So, I've recently come across the term "barstool conservatives" on reddit, asking if the Forward Party is a good movement for these guys. And, while the term was not explained super well, I got the impression it was essentially someone who is or was a conservative, but dropped the religious aspect of conservatism, embraced libertarianism on cultural issues, but is against the woke stuff. Essentially, it's kind of an old school liberal on social issues who abandoned the republican party and their authoritarian nonsense, but isn't on board the woke train.
This...kind of sounds like me. I mean, I'm an ex conservative. Through the 2000s I evolved from a traditional religious conservative, to someone who was more libertarian, and then I abandoned the GOP entirely in the early 2010s. And my mentality sounds a lot like this "barstool" mentality. I mean, the basis of my socially liberal worldview is more based on libertarianism and the whole secular humanist worldview of live and let live. However, I never really was on board with the woke stuff and while I initially saw woke people as well meaning and thought I could ally with them to achieve mutually beneficial goals, it's been shown since 2016 that they're impossible to work with and they're basically a bunch of authoritarian quasi religious zealots who go against some aspects of my more chill worldview in many ways.
So, given this term, I decided to look it up to learn more about it. And this article seems flattering in a way toward them. It portrays the religious conservatives as a thing of the past, whose ideas and ideologies will appear as bizarre as the amish to the normies, and that traditionalists will moderate and forge an alliance with the secular in an alliance against the woke. Sounds good, I mean, based on my whole worldview thing, sometimes I will actually end up siding with the right against more extreme elements of the left, only to snap back left when the right wants to push their religion on people.
But, it's not all sunshine and rainbows. Looking into them more, they may not mesh with my ideology well after them all. After all, one of their causes in recent years has been fighting the left on COVID, seeing the left as being too authoritarian and crushing small businesses with COVID regulations. And I'm going to be honest, I'm actually to the left of the mainstream left on COVID. I supported regulations, I supported lockdowns, and I supported mask and vaccine mandates. My libertarianism is based more on the John Stuart Mill variety of people can do what they want as long as they don't harm others. And COVID is a public health crisis leading to the deaths of over a million Americans. That's over 300 9/11s for you 2000s neocons out there. And while a lot of right libertarians tend to have this kneejerk "don't tell me what to do" mentality, my personal ideology is a bit more sophisticated. Honestly, I kind of hoped that the pandemic would have created a revolution in thinking in this country. I figured if we shut everything down and couldn't work, we could use the opportunity to push a universal basic income. And perhaps afterwards, we would see less value in work in our lives, and seek more work life balance, with UBI being a permanent thing. But because of the barstool conservatives and the right in general, we're backlashing against it. The right saw the pandemic as an affront on capitalism, calling for the economy to reopen and everyone to go back to work regardless to the danger to themselves and others. And now people are screaming "no one wants to work any more" over the so called "worker's shortage", and blaming inflation on $1400 checks and Biden's unemployment which ran out almost a year ago now.
Now, I would not force the economy to shut down if not for the pandemic. But, I kind of have to say, given my "indepentarian" mindset, that forcing things back to normal, despite the libertarian framing by conservatives is authoritarian to me. The difference between right and left libertarians is the perception on whether markets can be tyrannical. Right libertarians see restrictions for good purposes as restrictive. People should have the "freedom" to work as much as they want, for as little as they want, in whatever dangerous conditions they want, and of course they're free to say no. Again, because their kind of 'freedom" is based on the idea of not being told what to do. It doesnt matter if the system pressures you into working in unsafe or tyrannical conditions just to survive. That's "freedom" to them. But for me, freedom is the ability to say no. While I do believe government should stay out of our lives on issues that do not concern the direct health and safety (or alternatively the ACTUAL freedom on economic issues) of others, I do believe the government does have a responsibility to protect people from harm, and also private coercion and exploitation. And my entire economic ideology is based on that. By guaranteeing a UBI and universal healthcare, I'm giving real freedom for people to live as they want. But, the right, they want to force people back to work. They claim this under the guise of freedom, but whose freedom? Not mine.
So...aren't barstool conservatives just...bog standard right libertarians? People who oppose government intervention on principle and whose idea of economic freedom is a small business being unburdened by regulations like minimum wage laws and the fair labor standards act and taxes?
Do I think there is some room for the left or alternatively andrew yang's forward party to appeal to these people? Sure. I think that they're a pretty undervalued swing demographic, and I think push comes to shove, given how conservatives responded to yang's original forward movement and 2020 campaign, I think they can come over. And I could see them being right at home in yang's new movement of not standing for much but making nice with moderate right wingers disaffected with the GOP.
Do I consider myself one? I mean, while my own roots both philosophically and historically aren't much different than these guys, let's be honest, I'm not much of a conservative. And I would agree with the left on a lot of things that these barstool people don't like. Like COVID regulations and economic interventionism. But regardless, let's face it, I don't really get along with the left either, especially as many of them get wrapped up in extremist ideologies like postmodernism and literal marxism. Like, I am ultimately liberal. To be more specific, I'm liberal in more Yang's lane of liberalism when he actually used to stand for something. Human centered capitalism, UBI, universal healthcare, and all that jazz. I'm not a leftist. At the same time I'm not a moderate lib a la Biden (even if I could agree with him on some things). And I'm certainly not a right winger.
I guess these days I'm socially center to center left, and economically basically a very UBI centric social democrat. Basically, my own brand of social libertarianism. This would at times align with the barstool guys, but other times, no. So I guess I'm not one, even if I have some similarities with them and could probably reach across the aisle on them on some issues.
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