Quote:
Originally posted by ubertuber
It seems strange to me that most people think only in terms of the right/left spectrum - and when I watch the news or politicians, they are content to play to that. You'd think that professionals who deal with these issues for business (politcians) would be more sensitive to some of the intricacies. I think it is also interesting how contradictory our two parties are. If I didn't know any better, I would expect a two party system to have more contrast - meaning a libertarian party vs. a populist one. Of course, then maybe no legislation could ever be passed because the parties would be far too diametrically opposed.
Anyway, as a libertarian minded individual, I have long been bothered by the fact that most people associate conservative thinkers with social restriction. I almost feel like the Republican party has hijacked the meaning of the term and no one else ever noticed. Do (true) liberals feel this way about the Democrats?
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If you read the article, it listed, like virtually every other political spectrum I have seen, it listed liberal and conservative as complete opposites. On every issue presented, they are on opposite sides. They have just as much contrast as a "libertarian" and totalitarian.
As for hijacking of terms, I'm not a liberal or conservative so I can't say anything that. However I am a little miffed that "libertarian" now refers to classical liberalism as opposed to Paris Commune-esque "socialism without the state." Until around the late 1950s, whenever anyone talked about libertarians they refered to the type of ideology advocated by Bukunin, Kropotkin and Proudhon. Now whenever one talks about these ideas, they have to be refered to as "left-libertarianism" yet there is never a "right-libertarianism." It's just a little thing that I can't stand, so I know where people come from when they complain that the third-way stole the liberal term or that the neocons stole the conservative.