Thoughts, essays, and writings on Liberty. Written by the heirs of Patrick Henry.

“People constantly speak of the government doing this or that, as they might speak of God doing it. But the government is really nothing but a group of men, and usually they are very inferior men. They may have some better man working for them, but they themselves are seldom worthy of any respect.”     H. L. Mencken

June 26, 2007

How Libertarians Should Define Themselves

by Doug Mataconis

David Boaz examines yesterday’s Supreme Court near evisceration of the First Amendment, and comes up with this idea:

Maybe libertarians should try to describe their philosophy by saying “libertarians believe in the free speech that liberals used to believe in, and the economic freedom that conservatives used to believe in.”

Works for me.

H/T: Coyote Blog


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3 Comments

  1. Conservatives never believed in economic freedom. It was pretty much always a cover-up for public cost, private profit.

    Comment by Joshua Holmes — June 26, 2007 @ 9:46 pm

  2. Conservatives never believed in economic freedom. It was pretty much always a cover-up for public cost, private profit.

    Yeah, and I’m not sure “liberals” are really for free speech, either. Seems kind of obvious that freedoms are inversely proportional to the size of government.

    Comment by js290 — June 26, 2007 @ 11:29 pm

  3. ‘liberals’ have never been about freedom of speech and never will be.

    as for conservatives and economic freedom, I’ll grant that the conservative leadership has never been about economic freedom. But I’d think that much of the conservative people as a whole do value it.

    Comment by Nick — June 27, 2007 @ 2:53 am

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