From: baker@Xenon.Stanford.EDU (Andrew Baker)
Subject: Re: Libertarians ARE Liberals (was: Perot for President)
Organization: Computer Science Department, Stanford University.
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1992 23:45:24 GMT

In article <1992Apr16.171057.16504@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu> gld@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu (Gary L Dare) writes:
>Actually, The Economist is a good example 'cos its editorial
>philosophy is a modern descendant of this classical Euro-Liberalism
>that Libertarians have tried to appropriate in front of an unknowing
>American audience (and thus, I've reset this follow-up piece to world
>distribution (-;) -- reading the Economist, they are nothing like the
>Lib/libertarian stuff you read on USENET.  None of their editorials
>express the kind of hyper-individualist rhetoric, mean-spiritedness,
>paranoia and label-slinging/pigeon-holing that is expressed by various
>net.champions of liberty who just want the world around them to piss
>off.

>True European Liberalism grew with the advent of technology, growth of
>commerce, and changes in society; in fact, a major flaw in Libertarian
>attempts to appropriate the European Liberal tradition is that outside
>of the areas they know best in (freedom of speech, individual choice,
>unconstitutionality of the War on Drugs/Child Porn/etc.) their other
>attitudes smack of conservatism including the politics of blame* of the
>worst of them (e.g., Rush Limbough -- "Out of toilet paper?  It's the
>damn liberals at it again!").  In European Liberalism moving into the
>21st Century, there is no misplaced nostalgia for a late 18th/early
>19th century "golden age", nor had it ever considered the American
>Constitution (an admirable work that it is) to be as sacred as a 
>third tablet from Mount Sinai -- after all, they're Europeans. (-; ...

>Helmut
>Kohl's moves at the recent Maastricht EC/EU conference proposing a
>Charter for Labour, German government actions to mediate the GATT
>dispute held up by France (dragging in the rest of the EC), and
>creation of an environment for free enterprise are all related even
>if it blows away the checklists drawn up in America of what's an X,
>what's a Y, and what's a Z.
>
>gld
>--
>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Je me souviens ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>Gary L. Dare				U.S. Elections 1992, Vote Now:
>> gld@cunixB.cc.columbia.EDU		a) Elvis 50's stamp, or
>> gld@cunixc.BITNET			b) Elvis 70's stamp?

I agree that The Economist is a fine example of classical liberalism --
which is why, however, it is generally against things like the EC
social charter which you want to include as being liberal also.  And I
bet that the Labor Party would call The Economist "mean-spirited."
I bet that pro-protectionist businessmen would accuse it of ideological
"label-slinging/pigeon-holing."  Regarding "misplaced nostalgia," one
might argue that its editors have a lot of nostalgia for Britain before
the socialists messed things up!

All in all, I think The Economist is a lot closer to the standard
American (libertarian/conservative) Right that you seem to loathe so much
than it is to the European interventionists. To put it another way, on
the one hand, we have the "free world."  I would like to think of liberalism
as being some subset of this, but you want to make it the whole thing.
If government regulation of wage levels is a liberal position, then
liberalism is just too "multi-faceted" for it to be of much use to me
as a label.




Xref: sparky talk.politics.misc:17667 misc.taxes:2195