Hopefully coherent thoughtlets

[sqbr]

I have a cold. This is very annoying but not in the least surprising, I always get sick when I stop worrying about something/am about to start a new job, and unless I stay sick *mutter* my Scitech interview is on Friday. Sometimes being me is very annoying.

For anyone who saw my swancon costume and didn't know who I was, I was dressed as Claire from "Bite Me".

During some panel at Swancon (I forget the context) strangedave disagreed with my assertion that libertarians are right wing, saying "What about socialist libertarians". I decided to look it up when I got home since it sounded like a contradiction in terms to me. So, I just remembered to google "socialist libertarian", and what is the very first link? The Libertarian National Socialist (Nazi) Green Party. Whose page starts with a little thing about how they're against racism. No, there's no contradiction there at all :) (Currently I'm half reading the wikipedia page but I'm too sleepy for politics)

Also this reminds me of a comic I came accross while going through the tailsteak.com archives today (still going). Nothing like interent archives when you're sick and bored.

Comments

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

Libertarianism has become virtually synonymous with Capitalist Libertarianism (which is right wing by most peoples definitions, though they will tend to claim its not), because there are such a lot of them on the internet and they are such loudmouthed pains in the arse. But there are definitely other traditions that reject the basic assumptions of capitalist libertarianism yet still deserve the name libertarian, most of which would tend to be classified as left wing.

[ataxi.livejournal.com]

Yep. Although the left-right vs. authoritarian-libertarian as two orthogonal political characteristics meme, which is probably more useful (heck: extra degree of freedom right?) is becoming quite entrenched as well.

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

definitely, and it makes a fair bit of sense in the historical context of capitalism vs communism being the dominant political dialogue for the last half century, and so laying claim to the 'right vs left' primary distinction. But 'left vs right' will mean different things in different contexts.

And there are, of course, more orthogonal political characteristics you could throw into the diagram.

[alias_sqbr]

Reading the wiki entry I realised it's like in Ursula K LeGuin's "The Dispossessed" and all was clear(ish, I am still sick). Thank heavens for that book, I'd never been able to quite get my head around anarchic socialism before I read it. Still not sure it would work of course, but at least I know what people mean :)

*shakes fist at Capitalist Libertarians, boy they make me testy*