Libertarianism

[Flackle]

Looking for arguments for an against the libertarian ideology. You may also discuss other miscellaneous political philosophies here if you'd like.

I, myself, describe my view to be mostly tied to libertarianism in general but in reality I am more independent then that.

[Joeyramone]

A pure libertarian is more of an anarchist than anything.  On paper, libertarianism seems OK... but so does communism.  When applied and taken to its logical conclusion, it leaves a lot to be desired.  I am OK with a limited federal government and states having more to do with the governance of issues and administration of fire, police, etc...

[Flackle]

A pure libertarian is more of an anarchist than anything.  On paper, libertarianism seems OK... but so does communism.  When applied and taken to its logical conclusion, it leaves a lot to be desired.  I am OK with a limited federal government and states having more to do with the governance of issues and administration of fire, police, etc...

Even the most pure of libertarians believe there needs to be some form of government in place to protect individuals from directly harming other individuals and to have law in place to make sure these disputes are handled in an objective manner (instead of the decisions of on person, or mob rule). All libertarians believe in "limited federal government and states having more to do with the governance of issues and administration of fire, police." Some self proclaimed libertarians may have more extreme views (like absolutely no government what so ever). But those are not views of a libertarian. They are views of an anarchist. Anarchy and libertarianism are two completely different political philosophies. Libertarianism itself has a wide variety of views like any political philosophy, but the idea of complete lack of any governance is reserved for the idea of anarchy.

[Abrupt]

I like a lot of the libertarian concepts, even though some that I like can seem a bit drastic and frightening to many.  I suspect that it will take a libertarian president and congress to correct the damage we have done to our government as I fear nobody else has the stomach to do what is needed.  Most people are too afraid to vote to that extent though so I fear it will take continued abuses under our leadership to reach that point.

[Falconer02]

Would anyone venture to say that Libertarians today are similar to the old-school Republicans from 100 years ago?

[Flackle]

Would anyone venture to say that Libertarians today are similar to the old-school Republicans from 100 years ago?

I'd like to point out that Lincoln, whom was a republican, was about as anti-libertarian as you could get. The only political parties that I believe had any real principals where the democratic-republican party and the federalist party. The name's themselves really called out to what they believed in philosophically. It seems to me that any party that came after that really didn't know what they stood for, and simply flip-flopped on whatever popular idea there was at the time to suit their needs. The only party that I see have an idea as to its principals would be the libertarian party. Of course it is  blatantly obvious that both the republican and democratic party of today are Federalist and really have no difference in principal.