In America the enemies of liberalism stole its name so we stole 'libertarian' from the left anarchists as a replacement. In Chile, as in much of the rest of the world, that never happened, so we can still call ourselves liberals. In those countries, so far as I can tell, some call themselves libertarians ' Chile has a libertarian party and my hosts have 'libertarios' in their name ' either to emphasize the connection to the American movement or to signal a more extreme version of liberalism. I was told that the Libertarian Party of Chile got 14% of the votes in the recent presidential election. That sounds impressive since the best the US Libertarian Party has managed is 3.3 %, but part of the reason is that Chile has its elections in two rounds, with the second round between the two parties that did best in the second round. A libertarian in Chile can vote for the libertarian party in the first round and his preferred major party in the second. A libertarian in America who votes...
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