Politics in general has become more-or-less a game of Red Vs. Blue. There was actually a study where homogeneous groups of people will establish hierarchies and use discriminatory practices if there is some distinguishing feature in the group, e.g. one group wears blue shirts; the other group wears red shirts.
To be fair, I also align closely with being a left-leaning libertarian. However, I will never officially call myself libertarian. The reason is once someone aligns oneself with a political or religious ideology the mind closes, and the person in question will rationalize the internal contradictions of his or her party while othering those outside it.
As for modern libertarianism, if you are able to find things in common with your libertarian friends, that is actually a good thing. The problem only arises when they ignore the internal contradictions of their belief system in favour of preserving the group. In that regard, they are similar to some church groups.
The right-wing libertarians worry me, though. In the article, I elucidated that right-wing libertarians were created out of think tanks started by the economists Milton Friedman and George Stigler, politicians Ron Paul and Rand Paul, and various other institutions and groups. It was designed to be pro-Corporate PR and nothing more.
In other words, the right-wing variety of libertarianism is just corporate shilling. It is not rebellious or edgy. Through all the fancy rhetoric, they specifically advocate for doing absolutely nothing except what has been going on for over 30 years, deregulation and privatization.
Right-wing libertarians will tell you they are socially progressive but fiscally conservative or for free-markets. Actually, they advocate doing absolutely nothing for or against socially. It’s not the government’s job to meddle in people’s affairs, except when it has to do with business. Their main focus is to dismantle government protections from the inside, dismantle the central bank, eliminate most taxes, and set up a kind of “salt tax” or consumption tax. They say they want to cut back military spending and intervention and end the draft. I will believe when I see it, and I would not hold out hope for that authoritarian, Gary Johnson.
As I have explained earlier, Thatcher ran a similar campaign claiming to be socially progressive yet fiscally conservative. In the end, her regime was an extremely authoritarian one. It was the only way to efficiently “liberate the markets.” She had to deteriorate human relations in order for the technocrat’s plan to work.
Sacrifice social progress for economic progress or vice versa. If you do not want either side to suffer, it is slow going, possibly decades on end for either to gain ground. So, I would be wary of any one group which proposes some brand new ideology as a solution to all our problems. It might be the result of a fad or a con. Remember, right-wing libertarianism is not some new ideology. Most of their ideas and goals were borrowed from the Birch Society and failed Republican policies under different names.
A conman once said that people who are already satisfied with their lives are hard to deceive. When the heart is in disarray, that is when rumours, conspiracies, and such become believable. People with surplus in their lives have a surplus in their hearts. That’s why the people the conman targets are the dissatisfied. Hearts filled with anxiety are the easiest to deceive. He went on to say, “You might think my plan in selling charms was to cause deterioration of human relations. But it is quite the opposite. Human relations were already deteriorating, and that is why everyone jumped on them… If something that is completely incomprehensible starts getting popular, doubt your generation. Consider that something might be very wrong. That’s because the generation has been enveloped by darkness.”
I am not saying your friends are con-men. It could be that they were deceived. Who knows? I do not know your friends, but if you get along with them, then that is all that matters. I hope this helps, and thank you for reading my work.