Amity Shales has an opinion column on Bloomberg, and she makes a statement and I am still trying to make sense of it:
"Modern libertarianism is a derivative of classical liberalism, though a limited one."
How is modern libertarianism a "limited" derivative of classical liberalism? Is it a derivative at all? What are the differences? I have always believed that modern libertarians, i.e. Ron Paul, Lew Rockwell, etc., were classical liberals, not the phony libertarians such as Neal Boortz and Bob Barr. Am I missing something?
Source is here:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&refer=columnist_shlaes&sid=aoiYcMi6CkNA
I'm convinced that trying to understand exactly what Rousseau wanted is an inherent paradox.
That actually made me laugh. No, we know what you really want.
"No, we know what you really want."
?
We can't always get what we want. But if you try, then sometimes you can get what you need.
Posts on the subject by RJM, that I liked:
http://mises.org/Community/forums/p/22576/396872.aspx#396872
and
http://mises.org/Community/forums/p/22576/400489.aspx#400489
"The moralizing, managerial, statist, popular government element has been present in classical liberalism since before it was classical liberalism."
Wheylous:Reading Bastiat leaves me with the impression that Rousseau was actually a socialist...
That's what Sowell seems to think...
Ron Paul and the six kinds of libertarianism
Government Explained 2: The Special Piece of Paper
Law without Government
Well, at least from reading The Law, it appears that Rousseau thought that nations needed to write laws to tell people what to produce depending on their environment, as if the bureaucrats knew what was sensical and the businessmen were idiots.
GW: Nice video!