The "professional left": a bunch of "firebaggers"

[DonCoquixote]

73. Let's define libertarian

One of the problems we have is that the media has beenn very good at eroding the meanings of words, such as centrist, or libertarian:

http://www.distantocean.com/2008/04/chomsky-on-libe.html

Chomsky: There's no difference, really. I think they're the same thing. But you see, "libertarian" has a special meaning in the United States. The United States is off the spectrum of the main tradition in this respect: what's called "libertarianism" here is unbridled capitalism. Now, that's always been opposed in the European libertarian tradition, where every anarchist has been a socialist—because the point is, if you have unbridled capitalism, you have all kinds of authority: you have extreme authority.

The American version of "libertarianism" is an aberration, though—nobody really takes it seriously. I mean, everybody knows that a society that worked by American libertarian principles would self-destruct in three seconds. The only reason people pretend to take it seriously is because you can use it as a weapon. Like, when somebody comes out in favor of a tax, you can say: "No, I'm a libertarian, I'm against that tax"—but of course, I'm still in favor of the government building roads, and having schools, and killing Libyans, and all that sort of stuff.

I believe your version of Libertarian is closer to Chomsky than Ron Paul or even Glenn Greenwald, and that is good. However, when folsk like Paul and yes, GG call themselves Libertarians, it becomes hard to address the beliefs that they have successfully sold as Libertarian without using the word. It is like using the term Jihad to refer to those terrorist who use their interpretation of Islam as a base for killing. You may mean Ben Ladin and similar folk, but then your Muslim friend will point out that there are many more uses for the word Jihad that have nothing to do with anything political. So, you stop using Jihad, but then you are left trying to find words to fit the job, mneanwhile, the enemy, who has the MSM media helping, does not even have to worry about the meaning of words, because they can bash them as they go.

In other words, we on the left need to get the tools back to frame the debate, because if we cannot even have reliable use of a language, we are done for.