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Comment by lmm | Hacker News Reader

You're coming over rather no true scotsman there. Every political group tries to disown the negative aspects of its labels. But those who self-identify as libertarian are and should be judged on the views and actions of others who self-identify as libertarian.

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He's not going the one true scotsman route. He's actually saying that there _isn't_ such a thing as a true scotsman at all, because each group of scots has its own ideas of what a "true scotsman" is -- which is a pretty insightful point to make.

There is no such thing as a 'true' libertarian, because many groups with only tangentially related credos have adopted the name as their own, and many groups have distanced themselves from the 'libertarian' label even though they espouse beliefs closely related to what is often understood as being libertarianism. It follows that, when you criticise people for being

We don't seriously expect Hacker News to mostly carry news about the newest exploits and defaced sites, do we? Same deal, talking about libertarians doesn't necessarily correctly identify the population you're targeting.

Should you judged by the views and actions of others who self-identify as "hackers"? If the label includes people with a wide range of fundamentally incompatible views, it's not very useful to use as a yard stick. It looks a lot like guilt by association.

> Should you judged by the views and actions of others who self-identify as "hackers"?

Yes

> It looks a lot like guilt by association.

Your political affiliation is your own choice, so it doesn't seem to have that unfairness.

So it's fair to judge Democrats as guilty by association in this case?

(Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Marisa Mayer, Eric Schmidt and Steve Jobs all self-identify as "Democrat", not "[Ll]ibertarian". The president of Adobe is on Obama's PMAB. I can't find info on the others with 3 minutes of googling.)

Sure, although I'm not sure the hypocrisy line is terribly effective here. A bunch of people who think regulations are necessary to stop corporations exploiting their workers turn out to run corporations that exploit workers? Well, yeah, isn't that exactly what you'd expect?

Most association is your own choice.

The only thing all libertarians hold in common is a strong belief in individual freedom. Different factions of libertarian construe freedom differently. Noam Chomsky opposes Corporate power, Government power, and Patriarchal power in the family. The Tea Party primarily opposes the power of the Government to tax. My big problem is with Tea Party elites who are really only interested in 0% capital gains taxes, and could care less about lowering regressive payroll taxes and excise taxes. As an individualist, I only take responsibility for my own words and actions. I don't accept responsibility for others--not even other left-libertarians, and certainly not Tea Partiers.

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