I think this is one of the major intellectual stories of the last decade, largely uncovered by the media.
How does a libertarian become a nationalist? Trump sure seems to facillitate "USA pride" but his politics and economics are not that libertarian at all. How can nationalistic pride win over what I thought was the center of the libertarian philosophy?
An internally libertarian society with strong immigration control solves this problem and would be called "nationalist" by most traditional libertarians.
With the caveat that most Xs are not open, thus no contradiction by closing society X. So only libertarianism suffers from this contradiction.
This is one critique that has been made and is of course debatable. It's important to not simply evaluate a political ideology by its tenets, but also the demographics of its supporters, to understand the "culture" that grows around a belief system. We often do the same to religions, after all.
Yeah, but its a product of the right/authoritarian side of the libertarians.
The left-leaning libertarians who tactically vote Democrat are fine with safety nets:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/7/17/1314751/-13-Tenets-o...
Right-libertarians in the US already generally were nationalists (nationalism is a very common, if not defining, element of the right-wing orientation), and generally had the least opposition for government action in the same areas where authoritarian nationalists tend to focus on preferring government action, which is why lots of right-libertarians have always been within the Republican fold rather than voting for the Libertarian Party.
A lot of his recent statements have come across as major disappointments to core libertarians.
Such as his support of Hillary over her emails, reluctance to audit the fed, support for basic income and his VP pick which is seen as purely establishment.
However, a lot of libertarians follow a non aggression principle, which says you can't use force or violence against anyone except to protect their liberty.
Basic income isn't compatible with that principle in that you will have to extract that resource by force from other people violating their property rights.
One thing that I've never really understood is why the valley apparently leans so far left. On its face, the sorts of policies that the left tends to advocate for would run counter to the things that Silicon Valley stands for: higher taxes, more regulation of businesses, more intervention in housing markets, higher marginal tax rates on "the rich" (AKA a middle class salary here) etc.
I assume that those who vote on the left either feel there are more important issues at stake, that those aren't really things the left stands for, or have enough money that it doesn't matter... would be curious to hear someone explain their reasoning, though.
> higher taxes
I'm fine with higher taxes for some purposes. As a fairly high income earner, my tax bill hurts quite a bit. Still, when I was a kid I had a single mom. She had to go on welfare for a little while, and it was rough on her. I think it's the first time I ever saw her cry.
Obviously there are some people who abuse the system, but I feel like we have to keep providing anyway. The money that we collected for those few months kept us from being homeless. I like to think it as an investment in my future by the tax payers. I've paid more in now than I took, so it worked out.
> more regulation of businesses
Not always a good thing, but I can get behind some regulations. I think the repeal of Glass-Steagall was probably a mistake (thanks, Bill), and likely contributed to the 2008 bubble burst. Things like the FDA, and OSHA seem like examples of good regulation. They're certainly imperfect, and have made mistakes. On the whole though, I think they've been a net positive.
> more intervention in housing markets
Not much of an opinion on this one.
> higher marginal tax rates on "the rich" (AKA a middle class salary here) etc.
Hillary's plan calls for a 4% tax hike on incomes over $5 million. Software developer salary is pretty good, but I don't think anyone's salary is that high.
Because Peter Thiel, among others, are largely operating on a hybrid ideology with the pillars of Nativism/Nationalism & Libertarianism.
Gary Johnson is pretty much a pure in the middle of the right/left axis among the range that is called "Libertarian". He is too left-leaning for many of the people that call themselves Libertarian but want to be able to enforce their beliefs on other people.
Is there not a more contradictory thing to say? I don't know how libertarians are okay with others using their moniker for something that doesn't seem libertarian.
Its doublethink, yes.
Thiel publicly proclaims he is a libertarian but his genuine, underlying belief is he can change the world and enforce his beliefs upon it.
This is pretty much the antithesis of Gary Johnson who is very much the live and let live libertarian.
http://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/education...
> I remain committed to the faith of my teenage years: to authentic human freedom as a precondition for the highest good. I stand against confiscatory taxes, totalitarian collectives, and the ideology of the inevitability of the death of every individual. For all these reasons, I still call myself “libertarian.”
> But I must confess that over the last two decades, I have changed radically on the question of how to achieve these goals. Most importantly, I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible. By tracing out the development of my thinking, I hope to frame some of the challenges faced by all classical liberals today.
> He is now not so much a libertarian as a corporate Nietzschean, who believes in the power of gifted entrepreneurs to change the world through the sheer force of will and intellect.