M.K. Gandhi while serving in the Ambulance Corps during the Boer War (1899) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Gandhi is purported to have said something of the sort.

Since the term “liberal” was co-opted by marxists in the early 20th century, and the term “libertarian” has more or less taken on the meaning that it used to have, I have noticed a few things:

First, that libertarianism, for many decades, has been ignored–barely a blip on the national radar, so to speak.

Second, that something has changed regarding these erstwhile liberals now called libertarians.  They have moved well away from obscurity, and in the last five years, seem to have moved rapidly through the mockery stage.  Naturally this type of mockery indicates fear–but this is another issue altogether.

Now, however, libertarians, individualists, (classical) liberals–call them what you may–are being actively fought.  This is quite a change, considering that a mere 10 years ago such people seemed to have been settled into the obscurity phase of the Gandhi quote (paraphrase, or misquote.)  I can only feel encouraged by this as I feel individual liberty is of paramount importance: and not just to me, but to everyone–even the enemies of such liberty.

If one scans the posts in the WP reader tagged “libertarian,” one might find about three hit pieces for every one genuine libertarian blog post.  This, at least, is what I found in my admittedly short, non-scientific sample.  In any case, such is not a group of posts that can be “followed” blindly, by any means.

The enemies of individual liberty taking part in these attempts at disinformation, denigration, obfuscation, or misdirection should perhaps take heed that stage 4 of the Gandhi attributed quote (paraphrase, &c) is just around the corner.

Related articles

• The Liberty Movement Under Attack! (libertywatchlist.com)

And having clicked on the above article, I was quite amazed at the synchronicity of another article which begins with the very same Gandhi  reference–perhaps properly quoted and sourced.  The above article is of course based on more concrete examples of this, rather than the result of my own proclivity for pattern recognition.  I did not include more related articles because I did not think my whimsical little article warranted vetting them all–especially since only one in three is a genuine….

Well… you get the idea, I think.