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Libertarianism is a political belief system that holds that an individual should be is free to do anything he/she wants, so long as he/she do not infringe upon the rights of others to do what they want. The government's role is to protect those rights. Libertarians emphasize that human relationships can be either voluntary or involuntary, and that they should be voluntary. In effect this is a claim that human relationships should not be characterized by violence or deception.

You can learn more at http://www.lp.org, the home page of the LibertarianParty? of the UnitedStates.

Also note that libertarianism is not strictly a right wing ideology; formal anarchism is apparently referred to as Libertarian Socialism.

A libertarian is even likely to reject the legitimacy of the right/left dichotomy. The conflict between right and left is seen to be, in essence, a dispute over the particular form in which the state will violate individual rights. The libertarian believes the state should not violate individual rights in any form, and so opposes the right and left equally.

Libertarians certainly believe that the state shouldn't violate individual rights, but that doesn't mean they don't fall on a political spectrum. Things aren't nearly as simple as state vs non-state; there's the mob, the aristocracy, and the private sector to be considered, and different kinds of libertarian have different opinions about them.


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Edited February 3, 2001 11:56 pm by JoshuaGrosse (diff)
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