I am from the UK but have always known far more about US politics. I was thinking the other day who my favourite prime minister was, but couldn’t think of any I didn’t want to punch in the face. any ideas?
Henry 2
please nobody say Margaret Thatcher, please nobody say Margaret Thatcher, please nobody say Margaret Thatcher
Lord Salisbury?
Yes, many Liberals will disagree with this choice, considering he was a Conservative Party leader and had some occasional deviations from laissez faire.
However, Liberal prime ministers and statesmen have often been pro-democracy.
Lord Salisbury was among those who rightly believed that democracy would allow debtors to outvote creditors since the former outnumber the latter. The taxpayers would diminish in numbers and taxreceivers (in civil service and elsewhere) would increase. Liberal belief that democracy would not lead to increase in state power was pure fantasy.
Gladstone. He was better than Gascoyne-Cecil, more domestically liberal, more laissez-faire and he supported home rule for the Irish.
He bombarded Alexandria which was LAME, but overall that was a pretty minor event.
Lord Acton said he considered Gladstone one of the three greatest liberals (with Burke and Macaulay) and I am inclined to agree so far as English politicians go. Macaulay was never PM, but he served as the Minister of War and argued that copyright was a government granted monopoly.
n 1909 the Liberal Chancellor David Lloyd George introduced his “People’s Budget”, the first budget which aimed to redistribute wealth. The Liberal statesman Lord Rosebery commented on what Gladstone would make of this budget:
This Budget is introduced as a Liberal measure. If so, all I can say is, it is a new Liberalism, and not the one that I have known and practised under more illustrious auspices than these, under one who was not merely the greatest Liberal but the greatest financier that this country has ever known — I mean Mr. Gladstone… Gladstone ranks as the great financial authority of our country… Mr. Gladstone would be 100 in December if he were alive, but, centenarian as he would be, I am inclined to think that he would make very short work of the deputation of the Cabinet that waited on him with this measure, and that they would soon find themselves on the stairs, if not in the street. Because in his eyes, and in my eyes, too, as his humble disciple, Liberalism and Liberty were cognate terms; they were twin-sisters.
This discussion got me thinking.
British Liberals used to be much different from today’s Liberals. The general image, among even Mises.Org posters, of a modern day opponent of increase in state power is a little less respectable - the arrogant, petulant young man who uses strong loaded language beyond reasonable limits, to the point of calling his opponents socialists and fascists. When cartoonist Barry Deutsch’s “Types of Libertarian” was posted, everybody from LibertyStudent to MaikU laughed and said it was exactly right.
On the other hand, men like Burke, Macaulay, Gladstone, Acton, Gascoyne-Cecil, George,.etc were different. Many British Liberal statesmen spoke multiple languages from French to German to Italian altogether. They could read old Latin and Greek works in the original language. They were less concerned with trying to organize society and spent more time on reading history, poetry, and good literature. They were more thoughtful and reflective and could withdraw from immediate issues of the day to take a look at the bigger picture. They had excellent command of language and believed in serious, specific language, without using dirty labels and insinuations.
I ask - why aren’t today’s Liberals of the same high standards as them? Why is it that the CPAC group of Ron Paul supporters were characterized as rude and obnoxious? Why was Rand Paul followed around by a thug and a bully who beat a woman so badly? I think there is a good case to be made for today’s libertarians to withdraw from the political process for now and spend some time raising their standards. Refine oneself and be half as intellectually enlightened as Burke and Acton. Less of shouting slogans with placards and more of debating opponents with respect and dignity afforded to them.
Because classical liberals were a much more conventional social view as well as being culturally/politically more mainstream. Libertarianism is more extreme and more fringe and thus it tends to attract a lot of losers and fringer nuts.
Sure sure.
Many will rightly point out that progressivism has little to do with racism. Yet, earliest progressives in the late 19th century were strongly racist, and while they had empathy for the poor, some like George Bernard Shaw believed that it was better to kill the poor to raise the standards of human society. Progressivism as a fringe movement attracted general malcontents and sociopaths in its early days. By the 1970s, the racist wing must have been completely eliminated.
Now, while I do feel that childish tactics of guilt-by-association have done little to show today’s minimal state or anti-activist-state proponents as racists or violent radicals, the job has been made much easier. Joseph Sobran once made the mistake of speaking at the Institute for Historical Review, and he reasoned that it did not matter since he was no more a leftist for having leftist friends than he was a Nazi for speaking at IHR. All the same, it killed his reputation (unfairly). Newspaper obituaries for him smeared him as a racist anti-Semitic libertarian.
I ask - why aren’t today’s Liberals of the same high standards as them? Why is it that the CPAC group of Ron Paul supporters were characterized as rude and obnoxious?
I would recomend reading the chapters in Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy that deals with the rather sensible sociology of the bourgoise and why it is doomed to failure and dramatically undermined. I have yet to come across a better assesment of the situation.
As for libertarianism, it is too fringe and related to the system that undermined the “bourgoise sociology” to begin with; which is why I am not to fond of associating myself with the term, even though I would probably fall in that catagory (or “market anarchist”, or whatever; besides I hate all those pretentious pseudo-intellectual words anyway).
William, you are a kindred spirit.
I also do not like words, I avoid them, and simply say I am not a political person at all if anybody asks. Which is partly true, because the market is beyond all politics.
When I first heard about the early stages of the whole Tea Party movement and Glenn Beck in America, I realized it was time to stop calling oneself libertarian. I also started feeling the same way, when I saw that LRC got way too crazy and loaded far too much on cranks and contrarian articles and when I saw that the most visible champions of markets today are Drew Carey and Kane. The time for dissociation was long past due.
Thankfully, no one really calls them libertarian. Just conservative, right-wing, nuts, and the occasional “fascist.” On MSNBC and Jon Stewart, anyway. Day-to-day conversations rarely include politics for me.
Ron Paul is probably the face of libertarianism right now.
When I first heard about the early stages of the whole Tea Party movement and Glenn Beck in America, I realized it was time to stop calling oneself libertarian. I also started feeling the same way, when I saw that LRC got way too crazy and loaded far too much on cranks and contrarian articles and when I saw that the most visible champions of markets today are Drew Carey and Kane. The time for dissociation was long past due.
Heh. I don’t care. I say ‘anarchist’, ‘libertarian’ and ‘capitalism’; and if someone doesn’t know what I mean they can ask me.
Gladstone. Thatcher comes in second but may win due to testicular fortitude.
Ditto. I ripped out all of the keys from my keyboard.
lol. ‘I don’t like labels, because clear communication is for tools!’
George Orwell himself once said that words in politics had deteriorated all serious discussion. It was now words instead of specific concrete ideas that mattered.