From: gld@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu (Gary L Dare)
Subject: Re: Libertarians ARE Liberals (was: Perot for President)
Reply-To: gld@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu (Gary L Dare)
Organization: Curious Goods (formerly Louis Vendredi Antiques)
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1992 17:10:57 GMT

mece3d@jane.uh.edu (Chris Struble) writes:
>
>'LIBERal' used to mean what the name implies - supporters of individual
>'LIBERty' against the arbitrary power of the state. That's us, and
>its probably why we kept the first five letters in 'LIBERtarian'. The 
>term "liberal' is still used in this old sense in Europe, and most of
>the free market reformers in Russia and Eastern Europe call themselves 
>'liberals'. Those who oppose (i.e hard-line communists) are called
>'conservatives'. 

"The government does not belong in the bedrooms of the nation.", to
paraphrase Canada's Liberal prime minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau (but
his government didn't carry this out very well )-;).

>There has also emerged a third party in England called the Liberal 
>Democrats whose pitch sounds a bit like ours, based on what little
>the censors of the socialist American media let us see.

Paddy Ashdown's Liberal Democrats can be easily read about in the New
York Times, Toronto Globe & Mail or even better, in a great British
newsmagazine called The Economist readily available here (but I guess
that I don't know about Houston).  What about socialist censors at U.S.
News & World Report? (-;

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.

>  The reason many of us associate the term 'liberal' with 'puke'
>is because socialists started using it in the second half of the 
>19th century.

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. (-;

* n.b., bogeyman politics are equally feeble coming from the right or
from the left.

>  By no means should libertarians be afraid of their liberal roots. 

A lot of non-Americans that Lib/libertarian dogmatists have scrapped
with over different issues here on USENET are true, direct descendants
of the traditional European Liberal philosophy.  Jim Robinson in
Vancouver, and Gerald Olchowy in Toronto, and Phil Carney at TAMU (an
exchange student from Lancaster); Indy at UCI is an American, and his
ability to support both H. Ross Perot and public/fiduciary health
insurance is quite analogous to the multifaceted philosophy that
European Liberalism has become in the ensuing centuries, infusing
itself in many different Euro-Australo-Canadian parties.  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?
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