Meh... as a Libertarian, I'd be disinclined to attend this, just because it seems to be perpetuating the myth that Libertarians are somehow innately more aligned with Conservatives than Liberals. In reality, Libertarians agree with Liberals on many things, and disagree with them on many, and likewise for Conservatives. And, IMO, the modern Libertarian mindset is a natural successor to the Classical Liberal mindset and is the actual modern Liberalism.

I, for one, certainly do not self-identify as a Conservative in any way, shape, form or fashion.

"Libertarian" is sometimes the refuge of "I'm a conservative but don't want to endorse all Republicans"-people.

It's also sometimes the refuge of "I'm a liberal but I know some economics." :-)

I think small l libertarians see liberals as supporters of both empire building and social welfare, so they'd align themselves with the lesser of two evils.

And we tend to see conservatives of supporters of both empire building and attacks on civil liberties. In no way clearly the lesser of two evils.

I would greatly disagree. Non-establishment repubs are not into empire building or attacking civil liberties and are clearly closer to libertarianism than the modern democrat. But both parties, overall, are mostly made up of establishment FDR progressives. At that point the D or the R is irrelevant.

ditto

The naming was a bit jarring to me since "Lincoln Lab" is MIT's massive off-campus, DoD-funded research complex.

Lincoln seems like an odd choice for a libertarian role model. He suspended habeas corpus and expropriated the Southerners' private property (their slaves, plantations, etc). If he hadn't been assasinated, all of that plantation land would have likely have been divied up among the former slaves. Spreading the wealth, the horror!

I don't think any libertarian would consider slaves as private property.

Fair enough. What about the plantation land? Fair game for redistribution to the slaves, or would that be a violation of the plantation owners' property rights?

You, just like everyone else, would have no clue as to what might have happened if President Lincoln were to have not been murdered. For all we know he would have given it back or more likely sold it off to pay for the war debt.

Never mind the fact that President Lincoln was the first Republican president and that that might have something to do with it.

I'd be interested in hearing from a hacker planning on attending this conference, their rationale?

Judging by the "WHO" and "WHAT" halfway down the site, they are looking for the answer to this: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/11/when-t...

I heard a talk by this group saying they were the answer.

http://www.parabellumlabs.com/

Just curious, but are things so tilted to the left here on HN that supporting a different political view/platform needs to be justified somehow?

I don't know, but HN has clearly begun to skew more and more to the "left" (in the modern, American sense of the term) over the past few years. I'd say it's been really marked over about the past 2 years. Why that is, is hard to say.

While it doesn't explain why, the observation of Robert Conquest's 2nd Law of Politics does seem to be correct: "Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing."