What's your political orientation?

Follow your argument. You mentioned Degreeinfo particpants and correlated these particpants with academia. We aren't all in academia. Further, your previous post implies to me that because many of us have academic achievements that we would somehow give up our own opinions and beliefs and displace those with the liberal leanings of professors. I have the grades to prove that I don't cater to professors who have never left the halls of academia.

Now, if I misread your implication then I apologize. Otherwise, I stand by my position that many conservatives are as well educated as liberals and those in academia. Hence, my "retort".

As for your articles, I would have to see the sampling, where the samples were taken, the questions being investigated,etc...before I can comment completely. But taken at face value based upon the same sex marriage issue raised as a question, I believe you will find that conservative versus liberal will follow the part of the country the poll was taken and that if you took this poll at an institution with a religious aspect, say Notre Dame, you might find a different percentage.

 

You're not actually taking any position. Here's your claim:

"many conservatives are as well educated as liberals and those in academia"

What does that even mean? That's not a valid hypothesis.

Here's two bits of information:

1) College professors are generally more liberal.
2) The college educated are generally more liberal.

These bits of information inspired this:

Surprise at the current results of this unscientific (and very possibly inaccurate) DegreeInfo poll.

Which, in turn, inspired you to say this:

yea, cause conservatives can't be educated.....

This comment inspired me to scrutinize you -- and now we've come full circle.

 

OK. so clarify your position.

" I'm somewhat surprised by the results of this unscientific poll of DegreeInfo users. I figured everybody would lean more liberal due to academia's leftist slant."

Why were you surprised by the results of the Degreeinfo Poll.

 

............

 

I'm a libertarian, but I'm cynical, I don't believe most individuals or governments make good decisions. If people's lives are likely to be ruined anyway I would rather that it was not done at the expense of liberty at least the failure isn't because they were put in jail for making what somebody else considers immoral choices (to a point, of course). Time, or God, or perhaps results should judge my choices, not some bloated, dumb, machine.

That's the guts of my point of view. When I speak to most libertarians I hear a similar point of view, distrust and fear of the government seems more of a motivator than an idea that people are truly capable of taking care of themselves. That's not to say that they don't believe that people SHOULD take care of themselves. I am of course generalizing, but if not a majority a significant number of conservatives base their opinion on a very legitimate fear above all else. Interestingly conservatives who also share this fear allow for big government in other areas of their life. I feel that point of view is fundamentally inconsistent.

I base my opinion on this fear, and I am not ashamed of it, I simply recognize that it is not an optimistic way of looking at things, but the belief that government will truly act in the interest of the people is perhaps more foolhardy than simply optimistic. With that assumption in mind I believe the only solution is to limit the machine as much as possible.
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I hope neither side finds my post offensive, it's my true feelings on the subject, and I certainly could be wrong.

 

So Steve, we totally agree, but we have different motivations for trying to ensure small government.

 

The problem is what do we do with the results of people making a series of bad choices? Do we confine them to ghettos, almost uninhabitable areas by middle-class standards and pontificate that they should pull themselves up by the bootstraps? Do we allow drug addicts to continue lives of misery, and by extension allow others (drug dealers) to profit by exploiting these unfortunate souls? Libertarians like to view drug use, or non-use, as a choice. This may be because it seemed like a concious, voluntary choice they were making when they smoked 420 in college and stopped when they entered the workforce. For many cocaine, meth and heroin addicts the only truly free choice they had was when they decided to use the first time - their future was forever changed by that one fateful decision.


I find libertarians to be the most unsympathetic people across the political spectrum. Conservatives are often criticized as being hypocritical but at least many of them sincerely believe that society will be better off as a whole by following their philosophy. Libertarians harbor no such illusions but instead want to wash their hands of any responsibility to the poor and disadvantaged by attributing all societal ills to results of poor decisions by people who had the opportunity to choose otherwise.

 

You're coming from the paradigm that the government is the only solution to problems. It isn't.

Libertarians would be opposed to using coercion to extract taxes and then have the government (mis)use it for welfare programs. Libertarians would not be opposed to voluntary systems to assist those with problems. Many libertarians work or volunteer for such organizations.

In the case of drugs, there are plenty of voluntary treatment options available. Currently nonprofits and free volunteer organizations (ie. NA and AA) provide excellent services. Further, if drugs were decriminalized, they would be cheaper, which would make it not as necessary to steal (harm others) for them. The free market would also help ensure their purity so drug users were less likely to get hurt.

Portugal decriminalized drugs and use has gone down. It has been more successful than any government intervention efforts.

 

I think many liberals and libertarians have similar visions of an ideal future society. Except the left version of it is upheld by government force and the libertarian version is upheld by voluntary cooperation.

 

As a foreigner, I'm always puzzled by the fact that the american left embraced the term that, in the rest of the World, basically means "non left": liberal.

I'm even more puzzled by the fact that the liberals here (known as libertarians nowadays) let that happen.

P.S. I'm a libertarian (liberal), but the Small Government kind, not the Anarcho-Capitalist kind. More Hayek than Rothbard.

 

Wow, that's one of the most stupid generalizations about libertarians that I've heard.

In fact, most libertarians that I know are very much concerned about the poor and disadvantaged, most are angry about how misguided left policies tend to make the life of poor people worst (and generally leading them to a life of eternal dependency in hand outs and other gifts from the powers that be).

 

Yes, it is very confusing.

My impression as been that European "liberals", are more left than American libertarians. Would you agree?

 

Kind of.

Because is not so easy to separate between left and right. Being a libertarian, for example, my socialists and communists scream at me that I'm a "reactionary conservative", while my conservative friends scream that I'm "godless communist"...lol

Pretty much the rest of the world is more "left" than the USA...in some aspects, specially in regards of the role of the government in certain areas.

If you come from a European or a Latin American background, for example, almost everyone takes for granted that the government should give health care for the citizens. It's not even a issue - for the libertarian in those cases it's already a tough battle to defend the existence of a supplementary for-profit health industry.

But in other aspects, I'd say, the social ones, Europeans and Latin-Americans are more "libertarian" (but not conservative) than Americans. The USA Puritan past still has a pretty strong influence in how things happen in this country, and this creates a repressive society in a outsider point of view.

For example, I live in San Francisco, a city known as one of the most craziest cities of the USA. But for me it's a very quaint city, almost like a Quaker Village. I'm not kidding: I can't buy a beer after 2am (even inside a club or bar). Drink beer in the sidewalk with friends? Not allowed too.

I could on and on forever with other examples (like the fact that not only Prostitution is illegal here, but the clients get arrested too and the police actually creates sting operations to get the "John". Surreal!).

But even on some economic aspects, you have some European countries that you would never guess are more "free market" than the USA: Netherlands for example. They do have the biggest welfare-state in Europe, but in the other hand, they also have the freest economy and market.

 

Isn't the current discrepancy in the word "liberal" in America caused by the historical progression and eventual reversal of political party platforms?
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I think Tom brings up an important misconception that was brought about by our over-zealous, fairly irrelevant libertarian party.
One can be a libertarian without being radical, I don't believe in no government programs to help the poor, I'm in the same boat as a centrist conservative on that issue which is 100% in line with being a libertarian. The reason libertarians are viewed as radical is because our American political party is radical. The term "libertarian" as it applies to the political spectrum could actually be quite centrist, it simply falls in a little considered quadrant of the political map. The prime difference between us and a republican on this issue is that we would prefer decriminalizing the drug itself. I believe treatment programs should be well funded and very available, perhaps even mandatory (with great caution I suggest this solution) if somebody chronically commits crimes while under the influence, additionally, the actual crimes will be punished regardless of the laws specifically concerning drugs (for example, legalizing mushrooms will not legalize operating a motor vehicle while impaired, this would also be an indicator that the user needs medical help). It's a bit less radical of a position than some more vocal and public libertarians would take.

Look forward to everybody's input. I have now officially said negative things about nearly every persuasion, including people who may largely agree with me... sorry .

@Hikaru:
Happens to me to! At a Christian school I was always "liberal". One of my teachers at Doherty characterized me as "very, very conservative", she wasn't even extremely liberal.

@Steve: I got in a long discussion with my one libertarian friend the other day about the FDIC. It's not an issue I know enough about. On the surface I find the idea of our money being controlled by one private party quite scary.

 

I see what you're saying but it seems the Libertarian Party has become less relevant the more concessions and compromises it has made. Bob Barr, the most recent candidate for President is an excellent example. He was basically "Republican-lite" and it didn't help anything. If going towards center doesn't bring you more influence, you might as well stay principled.

This brings up an important point: American libertarians are, for the most part, stubborn. They don't want to violate the non-aggression principle and so they practically excuse themselves from the sausage making process of politics. No easy answers here. There's a quote that goes something like, "Organizing libertarians is like herding cats."

 

Lol...exactly, that's the problem. By definition a libertarian is individualist that wants to be left alone, so it's very hard to organize in a way similar to the left or conservative groups.

The anarchist on the left tend to have the same problem (I used to be an anarchist when I was young. As I a lot of other anarchists that I know, I become a libertarian when I learned a little bit more about economy. As some people say: a libertarian is an anarchist that knows math)

 

You can call it a "stupid generalization" if you like but the word "unsympathetic" is the adjective I believe best describes the position held by the overwhelmingly majority of libertarians toward the poor and lower class. Libertarians don't believe that the government should play the primary role in alleviating poverty and misery. Yet the government is the only body with the power to deal with the scope of the problem, especially with its power to tax. Some libertarians may care, but apparently they don't care enough to trust their democratically elected government to enact programs designed to improve the lot of the most economically disadvantaged.

I have another observation based on working my whole adult life in poor urban areas. People living in these areas aren't much different than those living in more affluent communities. While they are largely Democrat strongholds, there are some Republicans. There are conservatives, liberals, socialists, communists, black nationalists, Puerto Rican separatists and probably some fascists. The one thing there aren't are libertarians. Poor people realize that the government, and the police they bitch about, are the only things standing between them and an Escape from New York type of existence where neighborhoods are ruled by armed gangs and their lives are an experiment of Social Darwinism. If you think this is so outrageous a proposition then look at the situation in the slums of the Third World like the favelas of Rio de Janeiro in your native Brazil or the slums of Cape Town, SA.