I just watched the last twenty minutes or so of the Obama Town Hall on Health Care. It is verified by the press that the vast majority of people at this town hall were randomly selected. So, if the Teabaggers are for real, some of them should have been at this town hall mouthing off and disrupting the event. But there was no one doing that. The questions being asked were respectfully, though too soft-ball for Obama’s taste. He kept requesting harder questions but they were hard to come by.
There was a Libertarian with a 9mm strapped to his leg sauntering around outside making a total ass of himself. Do people still call themselves libertarians anymore? Or is it just too embarrassing….
Meanwhile Senator Claire McCaskill is trying to hold a town hall meeting right now and the teabaggers are closing in, disrupting the meeting, and making general asses of themselves.
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Yup (raises hand).
I’d call myself a “liberal” but the word has mutated over the years, so “libertarian” (as distinct from “authoritarian”) will have to do until the grab-bag of anarchists, reactionaries, Randians, and out-and-out whackjobs running the Libertarian Party manage to complete the job of discrediting the word.
I work in Portsmouth. There were teabaggers, about 15 of them standing on a lawn on the route to the airport holding silly signs. Mostly just seniors. It gave me a good laugh on my commute in. Except for a few random idiots with unconcealed weapons, we don’t have much crazy up here.
The whole town hall seemed pretty receptive.
Libertarians are defined as people who fetishize government. They find coercive collective action without a government tag A-OK, particularly when a (curiously:) government-chartered corporation is involved, relying on government-enforced laws to clear the rabble out of the way. Sorry, DC, the job was completed some time back.
There’s still a bit of life left in European “Social Libertarianism”. They used to be just “libertarians” until the American fetishists co-opted the word.
p.s. I favor librarians instead.
I used to spend a lot of time with social librarians, but they weren’t economical.
But look out for the Radical Militant New Librarians. Those hand held scanners of theirs can take out your vision.
Do people still call themselves libertarians anymore?
Not really. It’s been sullied both by the Libertarian Party (which, yes, has been off the deep end for some time now) and people who shallowly ridicule libertarians because they can’t see the shades of gray and consider the extremists to be the norm.
Personally, I’d be happy to see a fraking *moderate* party start to coalesce. This extremism from both sides has got the country bleeding from the head and ass. I’m sort of surprised it hasn’t what with the Republicans disintegrating because they constantly have to get their Jesus freak on. Where are all those ex-Reps going? Independentland? What, all of them? Ah, who cares..
(Cue someone from the EU saying “But you’re all right wing to us!” as if it matters or means anything in 3… 2… 1… Hey Euro-buddy, we have *states* bigger than some EU countries, OK? You don’t reform health care in a month with that situation. Also, I have family all over the EU so I get the real story. Don’t even bother.)
Will Canada do?
“You’re all right-wing to us!”
/joke
Moderate would be great, but it seems to be expedient for the parties to harp on the divisions to polarise. They did it to us during the Quebec referenda, and to a lesser extent, the current government is trying to play the same game.
My point, and I do have one: it’s hard to stay moderate in today’s climate.
I’m still registered Libertarian, but I stopped using it as a label a while back. And even then I considered myself the rare Liberal Libertarian . . .I hate big government but I believe in social programs at a local level. A couple years back I started my own party, which now boasts about 10 indifferent members, Radical Anarchist Granny Environmentalists.
Maybe it’s time for some science fiction to come true. Back in the 60s, Mack Reynolds wrote a story titled, “The Radical Center.”
Psst, they’ve already completed the job of discrediting the word. Perhaps you should go with “independent” or “no affiliation”.
I’m an American and I think that the Democratic Party is moderate, at least on average. What we’re lacking is a legitimate liberal party, which means that any political “compromise” ends up being fairly conservative rather than centrist.
I agree completely with catgirl on the whole party thing.
That doesn’t answer the question of “what is the opposite of “authoritarian?”