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You're arguing on semantics. Anarchy has been split up into sub groups specifically because it can be taken to mean multiple things. Now there are Anarcho-capitalists (American Libertarians), Anarcho-socialists, Anarcho-syndicalism, etc.


Of course; virtually all arguments are semantics. I was simply looking for clarification into nirvana's intended meaning. That that involved getting into the semantics of anarchism/socialism/libertarianism/what-have-you is the nature of this kind of discussion.

If I was concerned with finding the 'right' answer, or pushing my own political ideology (which happens not to be any of those currently under discussion), then I could see why we'd need to have a discussion about what 'anarchism' with or without adjectives really is.

I was, however, only concerned with the history of these ideologies (as a former student of precisely this topic). I had hoped to probe into that by bringing up the diverging uses of the category libertarian in the broader history of European politics and the divergence of U.S. political categories from those.

Certainly never meant to upset anyone.


You are technically correct, which Futurama calls 'the best kind of correct', but it isn't really.

When you're arguing about what kind of thing a thing is, you can call that a semantic argument, but if you're trying to characterize something that exists in practice, this is different from fighting over dictionary definitions.

(Interestingly, I got into the contrapositive of this argument on HN the other day: I tried to use a math term to mean something closely related to the standard definition, and people jumped on me for misusing it.)




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