The word is LIBERAL.
You are all liberals. You have always been liberals. You always will be liberals.
The word "liberal" has meant natural rights negative liberty in the past and still means natural rights negative liberty. The meaning never changed.
The dirty five syllable word is an American word. Meaning it is only used by 300 million people. 5.7 billion people in the rest of the world still use the word "liberal".
Why use an American word, even if you are American? The greatest American writers always read European stories, and considered the local grassroots works to be garbage. Howard Philip Lovecraft considered award-winning American author Sherwood Anderson to be a writer of "backstairs gossip" and instead read superior works of German writers like Hanns Heinz Ewers and Irish writers like Edward Plunkett. And the first person to mathematize economics was an American, while French and German economists till late stuck to basic common sense, common language economics; what the French Liberal School once created, the myriad schools of economic thought in the United States completely destroyed and discarded it.
The only reason the word "libertarian" came about was because of the word "civil liberties" which expands only into "civil libertarian" since "civil liberal" connotes something else.
For once, let us all liberals use the words we have always used, without others dictating the words we should use.
Liberalism is liberalism, and posters on the Mises site are liberals - they shall not use the terminology from the land of double-think; they know what they know from Viennese roots, not American ones. ;)
No, classical liberals still believe in some form of minarchism.
A good deal of those posting on the mises forums(Myself included) are anarcho-capitalists.
You know, since the left has embraced the word "progressive" it would nice to reclaim "liberal" but I don't think it will happen.
In broad strokes, liberalism was simply the idea that civil society is self-organizing, and liberty is the father of peace and prosperity. Where liberals of the 18th-19th century went wrong was in their belief that centralized power could be restrained with parchment. They didn't have the experience with "limited government" experiments to draw from that we have available to us today.
Except that belief in limited government was not central to liberalism.
Liberalism was just about liberty and a passion for it.
Whether you never made the jump towards nonarchism or felt a little more comfortable in miniarchism, liberalism was first about liberty and last about liberty.
Liberalism was like the statement made by a member of the Office of Price Administration who wanted to remove price controls who said that if there was a button to push that would remove all price controls, then one should press that button if one ever got the chance. Liberalism was having that passion to push that button, whether it resulted in a severe limitation of government powers or made a small step towards or whether it would eradicate its hold forever.
We all know we can't fully remove fraud, crime, or coercion forever, and those things as characteristic of the state or any malevolent entity would remain. But as such, what we can do is remember what is right and wrong, and by the sheer power of believing in what is moral, large numbers of us could slowly be driven away from those wrongful actions and slowly drive ourselves more towards constructive activity.
We will never solve poverty, unhappiness, squalor, and the lack of social mobility - but what we can do is preserve that thing called high civilization which is the force that removes all those problems over the long course of humanity, whether there was a barbarian or a state knocking at our doors at all times.
Liberal Mises himself didn't even believe in natural rights.
Instead of explaining to my Republican family that I'm a "libertarian" or "an-cap" let me now tell them all I'm a "liberal". I'm sure they would understand what I really mean.
If you explained to them, they would!
Charles Johnson (RadGeek) debated this with the neocon Lee Doren at a FSP event *.
If you have to educate people on language and philosophy, you're just making your job more difficult. This is why most libertarian ideologues are some of the worst marketers of ideas.
Also, if you're really a liberal, you probably wouldn't be telling people what words they should and should not use. You would let the market decide and you would prove your case by more effectively arguing with the term liberal than libertarian. Just commanding something doth not maketh it so. That's the central planner in all of us, even those of us who are dedicated voluntarists, that little demon inside, telling us we know best and can tell everyone else without having to go out and prove our opinions or ideas in the market.
* One of the most painful debates I have ever had the misfortune to watch btw. It's disappointing when "movement" "leaders" can barely articulate their own philosophy. Shows how we are still in the infant stages of this intellectual revolution, as the better promoters and rhetoriticians have not emerged yet.
i prefer voluntarism because voluntary and volunteer already have good feelings associated with them.
mediahasyou:i prefer voluntarism because voluntary and volunteer already have good feelings associated with them.
+10,000
But people don't look at the term "Voluntarism" a political movement or term. They'll think you mean being a volunteer with a non profit group.
I'm sure they would understand what I really mean.
Story of my life. When you say "liberal" to people, it makes them think that you're progressive instead of classically liberal. That's why I hate these labels. I always say "conservative" to people, but many of my conservative beliefs are conservative in the old sense of the word, as in small government, etc. Now whenever people ask me what my political beliefs are, I just said, "Ron Paul," and they understand perfectly.
The point of language is to communicate, not to hold to principles beyond any rational point. Besides all liberal means (when taken as the word itself rather than how it stands in dealing with modern political parties) is in favor of "new" things, this association probably came about in relation to the left/right political scale. In this way libertarians are indeed the most liberal people out there, but a wide variety of other philosophies can also be considered liberal.
I will continue to use the word libertarian as in nearly all contexts it means different things than liberal, and is a better description of my belief.... Besides i like the way it sounds, it sounds like a person who eats liberty... That's seriously what I thought the first time I heard the word...