I think I may be Libertarian. Will you help me unpack that?

Let me ask you a few question that I think sheds the light on if you're a libertarian. (and I know you answered some of these)

Do you believe religion trumps personal liberties?

Do you believe anyone should have the right to kill another person with out their consent and without the immediate threat to another person's life? Ignore abortion for this question, we won't go into that here.

Do you believe people have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness above all else as long as it doesn't remove someone else's rights?

Is your rights and another person's right equal in EVERY way. Meaning you can't deprive someone else's right due to your right?

Are you willing to defend hate speech, acts you find disgusting, prostitution, the right for people to die, and other things that people might disagree with?

Are you willing to have a lot of people think you're wrong or a monster because you use a logical view of matters that they take a purely emotional (and usually knee jerk reaction) to?

Are you doing all this because you HONESTLY believe all of them and not just are afraid of the taxes, or want to pretend you're not a Republican?

Are you going to vote for Gary Johnson because you understand his platform and past, or are you going to vote because he's the libertarian party and clearly he must be the most libertarian candidate?

Now let me say the unpopular thing, and the thing that this subreddit hates and downvotes for. Sanders isn't that bad. A lot of people here throw socialism around for Sanders like a lot of Americans, but he actually isn't that far off from a Libertarian view in MANY ways. He's for fixing the election system, he's for legalizing drugs, he's for equality, he has a LOT of libertarian views.

His method of implementing these changes are troubling and honestly I understand not voting for him, but socialism and libertarianism are actually NOT incompatible, Left-libertarian has been a thing for almost two decades.

In addition, Sanders ISNT a socialist. Socialists believes that the government/public should own the means of production. So unless you think Sanders wants to take businesses and allow the government to run them, he's not a socialist. This doesn't mean you have to like or vote for Sanders. Personally I feel that rather than assist in liberty he'll expand the federal government's control for the right reason... but ultimately, we know how that turns out. But I wanted to clear up that he's not an evil "socialist", and in fact left-libertarians do exist, and yeah... Sanders is one.

/r/Libertarian Thread