Libertarian UK Launch Drinks
Last nigh I went along to the launch drinks of Libertarian UK.
Libertarian UK was put together by Chris Mounsey who is better known as Devil’s Kitchen.
The aim is to provide a place for libertarians (aka liberals) to discuss policy and ideas with the aim of promoting libertarian, anti-authoritarian, liberty based ideas and promoting policies which may be accepted by a more mainstream audience.
The evening was great fun, although I felt a bit out of place being the only Liberal Democrat. For some reason, libertarianism is dominated by Tories and the LibDems have a very bad reputation as being socialists, high taxers and big state interventionists, although The Croydonian was very reasoned and defending those of us in the LibDems who are liberals and the LibDem record on civil liberties.
Libertarian UK is looking for people to write articles for the blog, so if you have any ideas I’m sure they’ll be welcomed. We could also show them that the LibDems aren’t just a bunch of leftist, tax and spend nannies.
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June 29th, 2007 at 9:51 am
Kind of you to say so. I think it is far more sensible to focus on what we agree on rather than engage in ideological witch hunts.
June 29th, 2007 at 7:29 pm
Perhaps I’m being obtuse (it happens) but do you know why the Writers page uses the term:
“Right Libertarians”
?
June 30th, 2007 at 8:48 pm
There’s a tendancy to view two different types of libertarian and call them left and right.
‘Right’ libertarians are capitalists - ie they are free market capitalists.
‘Left’ libertarians are in some way anti-capitalist. They sometimes call themselves mutualists or ‘free market anti-capitalists’.
I’m not too sure how that works, but they tend to like mutual associations, friendly societies etc. I think that’s part of libertarianism if people wish to so I don’t really make a distinction.
Listening to DK talk at the launch, he refered to people who are civil libertarians but not economic libertarians as left libertarians which is probably what is meant there. I wouldn’t call such people libertarians, but they’re allies on those issues.
July 2nd, 2007 at 4:37 pm
The term “libertarian” is used in some countries (Germany and Spain for instance) by anarcho-socialists.
But to make it more confusing, in the United States the term “Left libertarian” is sometimes used of the anarcho-capitalists, while “Right libertarian” is used of libertarians supporting a night-watchman state (also called “minarchists” by the anarcho-capitalists).