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BillyDkid
10-16-2009, 12:53 PM
It's pisses me off that these words have been hijacked by people who are neither liberal nor conservative. If someone were to ask me if I were liberal I would have to say - yes, of course I am. I think people should be free to live as they choose to live as long as they are not hurting anyone else or infringing on the rights of others. If they asked me if I am conservative, again I would have to say yes, we need to conserve the principles on which this country was founded. I am conservative about foreign intervention and government spending our money and so on.

I am neither left nor right - that is a false dialectic in which libertarians do not fit. Liberal has come to mean something very different from it's original meaning. Same with conservative. Both now mean some sort of collectivist, authoritarian, social engineering thing. Not to offend my friends who call themselves conservatives. I think Ron Paul type of conservatives have virtually nothing in common with what Washington calls a conservative - say, Tom Delay or Bill Kristol. I actually prefer to call myself the old term for libertarian - classical liberal - because it confuses everybody.

1000-points-of-fright
10-16-2009, 01:30 PM
One could say that libertarians are liberal with the freedoms we attribute to individuals and conservative with the power we give to government.

Vessol
10-16-2009, 01:34 PM
One could say that libertarians are liberal with the freedoms we attribute to individuals and conservative with the power we give to government.

That's how I've always looked at it.

Conservative in economics as well.