I find it more compelling to put this thread in the Society and Rights forum; it's more of a theoretical discussion than the politics and government forum would allow (it's a bit more practical in nature over there). Plus, I think the focus here should be about the people and what they want in general.
Osborn should have fun with this one...
Libertarianism: economically conservative, socially liberal. The individual's rights and freedoms.
Populism: economically liberal, socially conservative. The people's will and power.
Which serves people more?
My case, at least in this thread, is that libertarianism is a cage, while populism is a fasces.
Fasces - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Libertarianism is a cage.
It sets out standards of rights for each individual and prevents any individual from damaging the integrity of another's freedoms. Each individual has no power over another. Each individual has only limited power to control oneself as far as he can reach without touching another individual's cage of freedoms and rights.
Each individual has no power over the size of anyone's cage, over the strength of anyone's freedoms or rights. The size of each individual's cage is outside the will of the people and is put in the hands of an arbitrary system of thought created by the intelligentsia. Libertarianism
shackles the individual's will, and prevents him from exercising his power over his surroundings based on standards that are not decided by the people but an arbitrary intelligentsia, a group of intellectuals who in their "wisdom" set down "rights" and "freedoms" that may or may not abide by the public will.
The people have no medium for change; no individual has power over another, no individual has a method of channeling his will into his society. The individual is trapped in his cage of arbitrary freedoms set down for the sake of "humanism," for "universalism of rights," for his "natural rights." Power is sacrificed for freedom. Will is sacrificed for rights. The people are shackled and placed in cages.
Populism is a fasces.
It, unlike libertarianism, provides a vehicle for change, a medium for the people's will: the government. In a Populist, Authoritarian Democracy, the people's will and power (Populist), substantiated with absolute authority over each individual (authoritarian), is channeled into government policy through open elections of representatives and popular referenda (democracy).
In this way, populism binds each individual to each other, as the twine ties each wooden rod together to form the cylinder of a fasces; it is then topped with an axe, the authority of the people, wielded by the combined strength of each rod, and held together with the twine of government.
Populism gives power to the people's will. The people are no longer shackled by arbitrary cages of "natural" or "universal rights." The people are now able to lay down their own laws, their own "freedoms." They are not bound by any intelligentsia, by any group of intellectuals who decide what an individual can or cannot do
for the people. Instead, the people
themselves decide their freedoms. No electoral college. No judicial review of constitutionality.
The people have the ultimate power, and their power is channeled into a representative government without the shackles of "universalism" and "humanism."
Concluding.
While the individual is shackled in libertarianism, unable to project his will onto others, with populism the collective holds power over each of its comprising individuals, and in this fashion the people can shape their society and their world. They can preserve their social institutions with legislation, can set down moral standards they deem good for their society, can privatize schooling if they want, legalize marijuana if they want, even create their own cages of rights and freedoms if they want. Whatever the PEOPLE want, the PEOPLE will have. That is populism.