What puzzles me when a commentator denounces the government, a politician or a policy as libertarian, how many in the general media audience know what a libertarian is?
Hardly anyone knows what neoliberalism is apart from the fact they appear to be right wing, or the right wing of the Labour Party, or anyone to the right of you on the left. As for libertarians, they barely register in the polls.
Prior to the presidential runs of Ron Paul and now the prominence of Senator Rand Paul, libertarians were little known in the USA.
As for New Zealand or Australia, libertarians are also seriously unknown.
The Liberal Democratic Party in the Australian Senate and the ACT party in the New Zealand House of Representatives are known as right wing parties to the general public. This is rather than as a classical liberal or libertarian party, even though a number of their members are either classical liberals or libertarians.
Why then do left-wing media commentators insist on using a sustained sneer that is largely unintelligible to most of their media audience?
I surmise that they are signalling to their left-wing audience that are one of us: that the commentator is hard left, far too knowledgeable about the obscure parties of the right, and is an American political junkie to boot.
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
Dec 11, 2014 @ 11:14:35
A frustration I share regularly. The DomPost (editor?) can’t write the word ‘ACT’ without prefacing it with some erroneous term like ‘far right’.
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