Bryan Magee, one of my favorite writers is known for his books dedicated to popularizing philosophy for the general public. In one of his books, Confessions of a Philosopher he covers politics at some point and in one chapter he talked about his encounters and debates with the 'radical right', which to me seems like the British version of the US libertarian politics. While he ultimately is not convinced to go along with their programs, he gained much respect for it and decided that it represented the strongest alternative to his classical liberal stance. He gives the reasons for why he believes and I believe it spells out why people outside of college activists, hipsters, and academic intellectual types seem to be suspicious of leftists:
"Three things added especially to its power as far as I was concerned. One was the intellectual honestly of it, the down-to-earth common sense which contrasted so refreshingly with the ideology and bogus moralizing of the left.
The second, following on this, from it's genuine populism, its closeness to the views, values, feelings, and aspirations of the so-called ordinary people, which is something that socialists had always hungered for, and often deceived themselves into believing they had, but never had. Many of them were utterly astounded when the dockers of London's East End marched in support of Enoch Powell, Britain's leading radical-right politician at the time - thereby exhibiting their total incomprehension of the actual views of such people.)
The third was its ability to point to living examples of what it was proposing, namely in the United States - a country that I loved, admired and felt at home in. Ever since my hear in Yale I had believed that if a grown-up human being were to arrive on Planet Earth without ties, and had to decide where to live, the obvious choice would be the United States - which does indeed seem to be the first preference of more international emigres than any other country."
"Three things added especially to its power as far as I was concerned. One was the intellectual honestly of it, the down-to-earth common sense which contrasted so refreshingly with the ideology and bogus moralizing of the left.
The second, following on this, from it's genuine populism, its closeness to the views, values, feelings, and aspirations of the so-called ordinary people, which is something that socialists had always hungered for, and often deceived themselves into believing they had, but never had. Many of them were utterly astounded when the dockers of London's East End marched in support of Enoch Powell, Britain's leading radical-right politician at the time - thereby exhibiting their total incomprehension of the actual views of such people.)
The third was its ability to point to living examples of what it was proposing, namely in the United States - a country that I loved, admired and felt at home in. Ever since my hear in Yale I had believed that if a grown-up human being were to arrive on Planet Earth without ties, and had to decide where to live, the obvious choice would be the United States - which does indeed seem to be the first preference of more international emigres than any other country."