Squared Circle

From Nick Gillespie's Neofiles interview:

I said in my earlier response that I'm interested in using libertarian as an adjective as much as a noun. I'm happy to recognize common tendencies and impulses in people even if I don't share all or even any of their political beliefs. And I should point out that some socialists were socialists at least in part because they thought it would give rise to a less-onerous state that enforced mass conformity. That was the thinking of the people who founded Dissent in the 1950s; they were socialists but also individualists railing against big government and big business as stultifying (and they were anti-Soviet, which was no small achievement for leftists of that period). I disagree with them — I think the logic of socialism inevitably leads to conformity, to the grey culture of the Soviet Union — but at least we share certain goals, including the creation of a world where individuals have many options and possibilities in self-development.