Talk:Libertarianism

Incoherent "history" section

This history section may need some bold restructuring, as it is currently an incoherent mess. Rather than providing a broad, chronological overview of the history of libertarianism, it's broken up into subsections that cover different wings of libertarian thought. So while it starts with its origins in classical liberalism during the 17th and 18th centuries, which is a fair enough introduction; it then has an "anarchism" section which focuses mostly on the French Revolution; then a "libertarian socialism" section, which stretches from the 1840s to the 1970s; then an "Individualist anarchism in the United States" section, which jumps back to the 1820s and goes on to 1900; then it moves on to an uncited, meandering and incoherent spiel about Geoism; then it finally ends with a section about libertarianism in the post-WWII United States.

This is less a section about the history of libertarianism than it is a random series of peeks at different subsects of libertarianism, with little-to-no connection between them. Perhaps some of this can be incorporated into a different section about the variants of libertarianism, but currently it makes for an ill-conceived history section. --Grnrchst (talk) 09:13, 7 June 2022 (UTC)

Issues with the article

@North8000: You've talked about how this article has some issues, including more of a focus on philosophy and practice. Are there any other issues with the article and if so, how can they be fixed? How can the article be fixed to reflect the ideology's implementations in practice alongside the philosophy? X-Editor (talk) 05:00, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

That's complicated question. Just quick shooting from the hip:

• Seek out material on current libertarian practice and current libertarian self-identification, current organizations, institutions & publication(s) and dramatically expand on that
• Reduce the coverage of specialized philosophies
• Make the lead be more a summary of the article.
• Try for more coherent organized writing in the larger more complex areas such as libertarianism in the US
• Increase simplified "overview" type coverage, especially of the dramatically different meanings of the terms on the two sides of the pond and the terms with equivalent meaning on the other side of the pond.

Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 12:36, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

@North8000: How would you make the lead more of a summary of the article? Otherwise, I think you've answered all my questions. X-Editor (talk) 16:20, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

In the end it would be a summary of the revised body of the article and so to some extent the problems/fixes are the same as for the body. But also right now it's too loaded with / dependent on obscure and/or questionable philosophical-strand terms, too focused on history and historical subjective "ownership" of terms (although history is important), too focused on obscure philosophy terms vs. common meanings of common libertarian terms. North8000 (talk) 17:02, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

Maybe the history section should be split off into its own article called History of Libertarianism once the history section is simplified, because simplifying would lose a lot of valuable content that should still be on Wikipedia. X-Editor (talk) 19:33, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

I agree that we don't want to lose anything that is in the article (except possibly commentary type stuff). But also note that I was only talking about the lead. Overall, I don't think that history takes up too much space in this article other than it needs some organizing / tightening up I think that obscure libertarian philosophies and related obscure terminology takes up too much space. Overabundance of such actually be a minus. I originally tried to learn libertarianism by learning those terms and a taxonomy of those terms and it took me many years to figure out that it was a waste of time.....that I was just trying to learn the obscure creations and created terms of individual philosophers. North8000 (talk) 19:59, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

I'd disagree with splitting the history section in its current state. The subsections titled "Anarchism" and "Individualist anarchism in the United States" literally don't mention the words "libertarian" or "libertarianism" a single time. These would be better off merged into their own respective articles (History of anarchism and Individualist anarchism in the United States), because it's currently unclear how they relate to the subject at all. Grnrchst (talk) 21:13, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

@Grnrchst: You're right, I've removed the sections. X-Editor (talk) 21:39, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

(per table below) I believe that that section IS relevant to the article but was too long / undue. I'm not sure what to do next. North8000 (talk) 23:28, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

@North8000: The geolibertarianism section in particular needs to be shortened a lot and needs actual sources. X-Editor (talk) 21:41, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

Cool. Evolution of the article is invited. But before anyone goes off the deep end we need to understand that we need to understand that we are speaking two different languages here about two different topics which have enough overlap that they need to be in the same article. Here is your translation table for the common meanings:

Vague description	US term	European term
Prioritizes freedom and minimization of government, not defined by complex philosophies	Libertarian	Liberal
More radical anti-government, more defined by complex philosophies	Anarchist, somewhat leftish	Libertarian

And, for our European friends, a major part of the meaning of "liberal" in the US includes favoring expansion of social programs and taxes to pay for them. So everybody, please recognize this and don't (based on terminologies) say that the other half of the article is all wrong.

North8000 (talk) 23:12, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

@North8000: It's not somewhat leftish, it's usually full on left-wing anarchist. Regardless, you did define the different terms very well, which will hopefully clear up confusion. X-Editor (talk)

Don't forget that I was using American-ese in that column!  :-) In American-ese, full left means being for expansion of governmental social programs and taxes to pay for them, and redistribution of wealth by the government.

I've been active at this article for almost 12 years, many of them as an attempted moderator. A pattern is that someone unaware of the two languages comes in and says that half the article is not about libertarianism. So I wrote the above to try to avoid that confusion. North8000 (talk) 01:08, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

@North8000: Sorry for misinterpreting what you were trying to say, although there are anti-state leftists in the US that want to solve these problems without the state, but you are right that other leftists want to use the state for that task. You should add that column to the Q&A section of the talk page, since it clears up a lot of confusion. X-Editor (talk) 05:57, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

My main focus was to avoid debates fueled by tower-of-babel misunderstandings. And second to acknowledge some main elements which exist which we need to keep in mind when improving this article. A subtle one is that in Europe it's more defined by detailed philosophies and in the US (where there are maybe 50,000,000 vague self-declared libertarians) it really isn't. I do realize that everything I wrote is a (hopefully useful) massive over generalization and thus wrong in many cases. . If you felt like it I'd be interested in knowing which side of the Atlantic you live on, but if not, "rather not" is a fine answer. I'm on the West side of the pond. North8000 (talk) 13:28, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

@North8000: I'm more familiar with US Libertarianism because people in the US are extremely outspoken about their politics. I also added info about an attempt to try US Libertarianism in the real world, but I'm not sure how many other in practice movements there are. X-Editor (talk) 18:53, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

@X-Editor: If you are curious the "libertarian" meaning that 20%-30% of Americans self identify as has a very short and vague meaning. It's sort of "place a higher priority on freedom" (including privacy as a means to that end.) And on "smaller and less intrusive government." And note the mere "place a higher priority on" and so a mild version of those advocacies. And most of them vote Republican and Democrat, not Libertarian party. Probably equivalent to someone in Europe saying that they are a liberal. North8000 (talk) 17:08, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

That's true X-Editor (talk) 04:40, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

North8000, although what you have provided is one definition of libertarianism, this would be a very different article if we used it. Every U.S. president from Washington to Hoover and ever Republican president from Reagan to Trump would be libertarians. For example in her book Roads to Dominion, p. 7, Sara Diamond writes, "Libertarianism, anticommunist militarism, and traditionalism have been the three pillars of the U.S. Right." Similar definitions were used by both social scientists and the founders of the modern conservative movement.

On the other hand, the term is used to refer more narrowly to the movement founded by Rothbard, Nolan and Hess, which drew on earlier libertarian movements, especially individualist anarchism. Rothbard distinguished his form of libertarianism by his emphasis on property ownership.

Libertarianism btw is not synonymous with liberalism. Hence French has three terms: libéralisme, libertairism and libertarianisme. The English term libertarianism is a translation of the French term libertairism, while the French term libertarianisme is a French translation of the English term libertarianism. Note the French article defines liberalism in the same way that the English article does, although it points out that the term is iused in different sense. Libertarianisme comes closest to the article North8000 suggests.

TFD (talk) 11:43, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

@The Four Deuces: I was not intending to create a new working definition for the term for the article, I was just trying to describe the most common meaning of the term in the US. But I disagree that that definition includes all of the people / presidents that you describe. The Nolan chart is probably the best decoder ring for the common meaning of the term in the US and IMO most or all of those presidents were in different corners of the chart than libertarianism. BTW I think that it is important recognize a 2nd tower of Babel between analysis by a European and US person. IMO a European would approach the topic as being mostly defined by history, taxonomy and well developed philosophies. A US person would tend to put extra weight on the common (vague) meaning of the term in the US. North8000 (talk) 17:14, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

• North: interesting and thoughtful proposal, but I think your first, second, 4th and 5th bullet points would result in a worse article. This article should remain more strictly about the philosophy, its schools of thought, and the discourse and debates among philosophers. Our coverage of libertarian schools of thought should be made more rigorous, and expanded, to match the example of our far-better Socialism article.

We should be careful to avoid treating philosophical libertarianism and American self-ascribed "libertarianism" as the same thing. U.S. Republicans are as "libertarian" as Obamacare is "socialist". No scholar thinks these politicians have much to do with the actual philosophy, except for a handful of Libertarian Party candidates. For example, why does this article talk at such length about the Tea Party, when scholars don't see it as libertarian? (See Brennan 2012) Sure, it has vague libertarian roots, but scholars dictate our coverage, not self-identification; the Tea Party doesn't deserve more than a few sentences, the rest is cruft (including irrelevant crap like mentioning that Trump praised the Tea Party).

Editors should be mindful to avoid rejiggering this article around what they're familiar with (U.S. domestic politics for most English Wikipedians). U.S. Republican talking points do not "define" libertarianism. Scholars and libertarian philosophers do, exclusively. Our already-excessive coverage of America only increase this article's WP:SYSTEMICBIAS and make it pointlessly more redundant with Libertarianism in the United States; that article should be WP:SUMMARYzed in a few paragraphs in a single section under "History".

For the structure, Socialism is a good model. The History section should be dedicated to attempts to implement the philosophy: politicians and governments deemed libertarian by scholars. The entire rest of the article should be about the philosophy itself, and based entirely on scholarship, not news orgs. "History" should also be reorganized to be more chronological, as others proposed. We should add "Social and political theory", "Economics", and "Politics" sections (the latter is about individual schools of thought, but again must be restricted to philosophers, not be redundant with "History"). What's in "Overview" (and most of History) should be spread out among those three sections. Thoughts appreciated. DFlhb (talk) 13:57, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

"talk at such length about the Tea Party, when scholars don't see it as libertarian" We already define the Tea Party movement as an American expression of right-wing populism. What does it have to do with libertarianism? These people did not care at all about civil rights. Dimadick (talk) 15:46, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

I do agree that the article should not focus on any one type of libertarianism. Also that the Tea party is only about 1/2 libertarian. Other that that I pretty much disagree with most of your post. "In practice" is immensely important. A scholar on a topic covers the topic. Most that you might be considering to be that might not be. Instead of covering the topic, they are more like philosophers creating or interpreting their own strands/meanings of the term. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 17:26, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

North8000, I'm still trying to understand what your definition of U.S. libertarianism is. It seems to describe the shared U.S. ideology, although they interpret it differently. Social conservatives claimed that morality laws do not infringe on freedom of choice, since immorality is not a real choice. U.S. liberals justified the welfare state and civil rights legislation on the basis that it empowered individual freedom. How far along a conservative or liberal pathway does one have to go before one is no longer a libertarian? It seems that only Rothbard & co. can claim no conservative and/or liberal traits, while democratic socialists are the only significant group that rejects its premises, at least in part. TFD (talk) 22:01, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

It varies a lot even in the US. Not only the definition, but even the degree to which it is defined. What runs through the most mathematically prevalent ones is short and vague....prioritizing freedom. The limit of the definition is pretty much the Nolan chart, and nothing beyond that. Fiscally conservative, and socially liberal (using the US definition of "liberal"). Sincerely,North8000 (talk) 02:03, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

The Nolan chart usually shows mainline parties in the upper right, left parties in the bottom left and libertarian parties in the bottom right. See for example "The US Presidential Election 2020" on the Political Compass website. Are you saying that libertarians are people who fall in the bottom right? That bascially limits it to Libertarian Party supporters. TFD (talk) 04:02, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

I know that you are one of the least biased and most objective editors I've worked with. But (especially if you live outside of the US) you might have the accidental bias of trying to understand the numerically large US libertarian phenomena in a framework of developed philosophies. The numerically large (20%+ of the population) has a very short vague definition given in my previous post, and for most of them it is nothing more specific than that, They know little or nothing about the US Libertarian Party and even those who do seldom vote for the USLP; they mostly vote for Democratic and Republican candidates. And of course there is the difference in meaning in terms across the pond. If you live in Europe, I think that the closest European word for the numerically large US libertarian phenomena folks would not be "libertarian" it would be "liberal", (which I assume is a big tent) which I think might illustrate the challenge of trying to define it as a specific developed philosophy.

Probably the distant-second most common "libertarian" in the US (my guess 1%-2% of the population) is one with a more developed philosophy along the lines of the USLP platform. Within that group there are varying degrees all the way from anarchists to very mild advocates.

Political scientists in the US describe common US libertarianism as classical liberalism or something evolved from it. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 23:19, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

Notable libertarians

We should have a section for notable Libertarians like Camille Paglia, Ben Shapiro, Dave Smith and many others both alive and dead Nlivataye (talk) 10:59, 28 October 2022 (UTC)

We already have a List of libertarians in the United States. Whether we also need an international list is another question. Dimadick (talk) 14:21, 28 October 2022 (UTC)

This article is badly lacking on "libertarianism in current practice" coverage. I think that prominent/significant instances of this with respect to individuals would be a good thing in that respect. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 16:16, 28 October 2022 (UTC)

But I think it's questionable to include Ben Shapiro. Even his self-description for that article (which includes "conservative on social issues") is basically conservative rather than libertarian. North8000 (talk) 16:22, 28 October 2022 (UTC)

@North8000: Wikipedia is influenced by the libertarian principle of spontaneous order according to Jimmy Wales[1], so I guess this website we're on would be an example of libertarianism in practice. X-Editor (talk) 17:29, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

Yes, I have seen Internet pages condemning Wikipedia as a libertarian mouthpiece. Dimadick (talk) 04:06, 5 November 2022 (UTC)

Lists are more appropriate for stub articles, where they should list only people who should be included in the article if it were complete. With a full article, important people should be mentioned in the article. A list of 50,000 to 2,000,000 notable American who could reasonably be described as libertarian is not useful.

There is also an issue of agreement on whom is libertarian, such as Ben Shapiro. TFD (talk) 05:52, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

Libertarian can be conservative or liberal but all agree on minimal government intervention, laisez Ferre capitalism and also gvt should not decide morality and decide between consenting adults either people find that ugly or not Nlivataye (talk) 07:47, 29 October 2022 (UTC)

Cool. In the US, conservative on social issues generally means in favor of governmental intervention. Most notably on abortion. But admittedly a conservative may argue that an unborn fetus is already a full human being and thus that governmental intervention government intervention is does not violate libertarianism. North8000 (talk) 01:59, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

I was under the impression that American conservatives favor police state policies and an increase on mass surveillance in the United States. Dimadick (talk) 10:42, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

Yes, that is somewhat true.North8000 (talk) 02:34, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

Whole page and related wiki stuff reads like an ideological campaign for someone's idiosyncratic politics

Needs a major clean up — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.29.166.232 (talk) 15:48, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

Could you elaborate on that point? X-Editor (talk) 00:24, 25 September 2022 (UTC)

The whole discussion that tries to shoehorn libertarian thought into a one dimensional axis is terrible. Human thought isn't as simple as left and right. Rjedgar (talk) 23:24, 1 November 2022 (UTC)

@Rjedgar The article does mention other forms of libertarian thought that aren't explicitly right or left wing, including libertarian paternalism, neo-libertarianism and libertarian populism. However, I can understand your point that the article might focus too much on the left-right divide. I think the reason this left-right divide was created was to distinguish between more socialist and anti-capitalist libertarians and more pro-capitalist libertarians. If you have any suggestions on how to fix this problem, please share them with me. X-Editor (talk) 01:04, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

Pinging @North8000: to this discussion X-Editor (talk) 01:05, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

I do reject the right and left libertarian terminology attempts to divide along those lines, and think that those two articles should be reduced to short articles on those terms. But I don't see where this article has that problem. North8000 (talk) 18:53, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

You all DO realize that libertarianism in and of itself is an asinine, poorly reasoned, vague and nebulous conception, dont you? Libertarianism is nonsensical from the get go, which is why its difficult to write any coherent descriptions about it. The libertarians cannot even decide what libertarianism is, by enumerating specific tenets and values, and by designing a functional system. Everything is so abstract all the time to the point of vagueness. And idealistic, as well, akin to the socialists utopian ideal; just as delusional and idealistic, merely occupying a different political space. Whenever one libertarian decides a policy is too libertarian, others in his ilk will naturally think him an authoritarian. And the push for ever more libertarianism at the expense of the ejection of prior proponents who are now too authoritarian by comparison is inevitable, precisely because no limits are defined. Simply put, libertarianism is, or will inevitably lead to, anarchism. The typical libertarian, though, is too strung out on pot to ever realize it, and has his mind set on a fantasy world. If you truly simply want less government involvement, but still appreciate the need for the rule of law and for society to set standards of conduct, well then, welcome to the conservative movement and let me introduce you to the tenth amendment. 50.34.32.46 (talk) 03:21, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

 32 Fernandez, Frank (2001). Cuban Anarchism. The History of a Movement. Sharp Press.  not a reliable source, and should be deleted

Taking a look at the book and pages in question, Fernandez gives no citations or sources for what he writes, Seeming to be an opinion piece. Contradicted by facts that are properly sourced here.

Looking at Letters of H. L. Mencken, H.L. Mencken was using the word to describe himself at least as early as the 1940s, I wish there was a source or citation explaining why he began to use it. (Current sentence seems to imply active intent in Co-Opting it, Rothbard source could be interpreted as it being a happy{for them} coincidence) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 182.158.83.164 (talk) 18:15, 13 December 2022 (UTC)