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I'm a member of the third group, but I wouldn't call myself "former" leftists. I'm still a left-of-center libertarian.
So what am I doing here?
The libertarian left is dead. It was taken over by authoritarian morons and their useful idiots.
Right wing spaces are the only communities which still care about liberty, meritocracy, and self-efficacy.
I'm not that big on traditional values and I don't do the Church&Jesus thing. But I sure as hell prefer it over the absolute clusterfuck the left has become.
I used to be a pretty hardcore libertarian. It was pretty easy in the 90s and early 2000s. Most of us were anti-war, pro-economic freedom, and "live and let live" socially. To this day, I think the Dobbs abortion decision is perfect. Remove it from the feds, and let the people at the state level have a choice.
I've been completely radicalized by leftists who hate me. They hate any devolution of authority from the central government to the people. They hate any kind of "live and let live" philosophy that isn't screaming praise for every perversion and degeneracy out there. They hate any economic freedom as anti-progressive, dogwhistles for fascism, and killing the planet. Leftists hate free speech and view proponents of free speech as nazis. Ironic. And, shockingly, leftists have somehow become the more bloodthirsty and interventionist party.
So, no. I am not a libertarian any more. I am, more than anything else, an anti-leftist.
If you look back on your grandparents, your family, your own characteristics, and our civilizational history, and look towards the future, that is where you will find God. It is the opposite of impermanent consumption and ugliness.
Yes, you can say genetics, and I don’t believe in an afterlife.
Either you are serving some ideal external to yourself, or you are serving your own baser interests.
You can call that external ideal God, Jesus, posterity, Humanity, the future, or whatever but that is really the binary choice that fundamentally determines a person's character and direction in life.
Children all start out serving themselves because they lack the capability to comprehend that anything could be greater than their immediate whims. If they are lucky they are surrounded by good examples of people who "grew up" to serve the external ideal and thus are able to do the same for themselves. Most people aren't that lucky.
Eat more cruciferous vegetables, and less whole grains. And never ever go full vegan.
Bingo: The narrative that our "base" instincts are something terrible to be overcome appears to represent the world view where things created by man are superior to natural things, imagining that we ourselves are something outside of, and greater than, the natural world.
And the world view where our "base" instincts are all wonderful and should be pursued at all times is the world view of pure hedonism and savagery. Its the one that hippies, sluts, and niggers live in every day.
Controlling and channeling our instincts is what makes man man and not monkey, and allowed us to create everything great that we are.
now that's a novel concept; finding a compromise between our base instincts and our higher selves. (for the record, I'm not being sarcastic.)
It makes sense on another level, because this country was founded on compromise. The Articles of Confederation were an unqualified failure, so the Continental Congress got to work, hammering out a new agreement, arguing and no doubt nearly coming to blows, but working out a compromise everybody could agree upon, even if reluctantly.
Hell, even the Declaration of Independence was signed when it became clear that the Crown was uninterested in hearing the Colonists out and instead demanded they be crushed under booted heel.
There never has been a "left" libertarian. If you just wanted to legalize drugs and abortions and every other degenerate behavior, without the actual principles of reducing government power and decentralizing it, and minimizing government economic meddling, you weren't then - and aren't now.
The "left leaning libertarians" are just degenerates. Actual libertarianism is exclusively right wing.
Same, except an anti-theist. I'd rather we actually not need to use the Church as a Crutch, but apparently some motherfuckers are a bit dense and killing god was not the best move.
And people told you this. But you thought you were smarter than them.
That sure as shit wasn't you. You're a race fag.
Anyways, I expect anyone strong enough to kill God, is strong enough to take the mantle of responsibility for themselves. The ones who aren't should not have been strong enough to simply replace Him.
Many people go through that phase. The societal poisoning was not done by edgy teenage angst, though. It was guided.
Individuals are capable of recognizing the utility and benefit of a moral society without necessarily adhering to what creates it, but society needs that higher power to keep a lot of self absorbed monkeys in check.
As to your anti-theism - there is no useful reason to reject the possibility of a higher power entirely. Certain groups' interpretations of that power yes - but even Jefferson, who swore to oppose all forms of tyranny over the mind of man, did so upon the altar of god.
I don't know where my parent comment went.
That being said, I don't think I disagree with what you said.
I disagree with your assessment on anti-theism. I feel like theism is far too easy of a mechanism to basically remove cognitive load and introspection from people onto an authority/institution that gets to exclusively arbitrate truth and morality.
What the American forms of Protestantism do is allow people to take that onto themselves. It's a kind of workaround where you say that God reveals truth and moral righteousness too you. There's problems with that, but it's a hell of a lot better than offloading that to the church.
Huh, I can't find it either. Weird. Anyways, theism is only a crutch if you use it that way. And unfortunately large percentages of the population will never rise to the mental level necessary to find morality without some kind of cultural force to compel them. The higher understanding of why moral societies are better is lost on many - look at how many people twist nietzche into justification for pointless hedonism and self-absorbed existentialism.
You identify american protestantism as better than the catholic organization, but both are theistic. You're right, but both are works of man. The organizations that form around religions are not the question of the existence of a higher power. On that subject, the protestants and the catholics are essentially an example of right vs left again - the protestants are decentralized and individually weak, while the catholic church is a leftist organization that has essentially become an extranational globalist government wearing the guise of religion.
American protestantism sits better with you probably because it fits the ideology of the right better - limited power that is easily fixed or ignored when corrupted. Whereas the catholic church is a massive corrupt institution that is essentially unfixable, like any large leftist government.