LOL. The reason I responded with "hmmmm" was because I was stalling to consider what you said. You know, in my origninal response to you, I had called myself a "libertarian" and you a "traditional conservative." When I read it back, the forms were inconsistent (yeah, only I would bother about something like that) since libertarian is a kind of conservative so I edited in the "libertarian conservative" so they would be even. I never meant anything by it but "libertarian." So when you responded, I scratched my head about the distinction you were making. You were using "libertarian conservative" to mean libertarian plus otherwise conservative.
It was just a fluke that this happened, but it turned up something interesting, at least to me.
I've been pondering it. I ended up doing an analysis similar to yours but I wasn't going to mention it unless you pursued the matter. What I did was to identify various positions that I've taken that you might be aware of and considered whether they were derivable solely from the libertarian perspective. This was the list of potentials I came up with that, while not inconsistent with libertarianism, cannot be solely explained by it: globalist, balanced-budget, anti-statist, anti-union, anti-pc, anti-affirmative action, federalist, personal responsibility, tough love, free market, free trade, non-interventionist, enforced borders... There are probably some others. Can you explain them as solely or predominantly libertarian.
Cultural/religious conservatism
While I personally don't do things that would scare the horses, I am definitely not one of those. Most definitely. Perish the thought. <g>
And I scrupulously avoid using the "conservative" label for myself, preferring "libertarian."
I don't think of you as libertarian even though you are distinctly anti-statist. I don't think you were at all libertarian when we first met but I've seen a bit of it creep in over time. Perhaps it's the abortion thing, which was the subject of our early encounters. |
