• Forester@yiffit.net
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    4 days ago

    Words have meanings and definitions if I call myself a pacifist who is against violence but I go around punching people in the face. Are you going to change the definition of pacifist or are you going to call me a violent non-pacifist.

    If they’re not following the actual principles of libertarianism then call them what they truly are. Reactionaries, conservatives, trolls, etc

    • Peruvian_Skies@sh.itjust.works
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      4 days ago

      It becomes its own thing. Like if you hear the word “truther” out of context you wouldn’t be blamed for thinking that it refers to someone who takes the truth very seriously. But in the context if a “9/11 truther” it means the opposite: someone who is completely dissociated from reality.

      When a movement adopts a word as its name, it’s like the word splits in two: one with the original meaning and one which refers to the group and means whatever that group stands for. Which one becomes dominant basically depends on what version the mainstream media uses more often. It’s a zeitgeist thing.

    • aesthelete@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      Are you going to change the definition of pacifist or are you going to call me a violent non-pacifist.

      If you and all of the other pacifist movement people are really violent then I’d say the same thing about your movement, you’re running a naming scam.

      In this particular case, it’s difficult to even call libertarianism a set thing, because the “movement” spends much of its time discussing what is and isn’t libertarianism, and I think that has a lot to do with the fact that individual liberty versus collective responsibility is largely a more difficult balance to strike than they’re pretending, and there’s no clear and fast way to cut it for every scenario. Pacifism, on the other hand, is much more straightforward to define.

      • Forester@yiffit.net
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        4 days ago

        https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-aggression_principle

        If whoever you’re talking to is openly engaging in behavior that encourages breaking of the nap, then yeah you’re dealing with a non-libertarian. To put this in other terms, all the Christian denominations believe in Jesus. They believe different things about Jesus, but they all believe in this guy named Jesus. If some guy starts preaching about Bob the Messiah and calling himself a Christian everybody’s going to be very confused why he’s calling himself a Christian.

        • aesthelete@lemmy.world
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          4 days ago

          Read the linked article, look at that verbiage: “considered by some”. That’s exactly my point. Nobody has the ability to define what exactly libertarianism is in this country because there are so many little feuding factions, and it’s a 1-5% movement in the first place.

          It’s essentially a thing you can pretend to be when the Republican candidate is too repulsive to openly support and that’s about it.

          • Forester@yiffit.net
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            4 days ago

            https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism_in_the_United_States

            The major libertarian party in the United States is the Libertarian Party. However, libertarians are also represented within the Democratic and Republican parties while others are independent. Gallup found that voters who identify as libertarians ranged from 17 to 23% of the American electorate.

            Libertarianism includes anarchist and libertarian socialist tendencies, although they are not as widespread as in other countries. Murray Bookchin,[25] a libertarian within this socialist tradition, argued that anarchists, libertarian socialists and the left should reclaim libertarian as a term, suggesting these other self-declared libertarians to rename themselves propertarians instead.[26][27] Although all libertarians oppose government intervention, there is a division between those anarchist or socialist libertarians as well as anarcho-capitalists such as Rothbard and David D. Friedman who adhere to the anti-state position, viewing the state as an unnecessary evil; minarchists such as Nozick who recognize the necessary need for a minimal state, often referred to as a night-watchman state;[28] and classical liberals who support a minimized small government[29][30][31] and a major reversal of the welfare state.[32]

            Personally i’m pretty much center on the left right spectrum and firmly minarchist.

            • aesthelete@lemmy.world
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              4 days ago

              If you have to type fifteen responses complete with diagrams about your ideology, then everything I’m saying about it not being straightforwardly definable is 100% correct and you’re proving it right now.

              Gallup found that voters who identify as libertarians ranged from 17 to 23% of the American electorate.

              Exactly, “identify as”…do you really think 17-23% of the American voting populace actually holds consistent, definable meanings about what it means to be a libertarian? I’m willing to bet that they do not.

              American politics is basically like the aisles in the grocery stores here: lots and lots of different labels and colorful packaging, and very little actual choice.

              • Forester@yiffit.net
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                4 days ago

                Most of us vote for the candidate that best upholds our interests no matter the letter on the lapel. In a FPtP system you are correct not much choice in the national elections, thats a feature of FPtP not a bug. Don’t mistake us as having no consistnacy while we are forced to strategically vote instead of using a ranked choice.

                • aesthelete@lemmy.world
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                  4 days ago

                  Most of us vote for the candidate that best upholds our interests no matter the letter on the lapel.

                  This also isn’t true. Hypothetically, rational voters would vote their own self-interest or using other rationally explicable criteria, but those are hypothetical voters. Those “thought exercise” voters are just as hypothetical as the “invisible hand” that magically makes markets fair, or the hypothetical economic rational actor in the economy that always has perfect information and behaves rationally to maximize their own self-interest. They’re more fictional than the “spherical cows” involved in introductory physics problems.

                  A lot (or maybe even most) of the people that vote Republican vote against their own interests. That’s why Cory Doctorow talks about them being “turkeys voting for Christmas”.

                  Farmers that vote Trump are voting against their own interest. People from small towns with decaying infrastructure that vote Trump are voting for a circus clown that will not do anything to improve their life a single iota.