We've got our own neos now...

[John Dibble]

...and I think I'm one of them.

http://www.neolibertarian.net/blogs/

Read this, password is tnlv1i1
http://www.neolibertarian.net/articles/tnlv1i1.pdf

[John Dibble]

...and I think I'm one of them.

http://www.neolibertarian.net/blogs/

Read this, password is tnlv1i1
http://www.neolibertarian.net/articles/tnlv1i1.pdf

What do you mean now? This is the CATO veriety libertarian, it has existed for a while.
As for me, always a paleo!

Well, whatever. I'm declaring myself a neo-Libertarian.

[John Dibble]

Well, whatever. I'm declaring myself a neo-Libertarian.

LOL! Not that kind of Neo, silly.

Though, then again I bet we'd get a lot of votes from younger people if our candidates were like that.

[John Dibble]

Is this a standard economic right, social left libertarian with an interventionist foreign policy?

It's more of a "we're not too stubborn to compromise" libertarian. Principle is great, but if you stand by it to the point where you ultimately get nothing accomplished, then priniciple is pretty much worthless.

[John Dibble]

Is this a standard economic right, social left libertarian with an interventionist foreign policy?

It's more of a "we're not too stubborn to compromise" libertarian. Principle is great, but if you stand by it to the point where you ultimately get nothing accomplished, then priniciple is pretty much worthless.

That's how you get people elected.  A very small portion of the electorate wants to gut the government and liberalize all the laws.

Yeah, which is why this is the better kind of libertarianism - it might actually be able to do something.

[John Dibble]

A compromise doesn't mean selling out our principles, and it's not the same as conforming. The problem with many libertarians is that they must have it all or none, and guess what they get - none. Many big Ls refuse to hear anything about incrementalization. Well all at once isn't gonna happen. If a small move towards libertarian principles works out, people will be more likely to vote for more of them. We have to operate in the real world, we can't act like spoiled children and expect to have everything our way right away.

From the article I linked:

"Politics is the art of compromise, which is to say, the art of the possible. Politics is the means whereby we try to reconcile the competing interests of society in order to come to a generalized solution that is acceptable to the whole. To be successful at this reconciliation, one must be willing to compromise. Certainly, one can try to get as much of one's program enacted as possible, but, at the end of the day, you have to have a firm grasp on the sense of where the limits of possibility lie. In doing so you have to determine that accomplishing a little bit of something is better than accomplishing all of nothing."

[John Dibble]

Sorry, guys, the term has already been laid claimed to.

Screw them, we're taking it like leftists took the word liberal!

[John Dibble]

Well, the thing about Reagan was that he was in a position where he actually had the power to make radical changes. Don't think I wouldn't try to implement libertarian policies if I were in his position. But the LP isn't anywhere near that level - we don't have the kind of large scale political power that the two major parties do, and if we refuse to make compromises with outside groups things won't change at all. Politics is the art of the possible - we aren't in the position where radical change could be affected, but we are in a position where we could get others to compromise with us and thusly move towards our goals, if only incrementally. Principles are important, but implementing them is pretty much impossible without power.

[John Dibble]

I understand that we'd need to compromise, but why should we be the ones that fold rather than the Demopublicans compromising to our ideals?

I've already said it - they've got power, we don't. If we're ever in power, we would have to compromise less. I'm not saying we shouldn't work for compromises in our favor - that's actually what I want. For instance, we can do things like "Give us X and we won't oppose you for reelection" or "Give us Y and we'll allow Z". Compromise isn't giving up everything, compromise is about giving enough people something they want - it's never completely satisfies, but it's a good way of getting something done. Any compromise we make would still have a payoff for us, otherwise it's not a compromise, now is it?

[John Dibble]

If a compromise satisfies no one, then it is a good compromise.

You know, I've heard this quote before. A compromise never completely satisfies either side, but people must be at least partially satisfied otherwise the compromise is pointless.