Posted: Thu Apr 01, 2010 5:13 pmAugarundus wrote:Wrong sir, libertarians are not conservatives. Where a conservative prefers order, a libertarian prefers liberty. A conservative to the extreme is a reactionary, commonly misconstrued as a Nazi. A libertarian to the extreme is an anarchist. Quite a bit of difference there.
To an extent you are correct.
Yet, when I say 'conservative', I am referring to the modern interpretation of the word 'conservative'. I realize that libertarianism is opposed to authoritarianism (totalitarianism), and conservative and liberal ideologies can both influence the libertarian movement to an extent. However, libertarians are technically similar to 'classical liberals'; they promote as much individual liberty as possible, and as little government as possible.
An extreme libertarian can take two forms; the anarchist, or the minarchist. I am a minarchist; I believe the state's only objective should be to protect rights (as opposed to the anarchist who believes no state should exist).
I must correct you on a few counts. To begin with, I make the semantic distinction because it's important. Just like totalitarian and authoritarian. A totalitarian government is one where the government has total control, an easy one to guess, and generally not automatically evil. Authoritarian on the other hand has a focus on an 'authority' generally a single, charismatic leader. Less important than some, as authoritarians tend to end up being totalitarian, but it's just something to think about.
Conservatives, strictly speaking, favor the status quo, as per their name. The most original 'status quo' is that of an authoritarian government, the feudal ideal of it. Conservatives in a lot of places started as royalists. Liberals favor, from a political science standpoint, equality, where conservatives support order from the same source of thought. A liberal to the extreme is something like an idealized communist, the abolition of classes part of communism. Conservatives to the extreme are totalitarians. There's another umbrella ideology, communitarianism, which opposes individualism, and is the common 'for the good of all' ideology that a lot of practicing communists use. This generally means supporting equality and order at the expense of liberty. A libertarian is the polar opposite of a communitarian, favoring the individual and absolute liberty. An extreme libertarian is an anarchist, that's it. A minarchist is a less extreme libertarian because you're sacrificing your right to enforce your rights. A communitarian to the extreme is a socialist police state sort of idea. This is on a equality/order scale, but it serves our purposes well.