For a group of people with whom I share nearly no political or philosophical connection, I have a lot of respect for libertarians (or is it Libertarians?). A lot of my respect comes from that they don’t stray far from their core beliefs. If you run across a libertarian, you can be pretty sure where they stand. This has a good deal to do with that they’re a small party, but that is beside the point.
The point is that I dove into a comment thread over at South Puget Sound Libertarian, and I’m having a very good time. Mark made a good point that the term “democracy” has become a very loose term lately, and has been bandied about in political dialogue to the point it just means “good.”
Soon to be heard on the street:
Person 1: So, how was your day?
Person 2: Pretty damn democratic. How was yours?
Anyway, that got me thinking about democracy overseas and the so-called democratic revolution (a guilty pleasure of mine), and well, you can read the comment thread. We may not agree on much, but man… Good Talk.
You probably already know this but small-l libertarians are a group that only partially overlaps the group of capital-L Libertarians. (The intersection of the 2 sets is non-empty as we mathematicians say.)
Capital-L Libertarians are a political party, in my view an ineffective instantiation of libertarianism. Though I obviously can’t speak for all libertarians, many of us think that politicization of society is a real problem and so we don’t particularly approve of the Libertarians. We’d rather get politicians and parties off the backs of everyone.
That’s an interesting observation. Libertarians (small and big L) don’t have an affinity for government, but in order to affect change, they need to engage in government…
I guess that is where libertarianism loses me.