Time to Retire the “Glibertarian” Slur

Mark of New Jersey

Mark is a Founding Editor of The League of Ordinary Gentlemen, the predecessor of Ordinary Times.

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8 Responses

  1. Is your dictum to avoid any term that can be misused? That seems overbroad, my good, ummm, entity.

    Anyway, he doesn’t call Balko (or anyone else) a “glibertarian” in this post. And “so-called libertarian” looks ironic to me; he’s saying that Balko, in believing that almost all prosecutors have scruples, is denying the “every man for himself and morals are for losers” nonsense spouted by actual glibertarians.Report

  2. Jaybird says:

    I see “glibertarian” like “neocon”.

    At the beginning, “neocon” had a very specific meaning and really meant something. Indeed, Irving Kristol was, in fact, a neocon. The problem was that “neocon” ceased to refer to an offshoot of the Defense Hawks (related but distinct) but meant “everything that is unlikable about conservativism”… and that eventually resulted in such things as Dick Cheney being called a “neocon”. (Dude, Cheney is a lot of things. Neo ain’t one of them.)

    It had the benefit of making that little vein in the conservative’s foreheads visible, though, and so it picked up a lot more use than it really deserved.

    “Glibertarian” does a great job of making that little vein stand out. It seems to me that its usage has shifted from accurately defining a subset of self-identified libertarians to being used because, dude, you can see that vein in his forehead.

    But I would say that.Report

  3. Trumwill says:

    Hmmm… I always thought that “glibertarian” meant something distinct from “fake libertarian”. I thought it was a reference to libertarians that are particularly thoughtless, insensitive, and (errr…) glib, regarding the effects that their policy preferences would have on the less fortunate.

    Have I been reading it wrong this whole time?Report

    • Mark Thompson in reply to Trumwill says:

      The official Balloon Juice definition:
      “a portmanteau of glib and libertarian, a person who affects libertarianism when it’s convenient. Used by those not ready to admit that all libertarian philosophy can be boiled down to “I got mine, fuck you”, or by those attempting to be polite to libertarians.”

      So it’s kind of both (in fact, under the above definition, it would apply to all libertarians, which is part of my problem with it). Regardless, applying it to Balko of all people on criminal justice issues is pretty absurd.Report