Eh, hard to really comment on the OP itself since this is in a vacuum

Would I call myself a "classical liberal?" I certainly did two, three, four years ago. Libertarian before that. I don't know what I would call myself now, but then again, I've never really been a fan of labels. FWIW, the political compass test—for all of its many issues with its questions—showed me in the right-libertarian quadrant when I took it a few months back.

In a vacuum I'm all for people's right to speak, associate, I am strongly against censorship, all that. Sadly, that doesn't really get you very far when you're in reality and you have people trying to use the weaknesses inherent in those viewpoints to tear down the very civilization that created such ideals. The ideas and ideology those people have are a virus to our civilization and I think that ideology needs to be curbed and stamped out.

But, that's not very classical liberal of me is it? "I'm all for people saying whatever they want, but not that."

Where I think the self-described classical liberals falter is they'll even be for the right of those people to spread their toxic ideology. Hypocritical isn't it? I think it looks so on its face, and normally I'd say it is hypocritical. That "normally" would be when everyone subscribes to the same philosophical framework that people should be able to say what they want, that we all have inalienable rights that are inherent in us from the day we are born to the day we die, all of that. When everyone is "playing by the same rules."

The ideologues we come up against completely disagree with that. They would force the classical liberal to play by their own rules but as soon as those ideologues attain power over the classical liberal they'll toss those rules out and impose their own. That was never a problem for the ideologue because they were never actually playing by the classical liberal's rules to begin with.

If the ideologue never agreed to those rules in the first place then why should we hold ourselves to those rules when playing against those particular players? That's where I think any claims of hypocrisy or what have you fall flat. We are up against people who would not give us the same courtesy and who would gleefully see us dead and gone and are arguably actively working toward that end.

Eh, hard to really comment on the OP itself since this is in a vacuum

Would I call myself a "classical liberal?" I certainly did two, three, four years ago. Libertarian before that. I don't know what I would call myself now, but then again, I've never really been a fan of labels. FWIW, the political compass test—for all of its many issues with its questions—showed me in the right-libertarian quadrant when I took it a few months back.

In a vacuum I'm all for people's right to speak, associate, I am strongly against censorship, all that. Sadly, that doesn't really get you very far when you're in reality and you have people trying to use the weaknesses inherent in those viewpoints to tear down the very civilization that created such ideals. The ideas and ideology those people have are a virus to our civilization and I think that ideology needs to be curbed and stamped out.

But, that's not very classical liberal of me is it? "I'm all for people saying whatever they want, but not that."

Where I think the self-described classical liberals falter is they'll even be for the right of those people to spread their toxic ideology. Hypocritical isn't it? I think it looks so on its face, and normally I'd say it is hypocritical. That "normally" would be when everyone subscribes to the same philosophical framework that people should be able to say what they want, that we all have inalienable rights that are inherent in us from the day we are born to the day we die, all of that. When everyone is "playing by the same rules."

The ideologues we come up against completely disagree with that. They would force the classical liberal to play by their own rules but as soon as those ideologues attain power over them they'll toss those rules out and impose their own. That was never a problem for the ideologue because they were never actually playing by the classical liberal's rules to begin with.

If the ideologue never agreed to those rules in the first place then why should we hold ourselves to those rules when playing against those particular players? That's where I think any claims of hypocrisy or what have you fall flat. We are up against people who would not give us the same courtesy and who would gleefully see us dead and gone and are arguably actively working toward that end.

Eh, hard to really comment on the OP itself since this is in a vacuum

Would I call myself a "classical liberal?" I certainly did two, three, four years ago. Libertarian before that. I don't know what I would call myself now, but then again, I've never really been a fan of labels. FWIW, the political compass test—for all of its many issues with its questions—showed me in the right-libertarian quadrant when I took it a few months back.

In a vacuum I'm all for people's right to speak, associate, I am strongly against censorship, all that. Sadly, that doesn't really get you very far when you're in reality and you have people trying to use the weaknesses inherent in those viewpoints to tear down the very civilization that created such ideals. The ideas and ideology those people have are a virus to our civilization and I think that ideology needs to be curbed and stamped out.

But, that's not very classical liberal of me is it? "I'm all for people saying whatever they want, but not that." Where I think the self-described classical liberals falter is they'll even be for the right of those people to spread their toxic ideology. Hypocritical isn't it? I think it looks so on its face, and normally I'd say it is hypocritical. That "normally" would be when everyone subscribes to the same philosophical framework that people should be able to say what they want, that we all have inalienable rights that are inherent in us from the day we are born to the day we die, all of that. When everyone is "playing by the same rules."

The ideologues we come up against completely disagree with that. They would force the classical liberal to play by their own rules but as soon as those ideologues attain power over them they'll toss those rules out and impose their own. That was never a problem for the ideologue because they were never actually playing by the classical liberal's rules to begin with.

If the ideologue never agreed to those rules in the first place then why should we hold ourselves to those rules when playing against those particular players? That's where I think any claims of hypocrisy or what have you fall flat. We are up against people who would not give us the same courtesy and who would gleefully see us dead and gone and are arguably actively working toward that end.