Can libertarians be liberals?

by | Jan 6, 2012 | 51 comments

Working in Democratic politics can do strange things to libertarians. Part of the job is selling libertarian economics to hardcore liberals– and that’s a daunting task. Perhaps impossible. It led me to re-evaluate major aspects of my libertarianism (Liberals support x. Libertarians oppose x. But is libertarian philosophy really opposed to x?) and take a much closer look at liberal ideas.

When I started, I was already skeptical of some core libertarian arguments, due to my near-obsession with academic economics. My work with liberalism opened the floodgates. Eventually I was forced to admit that I was probably wrong in advocating free market anarchism and adopted a position awkwardly in between liberalism and libertarianism.

Since then I’ve struggled to find a way to describe my views. “Left-libertarian” was an obvious candidate, but it seems that most people using the term are anarchists, and I’m not nearly that radical. Taking a cue from Will Wilkinson, I started to use “liberaltarian“. But, in many cases, people simply interpreted that as “libertarian”, defeating the purpose.

For a while, if asked, I would just shake my head and laugh nervously. Finally I gave up and called myself a liberal.

So I was intrigued to find an essay at the Bleeding-Heart Libertarians blog by left-leaning libertarian Will Wilkinson, titled “Why I’m Not a Bleeding-Heart Libertarian“: (more…)

Parking Tickets Arraignment

by | Jan 6, 2012 | 9 comments

Today I went to District Court in Keene for my arraignment for alleged parking violations. I was joined by 3 other activists contesting tickets who also had arraignment. Nemi Jones, Cecelia Freechild, and Kelly Voluntaryist. We were joined by cameramen and activists who came out to support us like Ian Freeman, Pete Eyre, Jason Rapsher, and David Crawford.
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If only more people felt this way, maybe we’d actually be free.

by | Jan 5, 2012 | 21 comments

Apparently some prudes in the legislature are trying to destroy gay marriage. Help put a stop to it by asking local “representatives” to vote NO on HB 437, which would undo NH’s historic gay marriage legislation. (NH was the first state to accomplish this by legislation, if I recall correctly.)

“We never use government to take freedom away from our people.” – Oh, if only that were true.