Are Libertarians the only ones that are truly for smaller government?

I am a liberal, so I don't agree with all of the libertarian platform. But as an outsider viewing in, it seems to me that Libertarians are, in general, the only ones that are truly in favor of an all around smaller government.

Liberals, like myself, identify with the Libertarian position on less government intrusion on social, personal matters and generally agree with their position on national security. But obviously where we differ is economic policy. Liberals generally want a little more government control when it comes to the economy and business regulation and so on and so forth.

Republican/neocon type conservatives claim to want smaller government. But it seems to me that they still want a big government telling people who they can marry, what drugs they can use, what they can look at on the internet (in the case of Rick Santorum) and they generally support a huge military and a huge USA military presence practically everywhere (what some would call, our empire).

It seems to me that Libertarians are the only ones that truly want little government intervention economically, socially and militarily.

This isn't to try and start a flame war or anything. This is just an observation I've made. I think it's a pretty fair assessment but I wanted to see what you think of it?

 

This is what gets me with libs.......A strong Military, support of the 2,000 year tradition of Marriage, Drug Control, and Rick Santorum = Big Government.

.......But a Government that controls our education--health care--paycheck--retirement.....isnt............
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Who said it isn't? Like I said, liberals are generally not shy about their support for a stronger government presence in economic policy.

 

The Democrat Party will not stop until it controls every aspect of our country, economy, and society......

........if you somehow equate that with Freedom or Liberty......

......then keep voting Democrat.
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I'm talking about political ideologies, not parties. Learn the difference. A liberal casting their vote for the democratic party at this point is just trying to vote for the lesser of two evils.

 

Your correct, right now libertarian conservatives are the only ones proposing a smaller government while social conservatives and liberals just want to waist money differently.

 

Clearly.....thats why Liberals primaried Obama......thats why Liberals created their own Tea Party.......

....oh wait....
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That's why this country is in the mess it is today.

 

That may very well be. I am still undecided as to who I am voting for personally.

 

What?...

Liberals voted for Obama because he seemed liberal when he was running, but they were wrong. I don't know what you are talking about.

And isn't the OWS the liberal version of the tea party? In some ways at least.

 

It might end up a hard choice for you, since they're pretty much both the same.

 

The hugest military on the planet by a factor of eight, unconstitutional financial support for a religious establishment, telling people that they have no right to self-medication and then filling the prisons with them when they inevitably don't comply, and Rick Santorum ... yes, that does equal big government. There is no rational way you can describe that as small government. You can only say that it's big in the way that you want it to be big.

What I actually want is a government that provides (not controls) education, health care and retirement when needed, which is smaller than what you're claiming I want. I think it's considerably smaller than the government that you want. But I'll cop that it's bigger than the government the libertarians want. I won't say it's small, because it's not the smallest option on the table. I'll just say it's big in the way I want it.

I think the libertarians want too little government in the sense that I don't think their government would be sustainable. We'd get taken over by China, maybe Japan, maybe Canada. We'd lose the power of the constitution over the territory that it currently has.

 

I concur. They are quite similar. I might vote for Samuel Alexander if he is on the ticket in my state.

 

I'm voting for Gary Johnson because he did extremely well in new Mexico, supports the Fair tax, Doesn't support our Nation building or illegal wars, has a history of balancing budgets and improving health care and education systems, doesn't approve of government intrusion like the patriot act, wants to legalize and regulate weed which will make it more difficult for minors to get it and save money etc. His Resume is more impressive than any other candidate running for getting things done, that you know actually work out well.

 

It depends what you mean by government. I'm against bureaucracy, so localization and decentralization is what I want - would you consider this big government?

 

Liberals made OWS. It doesn't give the democrats much more credit than the republicans. If the tea party were more honest, it wouldn't give the republicans much more credit than the democrats.

There are very few democrats that a liberal can vote for and feel good about it. On top of being nearly as corrupt as the republicans and only somewhat more populist, they're actually more conservative than the republicans.

 

I'm interested in what you mean by this exactly. Could you elaborate? I don't know if you live in the USA or not, but in the case of the USA, does this mean you would support stronger state governments over the Federal Government?

 

Property rights, possibly? Some libertarians might want more government intervention in property disputes than some liberals would.

That's the only nitpick I can think of, though.

 

Hmm, I thought the right to private property without any government intervention was a big thing for libertarians. Maybe I'm mistaken.

 

I don't live in the US, and no I don't support stronger state governments because they still cover such huge areas. I'm in support for democratically elected local councils getting real power and eventually replacing the centralized government.

This is a good chart to explain the basic organizational structure of a decentralized vs a centralized government. On the left you have a centralized government and on the right you've got a decentralized one.


Basically what's going on in Venezuela at the moment: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venezuelan_Communal_Councils

 

Oh, so you would basically support giving the most power to the Mayor's and whatever council keeps them in check of various cities?

 

The council structure would be radically different too, the councils would be regularly elected by the people in their respective neighborhoods. You wouldn't have mayors by the way, you'd have an elected council of x amount of people.

 

That's really interesting. I've never actually heard this idea before. We're going kind of off topic here, but to me this sounds pretty close to Communism but kind of different, as I understand it (and of course, I mean communism as it was originally defined by Karl Marx, before the Soviet Union hijacked the term).

I was raised to believe that the left/right spectrum was pretty much Government controls everything/Government controls nothing, or basically Authoritarianism/Anarchism. Of course, now I know this is completely false, or at least not fully representative of the true spectrum of political thought, but I wouldn't have equated something so decentralized as a "left" idea. Would you say that your idea is a "left" idea? And would you say that Anarchism is closer to the left on the spectrum than the right?