Why libertarians are not conservatives

21. March 2010 by admin.

One of the Seattle’s silly quirks is that if you’re a conservative, people will often think you’re a libertarian, and libertarians oftentimes consider themselves to be conservatives.  From what I can tell, this confusion comes from Seattle’s (and the Left’s) strong record of vicious fighting against social conservatism, which makes conservatives terrified about taking social stances in public, which leads to something similar to libertarianism (as libertarianism is a combination between liberalism’s severely limited control upon sexual/substance morality and conservatism’s supposedly lax business standards).  But even beside differences in social liberalism, it’s easy to see that libertarianism and conservatism are irreconcilably different in too many ways to even consider them similar. 

Because of these differences and the fact that libertarianism seems to be gaining serious ground in the Republican party, our knowledge about the two governmental philosophies is absolutely essential: we must be clear about what we want, and what we mean when we use words like “conservative.”  So for my many wonderful libertarian friends who think they’re conservative, and my other friends who think I’m a libertarian, here is a quick primer on the philosophical differences between the two. Read the rest of this entry »

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