Look, there’s definitely some people who lean “libertarian” on paper who have valuable and interesting insights. Chuck Mahron/Strong Towns, for example. They’re A+ in political ideas and messaging and you can definitely see NAP center stage if you read between the lines of what they are saying. Except I’ve never heard him use the word “libertarian”. I suspect because he knows it is a poisoned brand and just generally doesn’t like labels, though that’s just supposition.
But apply some Bayesian theory here and don’t engage in any No True Scotsmanship. If someone tells you they are a “libertarian”, that information on its own should give you HIGH confidence the person is somewhere between “Republican who has a gay daughter he doesn’t want to see lynched” and “total crank sovereign citizen type”. There’s 1,000 false positives for every true one.
If I were you, holding the sincere beliefs I have no reason to question you having, I would not want to be identified by that word.
Online in particular is a crap shoot. It’s a small enough demographic that it’s easy to be overrun.
In 15 years my local LP has gone from weird old racist fucks to younger people that are pretty fantastic. The 2020 state convention had me pleasantly surprised. We were heavily involved in supporting the pro-choice vote we had (and won) and, while the dinosaurs aren’t dead, they were completely ostracized.
Look, there’s definitely some people who lean “libertarian” on paper who have valuable and interesting insights. Chuck Mahron/Strong Towns, for example. They’re A+ in political ideas and messaging and you can definitely see NAP center stage if you read between the lines of what they are saying. Except I’ve never heard him use the word “libertarian”. I suspect because he knows it is a poisoned brand and just generally doesn’t like labels, though that’s just supposition.
But apply some Bayesian theory here and don’t engage in any No True Scotsmanship. If someone tells you they are a “libertarian”, that information on its own should give you HIGH confidence the person is somewhere between “Republican who has a gay daughter he doesn’t want to see lynched” and “total crank sovereign citizen type”. There’s 1,000 false positives for every true one.
If I were you, holding the sincere beliefs I have no reason to question you having, I would not want to be identified by that word.
Online in particular is a crap shoot. It’s a small enough demographic that it’s easy to be overrun.
In 15 years my local LP has gone from weird old racist fucks to younger people that are pretty fantastic. The 2020 state convention had me pleasantly surprised. We were heavily involved in supporting the pro-choice vote we had (and won) and, while the dinosaurs aren’t dead, they were completely ostracized.