1. The reason you are confused is because most people, and alsmost everyone in the media, gives inaccurate and incomplete labels and/or descriptions to the political/economic theories or parties.
Its absolutely inaccurate, very confusing and even foolish, to divide the political spectrum into left and right.
The ultimate question is the individual freedom vs. state control.
5. This site has the world's smallest political quiz - http://www.theadvocates.org/index.html
Look at the upper right portion.
(a) In essence there are 5 positions:
(1) the abolition of the income tax. On the contrary, 2 American parties have it in their platform.
(a) the Libertarian Party (b) the Constitution Party.
(b) the free trade.
(c) abolition of inheritance taxes, capital gain taxes.
(2) taking the state out of the education.
In sum, there are few libertarians, but no libertarian party. Of course, in France, there is Sabine Herold who is a libertarian and got 80,000 people to protest against the unions.
I have to admit that I don't like it. You can have restrictive (ie authoritarian) rules concerning taxes for example to ensure a fairer distribution of wealth among the population, which would end up in the best case szenario as giving more people more freedoms.
You have to defend freedom of press and freedom of opinion against authoritarian hate speech to ensure that everybody feels comfortable to voice their opinion and not be bullied into silence. These would be authoritarian measures to protect freedoms.
So, I have my doubts about the top to bottom kind of scale. A fundamentalist libertarian can allow freedoms to be destroyed for the sake of staying truely libertarian and that doesn't make sense to me.
3. You have to defend freedom of press and freedom of opinion against authoritarian hate speech to ensure that everybody feels comfortable to voice their opinion and not be bullied into silence.
(a) THere is an American Nazi party. Big deal. They can print hate speech. They can march and protest. Big deal. They are miniscule. Plus, once you have their opinions aired, you can debate them, show them how irrational or dangerous they are.
(b) same goes for the KKK.
4. Give me an example where your version of protecting against the hate speech provides more freedoms.
Cheers
There is no evidence taht the Libertarians do not want freedom of press or opinion. The question is (a) which method provides the most individual freedom; (b) which method is more productive.
