Thomas wrote:Suppose that, for some unlikely reason, some government would heed the advice in Mill's essay On Liberty. Suppose it abolished expanded free-speech laws to legalize holocaust denial, allowed consenting grown-ups to enter polygamous marriages, established free trade in opium, privatized the schools, and so forth. How would a typical speaker of French, German, Italian or Spanish categorize this set of policies? For one thing, the speaker would most likely categorize it as "nutty", for continental Europeans tend to trust their governments more than the English, Americans, and other peoples with Anglo-Saxon traditions. Also, more pertinently to our disagreement, all of the speakers would categorize these policies as "liberal" or "neoliberal". (For everyday policy discussions, both words mean the same; "neoliberal" is the buzzier buzzword though.)
I don't expect you, Setanta, to take my word for any of this. You are therefore welcome to cross-check with other native speakers of European languages such as nimh, Walter, or Francis.
Of course. What you say here is common place for anyone acquainted with current European political culture. No reason to expect people elsewhere to necessarily be so, but yes, they can certainly take your word on this.
Setanta wrote:I think you have some idealistic notion of what it means to be libertarian, and that you confuse this with liberalism. Two different critters.
Set, what in most of Europe (with the exception of the UK) is called "liberal" is a lot more like what you call "libertarian" in the US than what you call "liberal" there.
Thomas would be considered a typical, if somewhat dogmatic, liberal in Holland, Germany, France, Scandinavia, Belgium, Switzerland, etc.
The Mediterranean countries do not really seem to have such an explicitly labelled, strong "liberal" current, but even there, if one would for example identify which main party in Italy is the most liberal, one would say Berlusconi's Forza Italia - not his social-democratic opponents who have so much in common with America's liberals.
The Central/East-European liberal political current, too, nowadays tends to combine its centrist intellectual tradition of enlightenment on cultural issues with this ardent capitalist/free market beliefs on the economy that Thomas describes and personifies.
When you define liberalism and libertarianism as two different critters, you are talking from a (North-)American perspective. In Europe, hardly anyone ever uses the term "libertarianism", since we already call the free-market/anti-regulation ideology liberal. The difference between them would here merely be seen as one of degree - US libertarians would be seen as radical liberals (radical-borderline-insane, that is).
For example: take the flat tax rate. Out with the redistributive principle of tax rates that go higher the richer you are - a "flat tax" instead. That is what we in Europe would call a very liberal idea, a typically liberal wish. From Slovakia to Holland and Germany, it has therefore also been liberal parties that have begun to pioneer the idea: in Holland the VVD, in Germany the FDP, and in Slovakia the small Democratic Party, which later merged into the SKDU - which did indeed implement the flat tax when it became the governing party.
Most everywhere in Europe - again with the striking exception of the UK - it's the liberals who advocate for lowering, cutting and abolishing taxes. In the US, of course, liberals would be the people who'd
oppose something like a flat tax.
(The UK Liberal Democrats are really a case of their own. They have very much been what you in the US would call typically liberal - even boldly advocating for a tax
increase. But make no mistake, the party has a libertarian wing too, and it has been winning distinct influence - amongst other ways, by calling on the party to adhere to a more truly "liberal" - ie, free market, individualist - economic vision).