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Comment by Freedumbs | Hacker News Reader

Maybe I'm really uninformed but classic liberal and libertarian are polar opposites. Republican policy is insanely archaic and constrains human freedoms much more that Democrats, so I'm struggling to see how a libertarian could support the guys putting militarized unaccountable secret police into our cities to terrorize and kill Americans. They're also much more into thought crimes than Dems, so I'm really wondering what you consider important?

What's objectionable about Democrat policy from the "libertarian or classic liberal" perspective?

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Classic liberals and libertarians both favor individual freedom and limited government, but libertarians generally take the limited government bit a little further.

Militarized police is definitely one of the areas I disagree with Republicans on, along with abortion restrictions.

As for thought crimes, it's a toss up IMO, but I view Democrats as more likely to try to legislate against them.

I'd like federal government to be a whole lot smaller with more things being left up to state and local governments, so that's why I tend to side with Republican policy more often, but they're not much better either.

It seems like you learn about politics through propaganda. When I hear "classic liberal", I think of the philosophical origin of liberalism: Locke and Hobbes. Libertarian contains the same root word, but is not similar to liberal other than that.

If you pursue freedom, and individual liberty and are a US citizen, there's no way to consider GOP policy as providing more freedom or liberty. The only 2 areas I can think of where they even claim to be for freedom is: guns and freedom for corporations.

Then there's literally everything else: being a woman, not straight, not white, not Christian, an income tax payer, a property owner near an unregulated corporate entity, a person who likes sane people to have access to semiautomatic long guns, a person who enjoys drugs, a person who wants to buy or sell sex, ... etc

> Libertarian contains the same root word, but is not similar to liberal other than that.

I don't think many people would agree with that. Other than their philosophical differences in their approach to dealing with externalities (classic liberals favoring preemptive regulations and libertarianism favoring compensation for damage to property rights), I don't see that much practical difference between them.

Okay. Let's assume they're roughly equal and both never evolved beyond personal liberty or whatever you mean by practically the same.

How on earth could you ever claim to be in favor personal liberty, and support GOP over Dems? GOP are literally trying to enforce a state religion at the federal level in 2026. The list of similar or worse infringements on liberty is truly unprecedented and for me, mind boggling.

Or let's ask the inverse: how do democrats infringe on your liberty or others?

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