[thebooktocome]

They may be socially liberal as individuals, but they are all too willing to curtail the government's ability to protect the rights of minorities. That's why they get classified as right-wing by most everyone except themselves.

For example, the libertarian solution to the Christian baker, gay wedding cake problem is that the government does not have the right to stipulate non-discrimination laws for public-facing businesses. Follow that logic to its natural conclusion, and we're back to segregated restaurants. Doesn't sound very leftist to me.

[rosser]

The counter-argument to that is often something like, "Well, people just won't patronize the segregated establishments, because who would support that?!", and with that, we've demonstrably already lost touch with reality.

[aeorgnoieang]

I roughly agree with your diagnosis about why libertarianism is considered right-wing but your example elides some pertinent details, e.g. segregation was sometimes (often?) imposed on private parties by the relevant governments.

[sigstoat]

> That's why they get classified as right-wing by most everyone except themselves.

"libertarians are always classified as X" reliably identifies a person as opposite-of-X.

if you hit up the conservative forums, you'll find libertarians regularly described as dope-smoking lefty hippies, and whatever else.

[wbxrs]

You have a point, I guess I had never seen it that way.

[iron0013]

That hasn't been my experience. On most conservative forums, most people--clearly conservative--describe themselves as "libertarian". Look at elected officials: who's more likely to describe themselves as a "libertarian", Republican politicians or Democratic politicians?

[sigstoat]

you're talking about self-description. i wasn't.

[iron0013]

What? I don't follow. Why would conservatives, who describe themselves as "libertarians", call libertarians "dope-smoking lefty hippies"? I'm saying your account of how conservatives describe libertarians rings false.

Conservatives don't consider libertarians to be "them", they consider libertarians to be "us"--that is, they don't make a distinction between conservatives and libertarians.

[thebooktocome]

It wasn't too long ago that Paul Ryan was considered a libertarian, and a positive direction for the Republican party.