Super quick comments: I greatly appreciate your nuanced coverage of
Milei. Agree his positions are very largely libertarian, and I’m
thrilled that freedom may get a better chance in Argentina because of
his movement. (Anyone who supports anarcho-capitalism is arguably a
highly evolved libertarian.) He also sounds highly pragmatic in his
approach to increasing freedom, which some libertarians are not.
(Argentina’s most major problems are economic, and hyperinflation is
its most major economic problem. Legalizing and formalizing the black
market use of Dollars is intelligent, practical, principled,
realistic, beneficial, etc. The Peso is broken, and it’s the people
who suffer badly every day. I’m not a Dollar hawk, but it’s vastly
better than the Peso.)
A major error in media coverage of libertarianism is exactly the flaw
you mention of trying to lump it into left or right wing when in fact
it’s neither. This is the error that Dave Nolan tried to correct by
educating with his chart.
In other words many people (including in the media) are not aware of
the statist/libertarian axis on the Nolan chart and incorrectly place
libertarianism in the left or right. It’s like two dimensional
creatures living in a flat plane world who cannot perceive a third
dimension (height). The ignorance leads to error and cognitive
dissonance.
Unfortunately Wikipedia is dominated by leftists, like most social
media, and sort of fails as an objective keeper of facts. That
includes its editors, unfortunately.
I applaud efforts to correct it, however futile.
In Liberty,
Jeff C.
···
On Sun, 2023-11-26 at 14:39 -0800, Starchild wrote:
Leading up to, and in the wake of Javier Milei’s historicand exciting victory in Argentina (we now have the world’s first
openly libertarian head of state, and in a major country!), I’ve
noticed a significant trend in the media, on social media, and
elsewhere, of people trying to mislabel him and his party – the
Libertarian Party of Argentina, or Partido Libertario in Spanish –
and the La Libertad Avanza (Liberty Advances) coalition of which
they are part, as “right wing” or even “far right” or
“ultraconservative".There may be some justification for characterizing thebroader coalition as right-wing or conservative – my best
understanding is that the other four parties allied with Partido
Libertario, including the one with the most seats in the Argentine
Congress, are more conservative – but it would still be remiss even
in this case to ignore the libertarian aspects of its character,
given both the name and Milei’s role as head of the coalition. He is
a self-identified anarcho-capitalist, and while he does have some
personal views that may be seen as leaning conservative, such as
being pro-life on abortion, I’ve seen no evidence that he favors a
statist approach toward such issues. The most troubling thing I’ve
seen or heard is Milei and his surrogates making favorable comments
about right-wing individuals like Donald Trump and former Brazilian
president Jair Bolsonaro.I believe it is of critical importance for the libertarianmovement that we seek to correct the record, and make it clear that
libertarian is libertarian. To the extent Milei, his party, or his
coalition may “go off the rails” and embrace statist policies, they
should of course be called out (or called in where possible) on this
by libertarians, and those specific policies or actions labeled as
right-wing, statist, and/or left-wing depending which label(s) seem
to fit. But the branding of genuinely libertarian views and the
people who hold them as right-wing is incredibly damaging to the
worldwide freedom movement. For us to succeed, it is vital that
people understand libertarianism isn’t just part of the same-old
left-right paradigm, but something genuinely different – if not
exactly new under the sun, nevertheless new to most political
observers for whom it may have been off the radar up until now, but
is increasingly likely to be on their radar. Otherwise we are likely
to be politically marginalized so as to appeal mainly if not
exclusively to people on the right, so that the movement over time
loses its libertarian character, as well as (inevitably) becoming
dominated by separate and opposing left-wing and right-wing factions
rather than being broadly united for liberty despite “internal”
differences.One area I’ve been trying to fight back against this (oftendeliberate) mislabeling is on Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia.
For instance, people keep changing the Libertarian Party of
Argentina’s page –
Libertarian Party (Argentina) - Wikipedia – to
characterize the party as right-wing. After multiple efforts to push
back against this, I just got a notice today from a Wikipedia bot
that I’ve been blocked from editing the page for 24 hours.
Unfortunately some of the bad edits are currently in place. If you
use Wikipedia, and can go and fix some of these references, I think
you’ll be doing our cause a service. You can also comment, as I and
a couple others have, on the article’s “Talk” page (for discussing
edits to the article).Becoming truly proficient at editing Wikipedia is a learningcurve, and I’m still by no means an expert, but the basics are
fairly simple. You don’t even need an account, or have to sign in,
to start editing. If you’d like to get started and don’t have a
clue, please feel free to call me at the number below and I can walk
you through it a bit. If you are a Wikipedia editor, especially a
knowledgeable one, I’d love to hear from you. Usually when my edits
are reverted (the quickest way of undoing someone else’s changes) I
just let it go or wait and try again later, but I know there are
more effective actions one can take to not be overruled, if one is
familiar with the site’s editing and governance rules and policies.
I encourage folks to go and do what you can there,Love & Liberty,
((( starchild )))