Oh shit! Apparently, I'm not really a Libertarian after all....

... at least to Mother Jones.

Josh Harkinson has an interesting article on the Ron Paul phenomenon, Pauls' Apostles in the latest issue. It's an interesting read.

What captured my attention was the inset (unfortunately NOT duplicated in the on-line version) designed to bring the uninitiated up to speed on the varieties of Libertarian Theology:

Libertarianism might be a simple ideology, an aversion to big government in all its forms, but don't tell that to Libertarians....

Anarcho-Capitalists: The most radical of the lot, they want to abolish government entirely (though, unlike regular anarchists, the do support private property rights)....

Minarchists: Archrivals to the anarcho-capitalists, they support a minimalist view of government: Let the state handle roads, policing, and defense--but nothing more....

Cosmopolitan Libertarians: Term used by the minarchist editors of Reason to describe their embrace of world citizenship and deride rivals as hayseeds.

Economic Libertarians: Worship free-market absolutists like Milton Friedman.

Hippie Libertarians: Worship freedom-loving freaks like Larry Flynt.

Religious Libertarians: Worship deities of their choosing, care about politics primarily as it affects religious freedom....

Gold Bugs: Advocate a return to the gold standard, or some equivalent, as a way to diminish the fiscal powers of the state....

Objectivists: Followers of the philosopher Ayn Rand who love morality tales, hate anarchy, and endorse a scorched-earth foreign policy....

Neolibertarians: Libertarian neo-cons; big supporters of the Iraqi War.

Paleolibertarians: Old-schoolers who despise the neolibertarians for selling out to the system. Also think atheism is overrated.

Technolibertarians: Extropians, transhumanists, sci-fi fans, they strive to transcend humanity's meat-puppet limitations and take self-determination to the final frontier.

South Park Conservatives: Find their politics articulated in a show created by two avowed libertarians; a seminal episode follows a race for school mascot between a giant douche and a turd sandwich. Which, says Reason's Gillespie, "pretty much sums up who most libertarians approach politics."

Paultards: Blogosphere dis for those who annoy the online masses by relentlessly shilling for their man....

Problem: I don't appear to be in there. Nor do any other Pragmatic Libertarians like futurist and science fiction author David Brin, who is also a member of the Libertarian Reform Caucus.

Maybe that's why so many people in the Delaware blogosphere had a problem with me when I started this blog.

Mom always told me I was weird.

Moral of the story: most of the time, when people provide you with long lists of definitions for groups they don't belong to, you really shouldn't accept it as definitive.

A Libertarian Martin Luther King Jr. Day post

In which we travel into interesting waters . . . (for a fairly long trip, so be prepared) Dr. King's 1968 book, Where do we go from here: chaos or community? , is profound in that it criticizes anti-poverty programs for their piecemeal approach, as John Schlosberg of the Center for a Stateless Society [C4SS] observes: King noted that the antipoverty programs of the time “proceeded from a premise that poverty is a consequence of multiple evils,” with separate programs each dedicated to individual issues such as education and housing. Though in his view “none of these remedies in itself is unsound,” they “all have a fatal disadvantage” of being “piecemeal,” with their implementation having “fluctuated at the whims of legislative bodies” or been “entangled in bureaucratic stalling.” The result is that “fragmentary and spasmodic reforms have failed to reach down to the profoundest needs of the poor.” Such single-issue approaches also have “another common failing — ...

Libertarian National Committee Deathwatch Part 1

As the LNC continues to lurch towards collapse, with the latest news of mass layoffs at HQ, I've decided to begin tracking those things leading the national party to irrelevance, even as state and local parties gain power. As news, rumors and rhetoric break out, I shall chronicle them in this ongoing series at Delaware Libertarian. Organizations approaching failure have a number of characteristics. One of the most striking is renunciation of their purpose and effort to reinvent themselves as a "me-too" provider of services in the marketplace. In this, the LNC has been on a collision course with destiny for a while now. Recently, for example, it hired Republican Party web site developer TerraEclipse to redesign the LNC web site . Terra created a web site very similar to those of the clients it brags most about -- far-right Republican conservatives like Tom McClintock and BJ Lawson. A quick look at the web site they built for the LNC is instructive. The tagline on the ...

The disturbing decline of the Delaware blogosphere: a very unfortunate Around the Horn (even if it's not Friday)

I've noticed a change in my own blog-checking habits over the past several weeks, and I don't know if it's just me or the reality of the last month of a divisive political campaign. I automatically used to check out Delawareliberal first and several times a day, because it was where I could find edgy, thought-provoking, and (dare I say it) funny banter going on. These days visit several other spots first, and my visits to DL are both shorter and less engaged. Why? Because the combination of invading neo-con commenters with the stridency of some of the major contributors has led to such pleasant exchanges as a post dedicated to labeling another blogger racist by donviti, whose own sense of provocative humor is generally so far out there that he makes John Belushi doing Samurai bartender on the SNL look positively pro-Asian. Or I can find Delawaredem and jason periodically spewing the idea that anybody who is not a liberal or progressive Democrat is somehow a non-American,...

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