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Comment by pphysch | Hacker News Reader

"Wokeness" (liberal universalism) is actually closely related to libertarianism. It's really just the same Western, individualistic, idealistic, Christian worldview and values applied at different societal scales, generating different conclusions.

Small scale rural (or elite)? These values manifest as libertarianism.

Big scale urban? These values manifest as liberal universalism, or "wokeness".

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Not at all. The woke thing is not liberal universalism, because it is actively hostile to any competing ideologies or definitions. That makes it explicitly anti-libertarian.

That's where the "universalism" piece comes from. It's the belief that deep down everyone on the planet is a liberal, and is therefore hostile to other ways of thinking.

Yes, superficially it is very different to libertarianism. But stick a libertarian in a big city for a few years and they will realize how silly libertarianism is (there's too many people for it) and transition into a liberal universalist.

Sorry but I think they are entirely different things with entirely different lineages. Woke comes from the Puritans, (American) libertarians come from the Western frontier.

... Where do you think the Western frontier settlers came from?

The western settlers were a quite diverse group. Many came from the South. They certainly didn’t all come from a narrow group in one region of the northeast? This is...basic history.

Exactly, they were virtually all Anglo Christian immigrants, and voluntary immigration selects for individualism. Same genotype, different phenotype.

You have changed the goal posts about three times now. I said Puritans and Libertarians, not Anglo Christians.

Are you going to claim that American Puritans & Libertarians don't have the same strong Anglo Christian roots?

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