[extropy-chat] Authenticity, extropy, libertarianism, and history

[Damien Sullivan]

On Wed, Jul 13, 2005 at 07:01:15AM -0500, Max More wrote:

> often called themselves "classical liberals". It used to be
> simply "liberals" but the Liberal Party muddied the original
> meaning over the course of the 20th century. In the original sense, Adam
> Smith was certainly a liberal.<br><br>

Heck, Milton Friedman, in the introduction to his 1963 _Capitalism and
Freedom_, called himself liberal, refusing to surrender the term to creeping
socialists, or to retreat to new senses of 'conservative'[1] or 'libertarian'.

I remember one days where I read something in the Nation, using 'liberal' in
some fairly leftist sense, perhaps protectionist, and then I read Business
Week, taking about liberalization of world trade, meaning the opposite from
waht the Nation did.

Heck, I suspect people at the Economist consider themselves liberal, again in
this sense of being market-friendly, not wanting a Big State, but not being
hostile to a state providing real public goods and providing good regulation
of markets.  Which to me seems compatible with a moderate libertarian.

-xx- Damien X-)