Being a Liberal

There seems to be confusion regarding labels in the political environment. Left, right, liberal, conservative, progressive, neoconservative, paleoconservative, neoliberalism, libertarian, bleeding heart libertarian... these labels are overbearing to the apolitical and even politicos apply them with definitions as unstable as a freshly dumped teenager.  

One day a "liberal" is that person which decries governmental intrusion into the marriage selection processes of individuals, while the next day a "liberal" is that person which calls for governmental intrusion in the business of education. One day a "conservative" is that person which wants to cut governmental spending, while the next day a "conservative" is wailing over a decrease in the growth of the military industrial complex.

To weed out the contradictions and remain intellectually honest we need to revert back to the historic/classical approach in labeling. The classical liberal, as Dr. Walter Block points out here, believes in negative rights, military isolationism and that the unhampered free market is the most effective economic system to uplift the masses from poverty. This is a decentralized system based on the individual. By contrast the classical conservative believes in the accumulation of central power. This ideology is based on the belief that an enlarged State apparatus does the body politic good. Proponents of this philosophy include the original central bank, the Sun King and the Kaiser.

The conservative wants to accumulate central power in order to intervene in the market economy. Conservatives believe that a war on drugs needs to be perpetrated by the State in order to lower drug usage by individuals. Glenn Greenwald answers that here.  They believe that a central bank is necessary to set the price of money and interest rates. Murray Rothbard's thoughts on the subject.  They believe in the use of drones to take the lives of boys err I mean militants in Pakistan. They believe that 6 year old girls and 85 year old women in walkers pose such a dire threat to their republic, that they need to be strip searched by the Transportation and Security Administration.  They believe in subsidies for corporations, and Rand Paul does not. It is not that conservatives intend for negative consequences to occur, but rather that they believe they are bringing about a preferable state of affairs through interventions. Everyone from Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton to George W. Bush and Rick Santorum is a conservative, because a conservative is simply an interventionist.

Liberalism is the ideology that says no to interventionism. Liberalism is against war,eminent domain abuse, subsidies, taxes... Liberalism is for private property, free trade, voluntary exchange, competing currencies... Liberalism is non-interventionism. To ask for an embargo or sanction is merely to intervene in the affairs of individual producers finding individual consumers. The vast majority of Democrats and Republicans are not liberals. The vast majority advocate for interventionism of many sorts, and are thus conservatives. What the liberal wants is simple. To have the market economy left alone by the apparatus that has a monopoly on the use of compulsion via gun-toting goons and fiat currency.

I am a liberal and what I want is laissez-faire, holus bolus