First time I’ve seen the culture war described as “neoliberal.” It seems like everyday that word becomes less and less meaningful. There seems to be a large set of people who use it as a general descriptor of things they don’t like.
That it is now re-appropriated by the "alt-right" (a term coined by neo-Nazi Richard Spencer) to mean some kind of swear word against left leaning "liberals" just goes to show how uneducated and confused the US public is about politics.
Over the years I've come to believe that there is a method behind this dumbing down and distortion of political views in the US, that it's the result of the two-party system that allows elites to keep voters aligned and in check, even though they'd all have reasons to vote for a third party. In a nutshell, it seems that many people in the US are unaware of the following facts:
- Libertarianism in original form, propagated e.g. by the Friedmans, is a form of classical liberalism that arose against neo-Liberalism, which was too federal and corporate-friendly for them. It's a radical attempt to reform liberalism and bring it nearer to individual anarchism. (But individual anarchism was explicitly targetted against communism and classical liberalism, so in the end "anarcho-capitalism" is not a form of anarchism at all and really just liberalism.)
- neo-Liberalism is a right-wing form of classical liberalism
- There are many left-wing liberal traditions, but these are barely represented by the two big US parties. (Some Democrats may count as left-wing liberals but not too many of them.)
- Conservatives and liberals are principally opposed to each other. That doesn't mean they cannot be somehow combined, but for a liberal the individual freedom always overrules conservative values.
Especially the latter point has been distorted beyond recognition by Republicans who traditionally hold Christian-conservative values and communitarian/racist ideas about closed, homogeneous societies but felt a need to incorporate (neo-)liberal doctrines in economics. Obviously, this integration can only work to some extent before the views become plain incoherent. Liberalism does not allow the restriction or suppression of anyone's freedoms, let alone those of minorities.
Basically, parties in the US just grab whatever elements they need from political traditions and ignore the rest.
And yet, your characterization doesn't gel very well with self-identified neoliberals!
Left-wing liberals considered it a task of the state to protect workers and children because only with a certain level of protection they would be able to exercise their individual freedom. You're not free in this view if you have inherited debts from your grandparents, for instance. Right-wing liberals instead took these issues to be self-regulatory and did not want the state to interfere. Neoliberals stand in the second tradition.
Self-described neoliberals: “a robust social safety net”
But, sure okay, represents exactly what you’ve said.
In Europe (the word comes from French), Libertarianism has been a synonym for Anarchism (anti-authoritarian socialism) since at least the late 19th century, long pre-dating the Chicago school. The concept of anarcho-capitalism is a much more recent phenomenon and not one that ever had the same degree of popular support as traditional, left-wing anarchism, e.g., in the 1930s, the CNT¹ had a 1½ million members.
I’d suggest modifying the above phrase to say something like “right-libertarianism in its American form, propagated, e.g., by the Friedmans”.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederaci%C3%B3n_Nacional_de...
There absolutely was a "culture war", or war of ideas, that was waged to sell deregulation and privatization to the masses. Ironically, these included some fairly generous handouts, e.g. earned income credits or the welfare programs in the UK funded by the oil windfall.
Ultimately, we wouldn't have ended up were we are today without a continuous campaign selling neoliberalism. It's how the Democrats became the party of wall street, and new labour in the UK is more conservative than the tories 50 years ago.
Mark Blyth gives a great primer called "A brief history of how we got here and why": https://youtu.be/tJoe_daP0DE