cut crop insurance before food stamps

[dilletante]

a number of my friends seem to be staunch anti-libertarians, and that sometimes confuses me. i think i just read the wrong articles, because this (titled as above) is what i think of as a classic libertarian position. (i think even the rabid ayn rand fans have been known to beat this drum, and they have a lot less that can usually be said to

Comments

[fennel]

What do you mean by "staunch anti-libertarians"? None of my theories about this phrase are panning out when I test them for applicability to people I know.

[dilletante]

well, the main thing that inspired the thought was more than once happening to run across profiles of people i knew on dating sites and noting that they included variations of "no libertarians." also whenever i mention libertarians on lj i seem to get replies along the line of lyonesse's above, which seem to be based on a different caricature of libertarians than the one in my own head.

[twoeleven]

it's one of several left-wing caricatures. there are so many to choose from. (likewise, plenty of right-wing caricatures of the left.)

[cruiser]

All those left and right wing caricatures are why I give no credence to the statements of anyone who makes a statement to the effect of "Group X believes Y" unless the person making the statement is verifiably a member of Group X.

[twoeleven]

i'd be suspicious of that kind of generalization regardless. i mean, i can tell you what my silly party's leadership committee positiion is on, say, obamacare, and i can tell you what the speaker of the house said today, but even on that issue, i doubt we're all of one mind about it.

[rednikki]

It's not really - or perhaps not only - a left-wing caricature. There's a lot of sites full of people who call themselves "libertarian" and think that "libertarian" means that gay sex should be illegal and that government money should mostly be spent on aiding corporations (among other things). The term has been co-opted by groups whose beliefs are actually anti-libertarian.

If you work in the tech industry here in California you get a lot of these "libertarians" - it's part of the brogrammer culture.

[cruiser]

Of course, you can also find people who call themselves "progressive" or "conservative" or "liberal" or "Democrat" or "Republican" or pretty much any 'X' for whom you can say "You state these beliefs which are not what I consider 'X

[rednikki]

RedState.com gets twice as much traffic as Reason.com does.

You may not think they're libertarian, and the "about" section defines them as "right-of-center." However, once you read the site you'll find the users generally consider themselves "libertarian conservatives" and "libertarian populists," and they are redefining the term libertarian in a way that is very different than what has long been the commonly agreed-upon definition. Most of the people on that site don't know Reason Magazine and don't know EFF. The few that DO know EFF have really, really bad things to say about it. And that is the weird-ass "LIbertarianism" that I am hearing about in the tech industry out here, usually combined with a heaping cup of Infowars to sweeten (?) the pot.

Sorry it's taken me so long to respond; it's been a crazy couple of weeks.

[cruiser]

No problem, it's been a crazy couple of weeks all around.

I'm curious where you got your "twice as much traffic" number from. I haven't thought much about website ranking before, but the first hit on Google for it was Alexa, which I've heard of - they came up with the following traffic numbers: Reason 1911th in the US, 7592nd worldwide; RedState 4768th in the US, 21221st worldwide. Googlefight gives Reason a 1000:1 margin.

I'm not going to waste my time actually *reading* RedState.com, but the wikipedia page says nothing about libertarian and a whole lot about conservative and Republican. There may be some people who use the site who self-identify as libertarian, but I wouldn't call them doing so as in any way "redefining" what libertarian means. I think the tech industry in California is pocket of oddballness, if that's what passes for libertarian there.

[rednikki]

I use Comscore for my numbers. Alexa's data is shit and has been for years. Comscore and Quantcast are what are generally used to assess traffic levels. (Part of my job involves assessing website traffic and Comscore and Quantcast are the agreed-upon standards in the digital advertising industry.)

[lyonesse]

does the article-writing versus personally-spouting distinction make sense to you?

[dilletante]

oh, totally; and that's been my main theory about the difference in impressions for a while. i don't think i can really honestly hope to meet more of the personally-spouting sort, as they don't sound like much fun.

[hissilliness]

I would own that phrase for myself.