Ron Paul: 'Socialism in a Libertarian Society vs Libertarianism in a Socialist Society'

Source:A Star Spangeled Girl- U.S. Representative Ron Paul (Libertarian, Texas) talking about libertarianism vs socialism.

"In a Student Town Hall on 9/25/09 sponsored by the Young Americans forLiberty, Ron Paul stresses that in a libertarian society, socialists would have the right to voluntarily live in their own socialist societies. Of course, any individual who chooses to do so must also have the right to opt OUT of living in a socialist society."

 
From A Star Spangled Girl

One of things I respect both about libertarianism and socialism is the diversity in both political Ideologies: a casual looker at both ideologies might think that are complete opposites. Or terms like Socialist Libertarian is contradictory in terms: Libertarians believe in complete individual liberty. They believe we should let free people live their own lives as long as they are not hurting anyone else with their freedom. As well as keeping most of the money that they earn. 

And Socialists believe in collectivism: "don't let anyone make too much money, spread the wealth." And do these things through high taxes and through government providing a lot of services. Instead of giving the people the freedom to do these things for themselves and if they do it better than others, so be it as Libertarians tend to believe. 

Socialists at least in the social-democratic sense, tend to be liberal-libertarian on social issues: take Noam Chomsky, Dennis Kucinich and Ralph Nader (to use as examples) except for maybe gun rights, organized gambling and hate speech in America. What I'm getting at the Ron Paul's of the world aren't the only faces of libertarianism and the Fidel Castro's of the world aren't the only faces of socialism. 

There's classical-libertarianism, the Ron Paul's, there's conservative-libertarianism, the Barry Goldwater's, there's liberal Libertarianism where I would fit in as well as people like  and then there's socialist- libertarianism the Dennis Kucinich's of the world. Who believe that people should have the right to live their own lives as long as they are not hurting anyone else with what they are doing. But want to see more government intervention especially from the Federal Government in the economy. And believe the Federal Government should try to bring about what they call economic justice to society, trying to make society equal for all. And not letting anyone by force have too much more than others.

Marijuana is a perfect example of this at least in America, where Libertarians, Liberals such as myself, Socialists and Conservatives (to a certain extent) like the late Bill Buckley, who are in favor of decriminalization or marijuana and treating it like alcohol and tobacco have it fall under the same regulations and taxes. 

These four different factions of libertarianism all believe in individual liberty, we tend to differ on the U.S. Constitution, property rights being a perfect example of this where Libertarians, Liberals, Conservatives all believe in property rights. Where Socialists don't tend to be a big fan of property rights and believe that government can force private business's to become public utilities for the good of the country (in their view) banking being an excellent example of this when our banking system looked like it was collapsing back in 2008.

Libertarians, Liberals, Conservatives and even Socialists as hard as that might be to believe all believe in limited government at least to a certain extent, but we all differ in how limited government should be. Especially when it comes to the economy where Socialists don't believe in limited government as much as Liberals, Conservatives and Libertarians.