| The author, Dean Baker, has a very narrow view of what libertarianism is and isn't. I'm a left-libertarian. I take a great deal of inspiration from the libertarian activist Karl Hess, who developed the language of the 1% versus the 99% in his 1975 manifesto, Dear America: "1.6 percent of the adult population owns 82 percent of all stock, and thus actually owns American business and industry. In a very real sense, that tiny 1 percent of the population faces the other 99 percent across a barrier of very real self-interest. That tiny 1 percent has been accumulating more as the years go on, not less. The key to that accumulation is assuring that the people who make up the other 99 percent are sharply restricted in what power and privilege they accumulate." Again, that was written by an American libertarian. Libertarianism is a family of philosophical viewpoints, that runs the gamut from the "Libertarian socialism" of Noam Chomsky to the "Geolibertarianism" of Henry George to the craziness of the "Tea Party." It's noteworthy that Ayn Rand denounced libertarianism. I was excommunicated from the Objectivist club in college for espousing libertarian anarchist views. It's also noteworthy that Tea Party founder Karl Denninger renounced the Tea Party, saying it was co-opted by the Republican Party, which shifted its focus to "Guns, gays, God." He sums up his feelings toward the Tea Party, saying: "Tea Party my ass. This was nothing other than The Republican Party stealing the anger of a population that was fed up with The Republican Party's own theft of their tax money at gunpoint to bail out the robbers of Wall Street and fraudulently redirecting it back toward electing the very people who stole all the f---ing money!" Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/20/karl-denninger-tea-... Someone who's really interested in the variety of libertarianism ought to start with the Wikipedia article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism |