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.
I wrote about the redistricting of Keene state representative districts last month– Redistricting committee leaves Keene in suspense. The suspense has now ended, and the results caught many people (including myself) by surprise.
Right now Keene has seven state representatives, all representing the entire city of Keene. In the earlier blog, I wrongly predicted that, after redistricting, each of Keene’s 5 wards would have its own state representative, due to a constitutional amendment which took effect in 2006. As it turns out, it was basically impossible to fulfill the requirements of that amendment while also satisfying federal restrictions. Federal law supersedes state law, so the New Hampshire constitutional amendment was ignored in some cases.
Wards 1, 4, and 5 will each have their own representatives. Wards 2 and 3, along with Roxbury, will share two representatives, and all of Keene, plus Roxbury, will elect two at-large representatives.
You can see the map for Cheshire County below: (more…)
In a recent episode of Freedom Watch, Judge Napolitano talks to Lynn Chong, former chair of the Belknap (NH) County Democrats. Frustrated with Obama’s foreign policy, she changed her voter registration from Democrat to independent udeclared and will vote for Ron Paul.
“I would definitely call myself a progressive,” said Will Hopkins of Belmont [NH], who returned from a tour as infantryman in Iraq to become executive director of New Hampshire Peace Action, a group seeking to end foreign wars and cut defense budgets. “I supported Obama in 2008, but I’m supporting Ron Paul. That’s where I’m putting my eggs this year,” he said. “A lot of folks in the peace movement are taking a close look at Paul.”]
