Any modern day classical liberals?

[politicus]

To the internet, on the term 'classical liberal':

I agree, but this would be less of a cheap shot if you provided your own definition of it.

[politicus]

To the internet, on the term 'classical liberal':

I agree, but this would be less of a cheap shot if you provided your own definition of it.

Classical liberals don't exist in the Year of Our Lord 2015.

Not relevant to my post.

[politicus]

The term may be silly, but it exists because there is a lack of a good label for people who are not conservatives on social issues and liberal on civil rights issues, but still economically right wing. Also the fact that Liberal as a label is ruined in the US by its association with interventionist economic policies and a relatively high tax level (what a European would call Social Liberalism).

Libertarian has an extremist ring to it and it sounds a bit silly for a European. It seems to work fine for Americans.

In continental Europe versions of economically liberal or business liberal works fine in various languages since social issues are less of a battle field, but those terms seems not to be used much in English and would be useless in an American context. It is generally understood that a person identifying as economically liberal is just more pro-free market/low taxes than a social liberal, but still in favour of strong civil rights protection (but not necessarily liberal on all social issues).

[politicus]

Hawk, I don't know how much you read on the IE board, but do any of these parties strike your fancy?

- The D66 of the Netherlands
- The FDP of Germany
- The Liberal Alliance of Denmark
- ACT of New Zealand

(unrelated, the only self-described "libertarian" parties (that I can name off the top of my head) that has achieved national representation is the Lib Dems of Australia and the Libertarians in Costa Rica, of all places)

Liberal Alliance actually claims the term libertarianism is superfluous because it is identical to what liberalism means in Danish and a guy like Ron Paul is described by Danish media as ultraliberal, so you can see this whole discussion is a bit alien to some of us continentals.

Classical Liberal seems mostly to be an attempt to use the modern continental European definition of (non-Social Liberal) liberalism in English by people who do not identify with the term Libertarianism for various reasons.

[politicus]

I'm not too sure about the Liberal Alliance, but I think we can distinguish between the classical liberal parties of Europe like FDP and US-style Libertarians. The former are more establishment friendly pro-business parties who drain their support from the upper-middle class; while the Paul movement (as I see it) is much younger, disparate and anti-establishmentary.

Yes, but the actual policy content is mostly quite similar if you weed out the many parties (and factions of parties) that are de facto just Conservatives in anything but name. Moderate Libertarian and Classical Liberal seems to cover identical ideologies. It is just that Libertarianism is connected with being radical, so a lot of people seem reluctant to self identify as a Moderate Libertarian.

[politicus]

No and there weren't any in the 19th century either.

As enigmatic as ever,

[politicus]

I'm not too sure about the Liberal Alliance, but I think we can distinguish between the classical liberal parties of Europe like FDP and US-style Libertarians. The former are more establishment friendly pro-business parties who drain their support from the upper-middle class; while the Paul movement (as I see it) is much younger, disparate and anti-establishmentary.

Yes, but the actual policy content is mostly quite similar if you weed out the many parties (and factions of parties) that are de facto just Conservatives in anything but name. Moderate Libertarian and Classical Liberal seems to cover identical ideologies. It is just that Libertarianism is connected with being radical, so a lot of people seem reluctant to self identify as a Moderate Libertarian.

I still think there is a tangible difference between the two labels though. Like the Classical liberal says "I must lower taxes to encourage business", while the libertarian says "I must cut taxes, because I am morally obligated to do so."

That distinction underestimates the degree to which modern business liberals/economic liberals in Europe are influenced by the Austrian school and for the younger ones also US libertarians.
It may work in the Anglophone countries, but I doubt it. In reality it is different degrees of the same ideology. Some are pragmatic, some are radical. The radicals like to call themselves libertarians, the more pragmatic and/or well established types prefer "classical liberal" or (if continental Euros) business liberal/economic liberal or just plain liberal. Hayek is a lot more central to modern (right wing) liberalism than Smith.