, you just trolled the thread, with predictably wretched results.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Nah, it's a very libertarian leaning publication, definitely not friendly to Trump or the like. Falls out of the mainstream right vs left. Libertarians tend to promote freedom above all other values - even as a more left-leaning person I think it's good to consider a libertarian perspective on many issues actually, unless there's seriously good arguments and evidence to the contrary, freedom is a very important thing to value.

They actually do quite well on the Media Bias Chart for a largely opinion based publication, similar to Vox or Slate, so if you're interested in a libertarian perspective on something, they're probably a good source to consider.

It's for 50 years been the preeminent libertarian magazine in the United States; the libertarian version of The National Review or The New Republic. It's very respectable, has featured some pretty excellent writers over the years, and is worth taking seriously. It is not a Trumpian outlet.

I think we have very different definitions of 'respectable'. Maybe it's an American thing where absolutist free speech is worshipped as part of the cult of civic religion, but where I live Holocaust denial[1] isn't considered respectable or acceptable.

If you mean it should be taken seriously because it is influential, then yes I suppose it's worth knowing what they are saying (today that's defending child sex trafficking apparently, but that's not new ground for libertarians). Freep, /pol/ and Stormfront are all influential these days, but that doesn't make them respectable either.

[1] https://pando.com/2014/07/24/as-reasons-editor-defends-its-r...

I read Ames's piece, and I read Reason's response here:

https://reason.com/blog/2014/07/26/did-reason-really-publish...

... both Ames and Reason link to a scan of the entire issue. I am with Reason: it's embarrassing for Reason that they ran pieces by people who would go on to become figureheads in Holocaust denial, but Ames is stretching the truth rather dramatically about the content of the actual issue.

I don't know anything about Reason and apartheid support. It wouldn't surprise me. The National Review has also been accused of supporting apartheid, and they are the house organ of mainstream conservatism.

Certainly, the libertarians share some goals with the GOP, while being staunchly against Democratic economic policies and regulations. But they also take strong stances against the police state and military industrial complex. I believe Reason is as mainstream as libertarian publications go.

If Reason is trying to indoctrinate me and turn my liberal self into a Trumper, I can only say that it's doing a remarkably poor job thus far. ;)

That’s called libertarianism.

It has nothing to do with Trump, but it attracts a personality type who is also attracted to Trump like figures.

Jesus. I'm a liberal Democrat and a lot of what gets written in Reason gives me hives, but I don't make up random slurs about libertarians, and you shouldn't either.

It's not really a 'random slur', it's a fairly run-of-the-mill anti-libertarian argument. It might be overwrought or in other ways wrong but it's pretty standard. Quick googling finds a recent example but as a line of thought it's been around for at least as long as Reason itself.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2017/0...

I would level the same criticism at this article! Most of the libertarians I know can't stand Trump. Libertarianism itself is a coherent political philosophy (a suboptimal one, but coherent nonetheless) and we can do better in rebutting it than pretending that its adherents are alt-righters or Trumpkins.

Actual libertarians who think through the philosophy are as you describe.

Many of the casual fans discover the philosophy after reading Ayn Rand or something similar. The noisemakers on AM radio often claim to be libertarian.

I'm not interested. I get it, you don't like libertarianism "as she is spoke". I don't either.

A random slur would be 'Libertarians are unclefuckers'. But it's not controversial that the fringier extremes of American political movements often end up in some pretty dark, often white supremacist places. Ron Paul had a crazy newsletter and a weird, Trump-like personality cult. You mentioned NR and TNR. NR was founded, in part, to keep the anti-semites and other crazies out of respectable conservatism. Quite a few of the things TNR has published over the years are coming under renewed scrutiny of late as it becomes less acceptable to give bigotry a pass as contrarianism.

Is any of this a particularly fruitful criticism of the coherent political philosophies of Libertarianism, Conservatism and Jerkoff Contrarianism†? I agree with you that, for the most part, it isn't. But it's hardly a 'random slur', either.

†That's what I'm deciding to call (with love!) the coherent political philosophy of TNR.

We're probably approaching a place where we're going to struggle to find disagreement. You're dinging me for abusing the word "slur". Fair cop.

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