Comments Elsewhere

IOZ: The problem is not that many libertarians are unwilling to consider the broader implications of their philosophy, but rather, that libertarianism is not a philosophy, not even a “political ideology,” as the more careful bet-hedgers might have it. … It is instead a lame, purely American third-party movement that sometimes appropriates the trappings of ideology in order to justify self-perpetuation in the face of a plurality-takes-all electoral system wholely inimical to minor parties.

That’s an interesting series of assertions about what libertarianism is and what it is not. Could you say a bit more about what all of it is based on?

Is this just your own personal stipulative definition of “libertarianism”? Is it supposed to be a definition that reflects common use? Is it supposed to be an account of what Kerry Howley is referring to when she calls what she believes in “libertarianism”? (If so, what’s your evidence that that’s what she means?) Is it supposed to be an account of what most libertarians, other than Kerry Howley, mean when they call what they believe in “libertarianism”? Or an account of what most people mean when they mention “libertarianism”? (In either case, if so, what’s your evidence that that is the sole common usage of the term among the population that you’re concerned with?)

I ask because you seem awfully sure that “libertarian” is more or less identical with “member of the Libertarian Party U.S.A.,” and “libertarianism” means nothing more than a libertarian’s partisan proclivities. Which is an odd position to take on a word that was first coined — by a Frenchman, not an American — 115 years before the U.S. Libertarian Party was ever founded,

Of course, there is such a thing as the Libertarian Party, and some people who identify themselves as libertarians (or Libertarians) support it. But there are also plenty of people who self-identify as libertarians who want nothing to do with it — either because they have problems with the organization as it is, or because they are opposed to all forms of participation in political parties or campaigns for government office. And there were, of course, a lot of people who took that position back when the Libertarian Party was being founded, and who have continued to take that position throughout its career of miserable electoral failures.

Of course, if you want to focus on one narrow meaning of “libertarianism” — your own personal stipulative definition, or one of the many meanings in common use, or whatever — you’re welcome to talk about any meaning of “libertarianism” you want to talk about. But why think that Kerry Howley is using the word in the same way that you are?