What is a libertarian? On the face of it, it’s pretty easy to tell that libertarians aren’t defined in the same way that “Republican” or “Democrat” are. Republicans and Democrats are defined primarily by their membership and loyalty to a political party, while the Libertarian Party represents a small minority fraction of self-proclaimed libertarians.

But if you were to base the notion of libertarians around a common ideology of Libertarianism, you run into a problem. The people who call themselves libertarians are a heterogeneous, self-contradictory group that hold incompatible ideas.

If your ideology includes a list of names such as: Friedrich Hayek, Noam Chomsky, Neil Peart, Glenn Beck, Ayn Rand, Jeff Bezos, Rand Paul, the Koch brothers and Mikhail Bakunin, chances are you aren’t going to get any coherent sort of ideology out of it.

A lot of people are going to look at that list and say, “Well, they may call themselves libertarian, but many of those people aren’t really libertarians.” But try to get them to explain why, and their answers will be absent, vague, or contradicting with each other.

The label ‘libertarian’ is driven by self-attribution, more than anything else. The term speaks to various people’s conviction that “we are libertarians” more than an objective observer’s assessment that “they are libertarians”. And when a term is more for the benefit of the subject than anyone else, it generally is very confused and somewhat pandering.

Just to illustrate, the most popular way of defining libertarian comes from a guy called David Nolan who was, of course, a libertarian. (He even co-founded the Libertarian Party in the United States.) He introduced what he proudly termed “The World’s Smallest Political Quiz”, a Cartesian quadrant graph which is now more popularly referred to as “The Nolan Chart”. It has two dimensions purporting to represent “social liberty” and “economic liberty” or something close to it, and labels the four different coordinates. High social liberty, but low economic liberty, is termed “left-wing” or “political left”; High economic liberty, but low social liberty, is termed “right-wing” or “political right”. And libertarian, as you may guess, is “high social liberty” and “high economic liberty”.

While it is popular, this chart is not helpful at all. Liberty is a vague term but it is almost always considered to be a “good” thing, adaptable to what people find ‘good’ in a liberal society. And even if I were to accept its characterization of the modern political left and right, I cannot accept it as a definition of political left and right. Ideas of left-wing and right-wing have not stayed committed to this economic/social liberty diagram, but have generally been defined around a pro-social change v. pro-traditional status quo element.

What would you guess the fourth quadrant is – that is, low economic liberty and low social liberty? This is the part that really demonstrates how facile, shallow and unhelpful the Nolan Chart really is: there is no agreement over what that fourth quadrant is supposed to be, except that it represents whatever the creator is deeply opposed to.

The terms used include “Authoritarianism”, “Communitarianism”, “Collectivism”, “Fascism”, “Totalitarianism”, “Moderates” (oddly), and the vague, strawman ideology made up only to be used pejoratively (by other libertarians), “Statism”. Nolan himself wanted that fourth quadrant to represent… Populism. You can almost taste the venom of spite dripping from the creators of all these different charts – and it just goes to show how preferential the opposing ‘libertarian’ quadrant is supposed to be.

I think we need a taxonomy for describing the people who call themselves libertarians – or, as I will call them for short, label-tarins. Well, I have my own system, made by an outsider, that elaborates on this fragmented yet somehow interconnected group. I call it “Label-tarians: An Outsider’s Guide to People Who Call Themselves Libertarians”, or possibly the “Nolan-Can-Suck-On-This Chart”.

The Label-tarian Graph

Like the Nolan Chart, this graph has two axes, but I avoid giving them the kind of preferential normative value that Nolan gave his chart.

The horizontal axis represents where that ideology sits on a traditional left/right spectrum – which I choose to define as a basis of “pro-social change v. pro-traditional status quo”. This definition is original to the French Revolution and it best articulates why, for example, Nazis are considered right-wing while Communists are considered leftist. Whatever ‘liberties’ a left-wing or right-wing group supports is, in my view, subservient to whether their positions alter social institutions or fortify traditional values.

The vertical axis represents how ideological the group is, which can roughly be translated to “the strength of their commitment to a system of high ideals” – in this case, political ideals. A low ideological rating would be considered pragmatic and unconcerned with the abstract, where high ideological identifies strongly with his belief system, whatever its tenants may be. And where the ideological would view the non-ideological as opportunistic and unprincipled, the flipside would see the other as dogmatic and self-righteous.

These axes especially made sense when I charted out particular subgroups I noticed and tried to draw the connections between groups, and noticed that it more or less made a clean 3-2-1 triangle. I’ve put the chart below, with six subgroups given a nickname and represented as touching circles. (Please note that these groups do not have hard borders and could easily support edge cases and people who fit somewhere between one or two or even three different groups.)

Labeltarians1

Group 1: “Anarco-Syndicalist” (Left-Wing, Ideological)

I will start this chart off with what many will consider the ‘black sheep’ of the group – the political activist radical who is resentful of capitalism.

The ones who have “read their Chomsky”, if you will. They read A People’s History of the United States, or at least skimmed it. They watch Michael Moore documentary without a single molecule of salt. The ideal society they describe sounds like a hippie commune. And sitting next to everyone else in this triangle, they’d probably have the other five groups turning their heads and crying out, “What the fuck are these socialists doing in here?!”

You’d be surprised, my friends. Sure, they would still identify as socialists, but unlike other socialists who accept some state role in implementing their vision of a just society, this brand of “libertarian socialists” or “left-libertarians” are broadly distrustful of authority, power and coercion. Theirs is the side that was kicked out of the First International with Mikhail Bakunin for calling Karl Marx “authoritarian”. They envision a communal society without hierarchy or executive leadership based on consent to public will, where everyone has a hand in creating the rules and follow them willingly without the need for complicated conflict resolution, because everyone magically gets along.

This is a typical “anarchist” position – though I should point out that this is not “anarchist” in the same sense that Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols is “anarchist”. You see, Johnny Rotten had a practicable action plan for his politics – he “didn’t know what he wanted”, but he “knew how to get it” – where most real anarchists may know what they want (in theory), but they do not know how to get it and occasionally seem disinterested in trying to actually get it at all. This hypothetical society is mostly a good platform for criticizing what they don’t like about society; in the meantime, the best they can do is get overly enthusiastic about cooperative housing.

They would call themselves libertarian but feel the need to stress that they are “true” libertarians, discrediting every other group on their terms. They are committed to ideals about liberty, justice and equality, and they are sour on society for failing their high (unobtainable) standards. The “Anarcho-Syndicalist” makes a lot of speeches akin to Dennis the Peasant in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. They might not realize that Dennis the Peasant’s speech is a joke.

They dislike the power of corporations and are critical of the United States’ vast global military and economic influence, which they haphazardly put into a giant box called “imperialism”. They are highly opposed to the expansion of the military, as well as to moral legislation or even stigma against people who live alternative lifestyles. In that latter way, they are adjacent to Group 2 and Group 6. They are very distant from Group 3 – which they would view as amoral, elitist and bourgeois – and Group 5 – which they would view as extremist crusaders for regressive nationalism.

Personal Idol: Noam Chomsky

Their Dipshit: Russell Brand

News Source: AlterNet, Democracy Now!, Jacobin Magazine

Likes: “Alternative” Media, “Alternative” Bookstores, “Alternative” Medicine – really, anything labelled alternative; Protests; Independent Cafes; Social Justice; Slam Poetry – particularly the kind that is thinly veiled aimless political angst; Sociology; Emma Goldman; Cooperatives

Dislikes: Capitalism; Imperialism; Militarism; Other ominious –isms; Heteronormativity; Institutions, and the Institutionalization of Systemic something-or-other; Privilege; Gentrification; the Political and Financial Elite; College Debt

Group 2: “Third Way Democrat” (Center-Left, Semi-Ideological)

This group is populated by people who may have overheard at a party once that “libertarian means socially liberal and fiscally conservative”, and thought to themselves, “hey, that sounds like me!” just before taking another hit from the bong.

You may have met that guy who is kinda libertarian… he thinks. He’s not totally sure, but y’know, he just thinks, like, the government shouldn’t tell him what to do. I mean, if he wants to smoke pot, it doesn’t hurt anyone, right? It’s his choice.

This guy is not too hung up on the labels, man. In fact, he likely dislikes all the labels in politics. He resents the partisanship and the polarization of politics; he wishes that people could live and let live with other political beliefs and work together. He wishes for a real third party option in the middle, rather than the demagogues on both sides.

The naïve, younger brand of this group is initially not enthusiastic about voting. He doesn’t think it matters. He believes he isn’t that political, but in reality he’s more political than he knows; he’s just severely alienated from contemporary politics, to the extent that he’s less willing to invest time and energy into figuring out what the correct label really is.

If he took the time and energy, he’d discover that he’s really more Third Way than libertarian.

“What’s Third Way?” you may ask. Well, Third Way refers to pattern of center-left politicians portraying themselves as more centrist and sought to reconcile market-based policies with socially progressive values. They were particularly prominent in the 90’s and were widely seen as a response to the New Right. It was most recognizable in two heads of government: Tony Blair in the UK, and Bill Clinton in the US, and while Tony Blair’s legacy is permanently tainted with his support of the Iraq War, Bill Clinton is remembered pretty fondly and the movement still exists today in the New Democrats caucus. I didn’t say they were influential, but they’re still there.

So to use an imperfect shorthand, if your label-tarian is favorable to Bill Clinton, chances are he’s a Third Way Democrat. What he really wants to be is a rational liberal centrist. He would like political leaders to be pragmatic on economic issues and likes the idea of a balanced budget, but he is also socially progressive. He supports gay rights, and he ridicules religious conservatives. He also dislikes military, but it’s more economic than his counterpart in Group 1; he thinks spending so much money on the military is just wasteful.

And let’s not forget: he is totally for drug legalization. The drug war failed like prohibition, it’s racially charged and it has broken homes and neighborhoods. Besides, we could use the tax money from marijuana sales to pay for our schools. Win-win, right? And marijuana’s not even that addictive. (He should know!)

The “Third Way Democrat” is adjacent to Group 1 and Group 6, particularly in terms of social liberalism, anti-militarism and distrust of the police; they are adjacent Group 3 and Group 4, and respect their business-oriented pragmatism. They are most distant from Group 5, who they view as crazy Right-Wing extremists.

Personal Idol: Thomas Friedman

Their Dipshit: Bill Maher

News Source: The Economist, NPR, Vice, The Daily Show – yes that counts!

Likes: Dave Barry; Sam Harris; Warren Buffet; A laidback, ironic, laidback approach to politics; South Park; Secularism; Neil DeGrasse Tyson; Rolling Stone magazine; South Park; Weed, especially if it’s legal

Dislikes: Political bullshit; the Religious Right; Judgmental People; Demagogues; Partisanship and Polarization; Fox News; the Drug War; Tea Partiers

Group 3: “Entrepreneurialist” (Unaligned, Non-Ideological)

More than any other group, the Entrepreneurialist has an approach to politics best embodied by the Godfather quote: “It’s not personal; it’s strictly business.”

I’ve noticed a tendency for successful businesspeople to label themselves as libertarian when they would otherwise be apolitical. They aren’t ideological; again, they’re businesspeople. They want to spend their time forging their success professionally and personally, and keep their political beliefs few and private.

But that’s the problem with being successful; once you become successful enough, people want to know what you believe. Standing for nothing is socially toxic, and as a businessperson you soon learn that you can’t ignore politics if you want to be more successful.

So what do you do? Well, you apply the same enterprising instinct for opportunity that made you successful businessman, and you look for the most advantageous approach to deciding your political opinions.

Hence this label-tarian group is “Entrepreneurialist”; their political approach is businesslike and calculated; they try out new positions and they are looking to get something out of them. And it turns out, calling yourself a libertarian is convenient in many ways.

For one thing, it allows you to avoid the typical left-right divide that could alienate people you want to work with. It’s specific enough that people won’t suspect you for being evasive, but nebulous enough that people won’t quite understand what you believe. And above all, it provides a nominal justification for acting in your own self-interest.

“Entrepreneurialists” can support policies that cut taxes, for example – but it isn’t because they think the government interferes with freedom and/or taxes are like legalized theft. Hell no – they just want to pay fewer taxes. And when the chance for a tax subsidy comes for their business, they have no compunction against lobbying for it. They may talk about simplifying the tax code, but they want to make sure their back door is still in. They’re pro-trade and anti-union, because in general that’s good for running business. They publicize socially liberal values, because that’s inclusive for customers. They often propose interesting policies or public projects that are exciting and get publicity, but their positions are adaptable by design. They are capitalists, of course – and like good capitalists they don’t wanna spend money backing a losing horse.

Now, I don’t think it’s necessarily fair to say they have no principles, or that they stand for nothing. But they prefer to make their stands privately and personally. If they care about environmental issues, they will build a sustainable home, or invest in better clean energy technology. If they care about gay rights, they will contribute to a gay rights organization. But they are not activists, and they won’t push hard to change other peoples’ firm beliefs.

One more thing: a lot of the other label-tarians think that these businesspeople are in their camp, and believe in their ideology, when “Entrepreneurialists” definitely don’t. For example, if you read Atlas Shrugged without having a severe allergic reaction, you might have picked up the mistaken belief that every successful businessperson has deep convictions about metaphysics and epistemology, and carry themselves with a righteous vigor about Reason and the virtue of selfishness, and all have the same beliefs and personality, and the same contempt for so-called “altruism”.

I assure you: they don’t.

The “Entrepreneurialists” are adjacent to Group 2 and Group 4, which they view as sensible and undemanding from an ideological perspective. They are very distant from Group 1, which they view as radical anti-capitalist leftists, and Group 5, which they view as extremist right wing demagogues.

Personal Idol: Bill Gates

Their Dipshit: Jeff Bezos

News Source: The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Bloomberg, Motley Fool

Likes: Money; Corporate Synergy; LinkedIn; Work-Life Balance; Liquidity; Disruptive Innovation (see Innovator’s Dilemma); Berkshire Hathaway; Elon Musk; Mergers; High Margins; Consumer Culture; the Cayman Islands

Dislikes: Solicitors; Market Crashes; Corporate Taxes; Labor Disputes; Social Media Storms; Accounting Fraud; Being Called “Fat Cat”; Telling People They’re Fired; Pretending to be Invested in Political Rants at Cocktail Parties

Group 4: “College Republican” (Center-Right, Semi-Ideological)

When I say “College Republican”, I don’t mean just Republicans in college. I am referring to a particular kind of Republican that tends to emerge and develop in a college-like environment.

Imagine a generally conservative kid, suddenly put into an environment surrounded by outspoken liberals and progressives, and finding his opinion in the minority, or at the least challenged for the first time. This could be an opportunity to be exposed to other points of view and give and receive insight – but we’re all human. Mostly, we just stubbornly dig in. (Note: a similar thing can happen for a conservative kid who goes to high school in a liberal city; it just happens a little earlier.)

The “College Republican” feels a personal need to fortify his own conservative beliefs and make them more sophisticated in the process. And most of the time (though not all of the time) the more theoretical he becomes the more he emphasizes the ‘limited government/free market’ side of modern conservatism over the ‘traditional values/religion’ side.

“College Republican” is “a conservative, but really he’s more libertarian.” Not enough to actually vote libertarian, though; he’s thinking a particular kind of Republican. Sometimes he avoids calling himself a Republican out of a perceived stigma from the liberal culture he engages with, and calls himself ‘libertarian’ instead.

He admires Margaret Thatcher. He advocates a school voucher system. He wants to share his opinion on Federalism with you. He thinks a flat tax would be a good idea. He demands entitlement reform. He likes (or liked) Ayn Rand and may call himself an Objectivist because he likes the idea that capitalism is moral – but his commitment to the philosophy is thin. In reality, he doesn’t aspire to be that pretentious and philosophical, and he makes up the large segment of Rand’s fan base who eventually ‘grows out of it’.

He really likes Milton Friedman, and he knows what a “Chicago Boy” is. He enthusiastically supports Rand Paul and wishes more people heard his ideas.

You know what he doesn’t like? Political correctness.

He is resentful of people talking about ‘oppression’ and ‘injustice’. He thinks affirmative action is discrimination, feminism is a grievance industry and their efforts to advocate for their agenda is unfairly forcing their ideas onto us.

And yes, a lot of people will purport to dislike political correctness when it’s personally convenient – like, when they said something demeaning and offensive, and they’re trying to deflect blame onto the people they’ve offended around the Thanksgiving table – but the “College Republican” has at least half-page op-ed in him about how political correctness and student activism is infringing on his free speech.

His righteous anger ought to be tempered with the knowledge that, instead of engaging those activists with his counterpoint, he’s content to sit bitterly and enjoy his position as the most political person in his insular fraternity, and/or a contributor for the Stanford Review – oops, I mean conservative campus newspaper.

Still, he does have an appreciation for new ideas, and if really pressed he may even support gay rights and drug decriminalization. That’s more than can be said for his more reactionary, dogmatic counterpart in Group 5…

“College Republican” is adjacent to Group 5 and Group 6, and shares their support for broad economic deregulation and small government, and skepticism of social progressive movements. He is also adjacent to Group 2 and Group 3, and shares their practicality and appreciates their moderation. He is most distant from Group 1, which he views as naïve ungrateful malcontents who spout socialist nonsense.

Personal Idol: Milton Friedman

Their Dipshit: Matt Drudge

News Source: The National Review, Reason Magazine; Drudge Report; Instapundit

Likes: Supply side economic theory; Margaret Thatcher; school vouchers; Thomas Sowell; New Federalism; a flat tax; Shelby Steele; Rand Paul’s candidacy; Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville; the Earned Income Tax Credit; Atlas Shrugged Sparknotes

Dislikes: Political Correctness; Dodd-Frank; Hillary Clinton; the Welfare State; School activism; Affirmative Action; Entitlement spending; Public Employee Unions; the Individual Mandate; Being Accused of Privilege

Group 5: “Constitutionalist” (Right-Wing, Ideological)

This is the crowd that wants to stop runaway BIG government and take their country back, and return America to the principles of the US Constitution! And they are more than comfortable telling you what the principles of the Constitution are, even though they don’t have some elitist law degree, or a legal education (formal or otherwise), and it’s a wash whether they actually read the Constitution, let alone understood it.

I think this all started out sometime in the mid-1960’s, when some men who were conspicuously not the Founding Fathers needed to brand their agenda.

The pro-business, anti-Communist Republican party were expanding their ranks to include a larger populist element – particularly from the South, thanks in no small part to the Democrats advocating the Civil Rights Act to the chagrin of the formerly Solid South. But it’s comparatively difficult to convince ‘folk’ about the benefit of laissez-faire economics and the dead-loss caused by unions. So instead, the Republicans linked their distinctly modern political agenda to a mythological narrative of American history, particularly its founding. Their rhetoric associated their politics with the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness of Thomas Jefferson, and called upon their recruits to support their policies not so much as good ideas on their own but rather as ‘traditional values’ that must be protected from the encroaching march of social progressivism.

And that’s where the Constitution comes in. It appeals to a belief that this country was somehow whole and ideal in the past, and that only in the recent past has it degraded due to an amoral liberal elite without wholesome ‘traditional’ values. It insinuates that the Constitution prescribed a static and unwavering vision of government that somehow conveniently aligns with the agenda of a modern political party, and that any compromise with that agenda is an inch taken away from the country’s very foundation and identity. It is the basis for a pervasive belief that forcing a shutdown of the federal government over an ideological issue is acceptable because conciliation is evil and the government needs to be stopped anyway.

If I may step out from my restrained irreverence into the realm of soapboxing, I’d like to point out that 1) the evolution of American Conservativism is very complicated but it is very clearly not a straight line from the Founding Fathers to Ronald Reagan; 2) the Constitution first and foremost advocated a system for the creation of new laws, and the limited government it instituted limited the federal government not to a size but to a restricted process for law creation and protections for individual rights; and 3) the Founders were not a homogeneous legendary group with a single mind but a diverse assembly with competing, contradictory visions for the United States and heated, often bitter arguments – particularly over the role of the government in economic issues, and not even the drafters could agree on the principles the Constitution promoted.

And finally, I firmly believe that Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and the like – lawyers and sons of the Enlightenment that they were – would be appalled at the notion that people without a legal background could invoke the Constitution as a single contiguous entity and expect to win their debate without any further reasoned argument. When James Madison argued as the respondent in Marbury v. Madison, he gave a detailed legal case. He did not say “I’ James Fuckin’ Madison – I wrote the Constitution so y’all can shut the fuck up ‘cause I know what it means! #TakeOurCountryBack”

In reality, the Constitution is not a substantive inspiration for the beliefs of the Constitutionalist, ironically. The Constitution is their brand. It serves the same function as ‘Just Do It’ for Nike and Chester Cheetah for Cheetos, except instead of trying to make you spend your money, it’s trying to make you buy into a nostalgic fantasy. In short, unless the person you’re speaking to invokes case law or a federalist paper when talking about what the Constitution means, I advise you not to take them too seriously.

Anyway, the “Constitutionalist” kept hearing the term ‘libertarian’ mentioned by her favorite talk radio host or Fox News contributor and decided to use it herself. She is “Conservative Libertarian”. She is a grassroots level Tea Party member, and she wants a republic based on the principle of Jefferson’s ‘liberty’. She is especially enthusiastic about the second amendment. She is very supportive of states’ rights and thinks that Obama acted like a tyrant when he signed the healthcare law passed by the two houses of Congress and issued temporary executive orders pursuant to his role as head of the executive branch. She is afraid that China will take over the United States by holding its debt.

She is adamant about protecting ‘liberty’ but it doesn’t take long for the illiberal Right-Wing side shines through, particularly on foreign policy, immigration and ‘values’ issues. She is a devout Christian and believes the United States is a Christian nation. She is deeply offended by gay marriage and thinks homosexuality is a choice – and a wicked choice at that. She wants more military spending and more border security because she is highly anxious about the country being ‘taken over’ culturally by external forces. And in her mind, the urbanites of the Northeast and West Coast might as well be an external force.

She wants to return the country back to the control of ‘patriotic Americans’; failing that, there’s always secession.

The “Constitutionalist” is adjacent to Groups 4 and 6, and shares their support of small government, their opposition to government regulation and their skepticism of social progressive movements. She is very distant from Group 1, which she views as SOCIALIST and MARXIST, and Group 3, which she resents as members of the east coast and/or west coast elitist businesspeople who don’t represent real small town Americans.

Personal Idol: Thomas Jefferson

Their Dipshit: Honestly, from Glenn Beck to Alex Jones to the Bundys who are as of writing still occupying that federal building in Harney County, Oregon, this category is highly competitive so I leave it to you to take your fucking pick.

News Source: Fox News; TheBlaze; The Rush Limbaugh Show; The 700 Club

Likes: The Tea Party Movement; Ted Cruz; Chick-Fil-A; Pat Buchanan; Sarah Palin; Wal-Mart; The Republican Liberty Caucus; American Exceptionalism; the Lord Christ; Gold savings; Liberty University; small town Americans; guns; GRATUITOUS CAPITALIZATION

Dislikes: SOCIALISM/MARXISM; Government Takeover of Healthcare; RINOs; Big Government; the Biased Liberal Media; Liberal Hollywood; the Liberal Elite; Jade Helm; Illegals; the Gay Agenda; Being Told that Thomas Jefferson Had Slaves

Group 6: “Moral Libertarians” (Unaligned, Ideological)

And finally, we come to the finally category of label-tarians, the group which above all I most associate with ‘libertarian’ and the group where the term makes the most sense. This is the substantive, philosophical brand of Libertarianism that comes straight from the philosophers branded as Libertarian. “Moral Libertarians” have a consistent idea of liberty – namely, negative liberty – and attributes direct moral value to liberty and direct moral harm to infringements on liberty. They believe strongly in the natural rights of self-ownership and property. Their system of ethics is deontologically derived from those rights, and coercion is the great immorality they fight against. All their socioeconomics go back to basic individual rights, and in much the same way that Group 5 invoked the Constitution more like a brand than a substantive influence, “Moral Libertarians” have a tendency to do the same with Reason, just before they make a very preposterous assertion about what ‘morality’ is.

They believe that taxation is theft, and income tax is morally equivalent to slavery. They think military is inherently immoral and a violation of the non-aggression principle of ethics. They subscribe to the Austrian School, the only branch of Economics that can appeal to their strict esoteric and moralistic sense of value. They oppose central banking and think inflation is a kind of government theft.

In theory, they may prefer the nation-state be abolished and replaced with a minimal state (minarchy), night-watchman state or a voluntary Anarcho-Capitalist society. In practice, they will vote for the Libertarian Party and advocate for the legalization of abortion, prostitution and all drugs, and the dismantling of social welfare programs, health and environmental regulations and military spending. They would abolish the Federal Reserve and reinstitute the gold standard.

They know what TANSTAAFL stands for. They would totally get it on a bumper sticker. Most importantly, they know and care deeply about the Nolan Chart.

So the “Moral Libertarian” really lays down the gauntlet for the other six groups; if you acknowledge and accept all its tenants and would adhere to them over an attachment to a national identity, or social justice, or pragmatic centrism, or your own self-interest, then congratulations – you can call yourself a libertarian without my asterisk. Just know that I think your worldview is somewhat deranged and inhuman.

“Moral Libertarians” are adjacent to: Group 1, who share a similar anti-state utopianism; Group 2, who share a similar openness to drug legalization and frustration with military spending; Group 4, who share a similar resentment of the welfare state and borrow occasionally the best quotes from the “Moral Libertarians”; and Group 5, who share a similar hostility to Big Government and a token belief in natural rights.

Of all the groups, the “Moral Libertarian” is least like Group 3, because the “Entrepreneurialist” is the least concerned about a coherent moral system based on deonological principles. The fact that the group avoids shaping society in accordance with ideology is the least in accordance with Group 6’s moral valuation of liberty.

Personal Idol: Friedrich Hayek

Their Dipshit: Ayn Fucking Rand

News Source: The Objectivist Standard; The Freeman; Liberty and Power; LewRockwell.com

Likes: Negative formulations of liberty; Anarchy, State and Utopia; Crypto-currency; Rush; Murray Rothbard; Ron Paul; Praxeology; The Virtue of Selfishness; online forums; freedom of contract; State of Nature Theory; the Nolan Chart

Dislikes: Statism; Logical Positivism; Collectivism; the Federal Reserve; Coercion; Keynsianism; Altruism; Populism; John Rawls; the Dionysian; Negative Externalities; Positive Externalities; the Milk o’ Human Kindness

***

Conclusion: So after all of that, what is a libertarian? While it is my belief that the ‘moral libertarian’ is the group most deserving of the title, it might not be the best policy to say that they are the only group allowed to call themselves libertarian. Still, if we want to use the term ‘libertarian’ as broadly as the label-tarian groups I have listed, we need a different approach.

You may have noticed that label-tarians are so broad that you’d almost expect them to cover a majority of the American public – and yet, most of the American public still don’t identify as libertarian. A lot of people may have similar beliefs as someone in, say, a Third Way Democrat, but never call themselves a libertarian, which would exclude them from this chart. So why do people become label-tarians? Why do they call themselves libertarians in the first place? For all the differences between these group there are a couple themes and the big one comes in the rhetoric they employ.

I submit that the quality that unites the label-tarians and distinguishes them from other people is not a shared belief about liberty, the value of liberty or even the definition of liberty, but rather the word liberty. It’s the effect that the word liberty has on them – the buzz of the word liberty. Some facet of that word captivates them, tickles their egos and makes them ignore, willfully or otherwise, that liberty is as appealing as it is vague, and that it means different things to different people.

The disagreements of a free society are rarely between those who favor and oppose ‘liberty’, but rather between people who try to empower what they value most about liberty. And by insisting that theirs is the sole banner of ‘liberty’, whatever they mean by that, label-tarians obscure the subjective nature of the term, and all too often cut themselves off from opposing views and actively misrepresent them as ‘tyranny’, ‘statist’, or otherwise antithetical to ‘liberty’.

I find that disappointing. The thing I most value in a free society is that it allows for ideas – conventional or otherwise – to be challenged, and compelled to defend themselves. But label-tarians feel entitled, beyond challenge or defense, to the word liberty, and fool themselves into thinking that the idea of liberty is something they can own.

Next Time: The District and the Abyss!

Pointing Out the ‘Ass’ in Classical Liberal,

Connor Raikes, a.k.a. Raikespeare