By the way, those self-sufficient western ranchers prosper because they get water and grazing land from the government at rates far below marginal cost.  Also, study after study shows that the Rocky Mountain and Southwestern states, home of those self-styled rugged individualists, are subsidized by the effete wusses of the coasts.  That is, every year we see that red states get more federal tax dollars back, in the form of various programs, than they pay in taxes.  Blue states pay the freight.

That said, there’s no reason libertarianism has to disenfranchise or denigrate women, etc.  The core reason it fails is that unbridled self-interest leads to Enron and Chevron, not to some Jeffersonian pipe dream.

Seconding what stuart said. I come from old-west heritage (if you can believe it). The fantasy of libertarian old-westism simply doesn’t match up with the reality. Apart from the single mothers who homesteaded in states like Colorado and Wyoming, there was a very careful goverment hand in the development of the west… hell, look at the homestead act. The government handed out 160 free acres to anyone who could fill out a title and work to improve the land. Obviously, this worked out very well for white people… not so much for the Native Americans and freed slaves. Even the modern-day libertarian ranchers owe their livelihood to the hard work of the fine federal boys over at the Bureau of Reclamation. Without the careful government management of the water tables and access rights, cattle ranching would have quickly turned the entire west into a desert.  In the last 8 years we have seen a breathtaking breakdown in quality of the water in the old west thanks to Bush allowing energy interests to rewrite the rules for what you can do upstream.

The core reason it fails is that unbridled self-interest leads to Enron and Chevron, not to some Jeffersonian pipe dream.

Just wanted to say HELL YEAH.

I love this post.

“That is, every year we see that red states get more federal tax dollars back, in the form of various programs, than they pay in taxes.  Blue states pay the freight.”

This has been the model for much of the Old Confederacy.  The same states - Alabama, Mississippi end up at the bottom of the list when it comes to literacy rates, HS graduation, maternal health, infant mortality, etc - yet they will not pay local taxes (income, property, sales) to support their residents.  That’s why the Bu$hco administration stopped issuing the reports that summarize each states contribution and return on federal taxes.

So, uh, do you want to inform libertarian socialist Noam Chomsky and left-libertarian Kevin Carson that they’re actually right-wing authoritarians, or shall I?

I mean, Sweet Jeebus Flesh in Cracker Form, we seem perfectly able to identify a full spectrum of beliefs for Democrats, and we can look back at history to see how there was once a fair number of moderate Republicans, yet once “libertarian” comes up, every single self-identified libertarian is a kook like Ron Paul (who is actually a socially conservative Republican with some libertarian ideas).  So is the entire Democratic Party the equivalent of the Blue Dogs?  (Based on their power to dictate the agenda, I’d actually lean towards “yes,” but that’s another debate.)  Are all progressives identical to William Jennings Bryan?  The problem with libertarians is the problem with many groups: the noisiest members aren’t necessarily the most authentic ones.  Radley Balko may be many things, but he’s not an authoritarian.  Yes, the comment threads at Hit & Run are flush with racist, misogynist social conservatives who play dress-up as libertarians.  And real libertarians like Jim Henley occasionally pop in to mock them.  Glenn Greenwald is also a rather libertarian fellow who I suspect doesn’t have it in for gays or women, and he’s hand-in-glove with a lot of self-identified libertarians.

So there’s plenty of roome to freely mock the Libertarian Party and “schmibertarians” in general without asserting that they’re all there is to libertarianism.  Not that hurting the feelings of a comparative handful of politically-motivated people will matter in any practical sense, but there are a few allies in the struggle against imperialism, the militarization of police, executive overrreach, etc. who haven’t earned being dumped on.  The Unqualified Offerings libertarian cabal have repeatedly been called “liberals” by drive-by commenters, especially when they washed their hands of Ron Paul because of his racist ties, or when they defend the rule of law against the latest “OMG!  Islamofascists are going to kill us!” nonsense coming from government and the media.

Just my two pence.  As someone who in occasional ridiculously optimistic moments dreams of the progression social democracy -> democratic socialism -> libertarian socialism, I get a little sensitive about the libertarian thing.  Well, except for anarcho-capitalists.  Beat up on them all you want.

In the immortal words of my friend Hannah: “The only people stupider than libertarians are ravers.”

Yeah, I too would like to see more distinction made between civil libertarianism of the serious, respectable school as formulated by many European thinkers in the 19th century, and the bat-shit crazy property worship / tax avoidance commonly referred to as “Libertarianism” in modern American political discourse. They’re not even vaguely similar.

Just wanted to jump in and second the defense of real libertarians like Radley Balko.  The State of Mississippi is going to be freeing wrongfully imprisoned innocents and paying out wrongful-imprisonment settlements in large part because of his work, and that ain’t the mark of an authoritarian.

C’mon.  We know that Time Magazine is a stable of wankers—isn’t it more likely that just this once, they turned their Distort-o-Tron toward somebody other than progressives?

I used to find libertarians mildly amusing, but more tolerable in social situations than doctrinaire conservatives, but that’s changed—at least conservatism can point to examples of societies (mostly monarchies/empires) that function adequately under conservative rule.  They still suck horribly for plenty of people, but they function.  Libertarianism, though, doesn’t seem to have worked (and by ‘worked’ and function’ I mean in producing societies that have been stable, orderly, & relatively prosperous) anywhere for more than a few thousand people at most.  It’s not just an adolescent philosophy because it appeals so strongly to white adolescent males trying to both justify and expand their assumed privilege, though; it’s that libertarianism at best is useful only in the adolescent phase (expansion & settlement) of building a society, which as several pointed out above, was in the US still heavily managed by the federal government.

BTW, they can’t have New Hampshire for their proposed grand experiment as far as I’m concerned, either—there’s too much infrastructure nearby for them to utilize, which weakens the moral fiber.  A big square state with nothing in it is the only appropriate choice.

latts, it’s funny how all those Libertarians in New Hampshire learn to love Socialist Vermont once they get sick or need to go on welfare.

This doesn’t really address the Ron Paul enthusiasts, though.  A guy stumping for shrinking the US Military and scale back subsidies to big industry doesn’t exactly strike me as someone looking to pick up the White Man’s Burden.

Libertarian is just a polite way of describing Anarchists.  And anarchists tend to pop up when they feel a heavy hand of government.  When laws favor integration and fairness between sexes and high taxes on the rich, you see a lot of racist, misogynist, old rich white guys taking up the flag.  When laws favor segregation and female oppression and reverse-Robin Hood tax schemes, I’m betting you’ll see a lot more minority, females, and working class libers pop up.

Right now many laws on the books (at least, as written) push in favor of women’s lib.  But if the GOP managed to flip those laws and start pushing bans on women in the workplace, mandating covenant marriages, outlawing abortion, or any of that other heavy handed bullshit, I imagine you guys would start talking like libertarians too.  When no laws seem better than laws on the books, libertarian looks like a better option.

Now, the current crop of “libertarians” in Congress are mostly just posers and hacks.  You can’t vote for the Iraq War or embrace government regulation of the uterus without betraying where you really stand on issues.  Finding a dyed-in-the-wool “libertarian” who even has a chance at office is harder to do today than it has ever been.  All that “I’m a cowboy, eat’n beans out of a can” bullshit imagery is for the Cheetos munching delusional Powerline reader.  Libertarianism isn’t about growing living in a log cabin in Wyoming on a diet of roots and berries and wolly mammoth.  It’s about getting rid of the police.

Thank you Dunc, et. al. I used to consider myself a, incredibly liberal libertarian (as in Founding Fathers, Enlightenment ideals type) largely because I thought, and still do, think tribalism is the best form of social organization. Of course, that doesn’t work at all modern society, and the moment I realized the game was rigged, so to speak, I became a Democrat.

Not all people who are sympathetic to libertarian ideals are authoritarians. Just the white male assholes.

If Libertarian philosophy results in women and minorities becoming second-class citizens and losing their voice, that’s not by design, it’s just because the market naturally favors white men, now, isn’t it.

Libertarian is just a polite way of describing Anarchists.

I disagree, Zifnab.  In practice, Libertarians are market-economy oriented. They believe that unfettered private enterprise is the key to ensuring social prosperity. Anarchists are more concerned with personal liberty, and generally eschew authority of all forms, including the boss-employee relationship (which is so central to the success of industry).

I recognize that much of what I consider libertarianism is really Objectivism, but so many self-professed libertarians are smitten with Ayn Rand, I think the overlap is pretty large.

I love the show Bullshit when it’s actually about debunking cranks. I just wish Penn&Teller;weren’t Libertards.

May they take many, many votes away from McCain.

I thought, and still do, think tribalism is the best form of social organization. Of course, that doesn’t work at all modern society [...]
Not all people who are sympathetic to libertarian ideals are authoritarians.

What do you mean by tribalism? Strikes me that tribal agricultural societies are typically fiercely patriarchal. (Hunter-gatherer tribes may have been more egalitarian. I don’t know much about it, but I suspect they still tended to favor male privilege.)

The trouble with having sympathy for libertarian ideals (and I personally am very sympathetic to anarchist ideals, which is related) is that they have a tendency to result in authoritarianism, in spite of our lack of sympathy for it.  We might love the idea of a bunch of micro-societies composed of twenty or thirty families minding their own business and trading with each other, but that equilibrium won’t maintain itself for long.  Within the tribe, the stronger members begin exerting influence over the weaker, and passing their privilege on to their friends and families. And between tribes, you find there’s not much to stop one tribe invading the other’s land for its resources.

Libertarian is just a polite way of describing Anarchists.
Actually Libertarians and Anarchists are opposites.  Anarchists want *no* government; Libertarians want a government that is strong enough to enforce contracts and keep the peasants from getting uppity.

It’s fun to play with Libertarians’ heads by playing the “should government do [whatever]” game.  Once you get them to admit that the government should have the power to enforce public health rules, you’ve won.  (Mary Mallon is the poster child here.)

Time magazine? Really?

While you accurately describe a certain type of American pseudo-libertarian (the militia/survivalist/cowboy fantasist), the Time article you use as your jumping-off point is a bogus trend piece disguised as a political feature. It posits the potential for some sort of unified libertarian movement based on the thin facts that a Republican (i.e. social authoritarian) Presidential aspirant holds some pseudo-libertarian populist views, that some amusingly obnoxious magicians (love Penn & Teller) have tapped a new and repellantly obnoxious audience, and that some Marlboro-smokin’ rifle-collectin’ rubes still believe in the rugged Myth of the West.

I hold some very strong social libertarian views, and some mild (more philosophical than prescriptive) fiscal libertarian views. Although some would (and have) called me a libertarian on that basis, I’m much too willing to acknowledge the state’s vital role protecting the domestic commonweal and I’m much too unwilling to pretend that big corporations can’t be as tyrannical as big government to honestly label myself even a small-l libertarian (the Libertarian Party, of course, is a complete joke).

All that said, and despite the “formal journalist tone,” Time magazine bears as much resemblance to serious journalism as McDonalds does to nutritious food. Even had I picked it up in a mechanic’s waiting room, I wouldn’t be quite impressed or driven to chortle by an analysis and “expose” of libertarianism in a magazine which is more interested in maintaining the easy-to-cover red/blue fiction than it is presenting an accurate picture of independent voters (most of whom, like me, hold what would be called libertarian views).

In practice, Libertarians are market-economy oriented. They believe that unfettered private enterprise is the key to ensuring social prosperity.

Yep, that’s certainly the current de-facto definition. It’s a great example of the difference between Libertarians and libertarians, as the roots of genuine libertarianism (of the respectable, etc, etc school) lie at least partly in a recognition of the appalling results that industrialisation had for the lives and liberties of the working class. Respectable libertarians recognised that there are many forms of power, and that economic power is one of the most significant.

I’m much too willing to acknowledge the state’s vital role protecting the domestic commonweal and I’m much too unwilling to pretend that big corporations can’t be as tyrannical as big government to honestly label myself even a small-l libertarian

Sounds like genuine, good old-fashioned small-l libertarianism to me… It’s a real shame that the term has been so thoroughly corrupted that there isn’t even a word for what it used to mean any more. Making ideas unthinkable by eliminating the terms you need to think them, how very Newspeak…

Amanda, this is a terrific post.

Libertarians are the Marxists of the Right. Libertarianism, like Marxism can offer good critiques of certain government policies (the drug war) and society, but as a whole system of philosophy it falls flat on its face.

If this were the 18th Century and we were still an agrarian, pre-industrial society it might work better, but its not and never will be again.

I disagree about the positive regard for the Time article which I felt was written with the deliberate intent of minimizing and obscuring all of the things that Amanda so clearly and aptly points out.

The post itself however was fantastic as it gets right at the heart of why libertarianism bugs the fuck out of me. “libertarianism” is a movement of penny-ante authoritarians who hate the government to the extent that it keeps them from shitting all over other human beings.

And I think that libertarians read history that way, and would like to roll back the clock until the liberties are only extended to the people that were first marked as deserving in the Constitution—-property-owning white men.

It’s not even hard to get them to outright say it; just pick at the surface and you’ll get these guys going on about how much better democracy was when it was only property owners who could vote, because it made sure the voters were all responsible citizens.

“We might love the idea of a bunch of micro-societies composed of twenty or thirty families minding their own business and trading with each other.”

That’s precisely what I think is ideal. Of course, around 17 I realized it was totally unrealistic and pragmatism led me to being more of a Democrat.

One thing I really like about libertarianism is the idea of free choice. If people want to make a society based on this that or the other thing (religion, a certain philosophy, whatever) have at it. Of course, doesn’t really work in reality.

I’m still a very big advocate of school and parental choice. I don’t think the government can tell me where I can birth my child, how I should raise them, and what they should learn in school. I consequently plan to homebirth should i ever get over this damn infertility, and homeschool for liberal reasons (I hate NCLB, factory schooling enforces conformity and dehumanization, etc.). And I think to be truly libertarian you have to adamantly feminist, which of course I am, and opposed to the insane drug laws and other forms of authoritarian bullshit.

And all this time I thought the basic libertarian ideal was that anyone should be free to do as they please as long as they don’t infringe on someone else’s rights.

Sounds like genuine, good old-fashioned small-l libertarianism to me

Maybe it used to be, but at a certain point we have to acknowledge that it no longer is. Even the small-l libertarians I know and respect seem remarkably blind to the coercive powers and massive bureaucratic inefficiencies of the modern large corporation. The ones I don’t respect actually seem to long for the company town (making the unwarranted assumption that they’ll be managers).

So “independent liberal” it is.

<blockquote>This post is about the people that the word “libertarian” denotes in American 2008, the people covered in this article<blockquote>

Amanda, this post is about the your (very accurate views) of the people that Time- magazine (very inaccurately) denotes as “libertarian” in America ca. 2008. I think you’d find a lot of thoughtful libertarians (for example, some of the better writers at reason.com ) who’d disagree with Time‘s characterisation.

What do you mean by tribalism? Strikes me that tribal agricultural societies are typically fiercely patriarchal.

Not only that, but the quickly devolve into religious and ethnic sectarianism. Writ large (and it gets writ large relatively quickly), they become feudal or theocratic societies with no real urban middle class or Jeffersonian yeomanry, but with lots of sexism and bigotry. Unless one counts Rousseau’s romantic views of the state of nature, what most scholars define as tribalism is about as far from Enlightenment political ideals as one can get.

Anarchists are just as deluded, make that <u>more</u>, than Libertarians, and the tone of acceptance here for that bankrupt idea bothers me.

Libertarians strike me as favoring a “sink or swim” sort of life style.
That’s fine if you’re a single, educated person.

When you’re responsible for four small people, you sink.

This is why I always say I don’t believe in rugged individualism, because I am neither rugged, nor an individual. I’m head of a household.

“Libertarians strike me as favoring a “sink or swim” sort of life style.
That’s fine if you’re a single, educated person.

When you’re responsible for four small people, you sink. “

Amen. I think I pointed out before that there is a reason why Ayn Rand never had any children or old people in her books.

Gracchus, I agree with you about Reason.com. They have good stuff on there about the militarization of police and the drug war that probably everyone here would agree with.

I have an idea!  Let’s argue semantics instead of deal with the actual content of this post.

What’s to deal with? Modern American “Libertarians” are, apparently without exception, a bunch of over-privileged, self-obsessed, whiny, middle-class, white guys with delusions of grandeur and a complete inability to empathise with other people. In other news, the birds go “tweet”, and it has recently been discovered that the sun rises in the east.

Mocking the afflicted may be fun, but it’s hardly interesting. What might be interesting is the question of how exactly we got from John Stuart Mill to the fucking Cato Institute. Still, your blog, your post, your rules, I know… Sorry for the thread-jacking.

Those dismissing “small-l libertarianism” based on the features of contemporary American Libertarianism, as though they were the same thing, really are missing the point of the distinction.  Try saying, “I’ve never seen libertarianism represented any other way than the shape it takes in the hands of the big-L Libertarian movement.”

Then go read Kevin Carson for a few hours, and while you’re doing that, understand that he is not a lonely outsider… indeed, the model he subscribes to is a recognizable face of libertarianism… outside of the U.S.

The high volume of BS put out by what Kevin aptly names ‘Vulgar Libertarians’ obscures something quite different.  But that doesn’t mean that other something isn’t there.  I have my disagreements with it, but they don’t extend to dismissing its existence.  They have much more in common with progressives than you might think.

I have an idea!  Let’s argue semantics instead of deal with the actual content of this post.  I’m super happy that some people think they can reclaim the word “libertarian” from its common usage.  They can lie to themselves day in and day out.

On the internet everything is American and nothing existed before Ronald Reagan.

Eric, Rejector of Memes sez:

Anarchists are just as deluded, make that more, than Libertarians, and the tone of acceptance here for that bankrupt idea bothers me. <\blockquote>

I find this reaction odd, since the feminism Amanda advocates is an special instance of left-anarchism applied to authority within gender institutions. Of course some of the people who congregate here are concerned with authority beyond gender institutions. It’s just a useful philosophical exercise to identify who has power and whether their possession of it is justified, regardless of the domain to which you apply the reasoning. So when Amanda sez…

<blockquote>By the way, I’ve heard a lot about how anarchist communities manage to slide right into women doing all the shit work while men get to do manly things and shoot the shit, which is different from shit work.  Indeed, one wonders if imagining yourself as a leftist makes it even easier to oppress women, because you’re telling yourself that’s not what’s going on.

... she identifies communities that are full of fail, just like the libertarian capitalists who explain away the illegitimate authority of corporate entities: these are so-called anarchists who explain away the illegitimate authority of the patriarchy. They should question their own practices, and indeed should question whether their ideal practices are even attainable.

That said, there’s no reason libertarianism has to disenfranchise or denigrate women, etc

You might want to inform Libertarians of that, because pretty much all of them are extremely hostile to feminism and women’s rights.  At first, it flabbergasted me.  They could try to get Libertarianism to appeal to women by making the case that, in a Libertarian society, women could be equal to men and have as much chance at success.  The problem is that’s not what they want.  The insecure white males who make up the bulk of Libertarians in this country do not want equality with women, period.

Let’s not forget another component of libertarianism - the right to be the biggest prick in the room, and the belief that any attempt to make someone stop being a prick is somehow an infringement on their rights.

What interests me is that Libertarians are much more interested in freedom as an expression of ownership than they are in freedom as an expression of liberty. Both parties are (theoretically) about freedom.

Right-wing Libertarians are interested in the freedom to control things: they want to have personal control over objects in their life… gun control and taxes threaten to take things away from them and so they find themselves siding more with the Republican line of thinking because it’s about keeping their property. They believe that taxes are theft, and that gun control is the first step towards police state.

Left-wing libertarians (also known as progressives) are interested in the freedom for their own persons: they want to have personal control over their own lives… anti-drug laws, anti-choice laws, and sodomy laws threaten to take personal choices away from them so they find themselves siding more with the Democratic line of thinking because it’s about keeping their freedoms. They aren’t so much down on taxes (placing a higher value on good social safety net that respects the individual than they do about material things) and they may or may not be interested in gun control—if they are pro-gun-control it’s more likely that they live in urban areas where the term “innocent bystander” could actually include themselves.

Both Libertarians and Progressives see problems in eminent domain—I feel that is the point of agreement.

When you look at these two breakdowns as a dichotomy between the struggle to maintain absolute authority over possessions vs. the struggle to maintain absolute authority over one’s own life and liberty, Amanda’s arguments are perfectly framed. When one begins to see themselves through the lense of their identity as having dominion over things outside of their own person, it’s easy to extend that sense of dominion to other people—women, children, slaves, anything that you can point to and say “this is mine,” rather than pointing to yourself and saying “I am my own person.” Anything that threatens that power structure and would claim “no, those things do not belong to you,” be they taxes or gun control or feminism or the civil rights movement are all threatening in the same way, because they’re taking away something that the Libertarian feels was rightly theirs.

Another way of talking about Amanda’s “roll-back-the-clock” comment is that big-L Libertarians seem to think that most of the status quo, with white guys in charge of the overwhelming majortiy of property and power, is just fine, even though it took enormous government (fsvo “government”) intervention to get there. It’s like any number of playground games where some kids think it’s a good idea to outlaw stealing and cheating once they’ve got what they want.

Late to the game, but if anybody notices this I’ll mention this.

As someone who actually studied this stuff in elementary school, the “libertarian model” would quickly form into a traditional company store type economy. Full stop.

Freedom isn’t just freedom from the government. To a degree, it’s also about freedom from each other. This is the part that most Libertarians miss. In fact, this is the part that most people miss. (Take for example, those that would deny the freedom of speech of others, while claiming their own, just because they’re not the government and they’re just doing it via harassment.)

What might be interesting is the question of how exactly we got from John Stuart Mill to the fucking Cato Institute.

Charles Koch.  His father funded the John Birch Society, he funded the Cato Institute.

Koch’s small fortune turned into billions from outright theft of oil that flowed over his transport network and was sold through his commodities trading system.  He’s got a little complex in Wichita KS that even includes a 70’s - 80’s “modern” (a.k.a. hideous) skyscraper right out The Fountainhead.  He even published a book that is a total whitewash of his operations called amusingly enough “The Science of Success”;  though it quotes liberally from Hayek and Friedman (the Pinochet-loving one, not the flat earth blowhard), it has almost nothing from actual sociologists, psychologists, or historians.  (You can always tell a Libertarian when they go to economists for history lessons.)

Hear hear, Mighty Ponygirl!

And while some libertarians will grudgingly admit that you should have a right to settle that in lawsuit, that’s all good and nice, but I prefer a system where my shit isn’t fucked up and I don’t have to waste my own time or energy getting compensation that won’t actually fix the problem.

Hence my motto for the Libertarian Party ideal: “Government by the lawyers, of the lawyers and for the lawyers.”

My absolutely fall-down funniest “just doesn’t get it” Libertarian quote came from a local mayoral candidate, who defended his record of just hiring people for his manufacturing company as part-timers (and thus not providing any benefits, etc) “If the government would stop making me provide benefits to full-time workers, I’d hire more full time workers.” completely oblivious to the fact that the reason people want full-time jobs is because they come with benefits…

Nevada is free because people from southern California swarm into Las Vegas every weekend and pour money into the Nevada economy.

Libertarians are the Marxists of the Right.

Word. And when you consider what happened when Marxists actually took over a large nation… what we’d like to avoid, here, is a situation where Ayn Rand is to the 21st century what Karl Marx was to the 20th.

Because if it happens again - if, like the Marxists, they bite of a third of the planet and masticate it for a century before vomiting up the detritus - the portion of the planet this happens to will be where I live.

Oh, one more thing - to me, this objection of some progressive libertarians to being tarred with the brush used to paint Libertarians seems very much like the objection of some progressive christians to being tarred with the brush used to paint Christians. Just sayin’.

“Property is theft.”  - Some French Libertarian dude.

almost all of the stuff I read on anarchists back in the day talked about the difference between “leftist” and “rightist” anarchists, with libertarians being, basically, rightwing anarchists.

once you’ve decided to oppose authority, you have to learn to figure out which kinds of legitimate authority you can deal with long enough to get up and brush your teeth in the morning.

While no doubt making a libertarian straw man (sic) allowed you to exercise out some spleen, neither you directly nor your excerpts from Time actually quoted any living, breathing libertarians other than comedian and “Jill-Jet” patent holder Penn Jillette, whose larger-than-life mouth represents himself and no one else.

It’s your blog, do what the heck you please.  But people who want to understand what actual libertarians have to say about the major problem of externalities (i.e. when I pollute the stream, I f*** you over and should pay) probably are not in fact reading Pandagon, since this is a sporadic torture chamber for libertarians, small and big L. 

Of course libertarian women don’t exist.  None of them.  There has never been one.  Actually hell no, the first woman to win electoral vote in this country was a large-L libertarian, not Gerry “Blacks have it too easy” Ferraro.  The fact that libertarian politics skew male is not evidence of the invalidity of the ideas, only of the poor libertarian rhetorical efforts towards women.  Maybe if the LP spent less time and cash fighting ballot access laws (typically imposed by Democrats and Republicans to create an effective cartel that would not be tolerated in most countries) not only for the Presidential race but for races down to dogcatcher, they would do a whole lot of other things better.

I do think nominating Bob Barr was a mistake, though.  Maybe in fairness I am part of the problem for selling out and registering Democratic last year.

{looks at picture, exclaims}: kitties!

Who, granted, can be about as libertarian as one gets . . .  although the whole stray/feral matriarchal colonies w/ communal child-rearing thing doesn’t quite match up . . .

The Franks also didn’t get the concept of res publica.  Look what happened to civilization.

Bruce-

Saying that libertarian women don’t exist is not what Amanda said (and, for the record, is a stupid thing to say in general).

The Libertarian approach is to pretend everybody has equal power already. Therefore, discrimination doesn’t exist (and if it did, karma - aka The Market - would wipe it out); therefore, claims of discrimination, sexism, and similar are lies, and if they’re not, why, you should just deal with it on your own.

On top of that, they’re seriously infected with defensive attribution. That’s secular Calvinism: if something bad happened to you, it must be your fault. (That way I don’t have to worry it will happen to me.)

To be fair, I have known libertarians whose primary interest was in government accountability - who would be unlikely to be found at a pot rally, but who are happy to spend their time trying to get the local small-town inbred school board to have open meetings, especially about why the board president’s brother-in-law seems to get all the school construction jobs. Or pushing for the local police to have an accountability board. Few and far between though.

I have patiently tried to explain to the posters over at Reason that historically, countries fall into one of three classes:  those that have government, those that have warlords/the Mafia, or those that are so anarchic they have neither (standard war zone); which one of those did they want to live in?

Libertarians are all for “self-government” until the unwashed plebes start voting for things like taxes and traffic lights, at which point they all start screaming about how deluded the masses are.  What they’re really pissed off at is that the bulk of Americans aren’t very interested in pure libertarianism.  Most Americans, although they will bitch about taxes, understand that they’re not the Greatest Evil in the world and think that paying taxes for infrastructure such as roads and bridges that don’t fall down is actually a Good Thing.  The average american also prefers not to have poison in his food, and doesn’t think that having the right to sue the manufacturer makes up for having his children sickened or killed.

Aside from the fact that a Libertarian society/economy would self-destruct after a few generations because no one would want to have kids….

Wow. As a regular reader and fan of this blog, it’s a bit discouraging to see how eagerly the strawmen libertarians are being thrown up here left and right.

I don’t want to get into a substantive discussion, because clearly it won’t be appreciated here, but I couldn’t not point out the level of exaggeration that is going on here. I run with a bunch of libertarian or libertarian-leaning crowds (and if forced to choose a label, would go for that one as well), and they are nothing like what is described in the Times article. Or this post. “Libertarian” is a fairly loose word to describes a certain range of political beliefs—some are bullshit, some are not, and some you may disagree with but are hardly worth any sort of vitriol.

Wow. As a regular reader and fan of this blog, it’s a bit discouraging to see how eagerly the strawmen libertarians are being thrown up here left and right.

So far the libertarians described here aren’t too far off from the ones I’ve seen.  You’ve got the IT-type blowhards all over the Internet (see Slashdot) who think that everyone should just become highly-paid consultants like them;  “nice” white folks (see College Station, TX) who think that welfare is killing all civilization everywhere;  “deep thinkers” who think privatization is the cure-all for long lines at the post office;  and of course the malicious manipulators like Charles Koch who are playing them all for an ego trip.

It’s well and good to talk about certain highbrow libertarian ideals that almost resemble a coherent philosophy that can even be tested in policy, but when virtually none of the libertarians you actually encounter even know about all that you begin to take shortcuts to describe the actual people you see putting up Libertarian Party signs in the yard.

which one of those did they want to live in?

They want to live in the one where *they* get to be warlord/king/emperor/etc.  Like just about everyone else, they want *their* agenda and interests to be the agenda and interests of their nation.  It is of course entirely impossible to run a nation that contains more than one person that is exactly aligned with the agendas and interests of every person within that nation, we generally find that a democracy (in some form) provides a good way of getting the various disagreeing voices to pick a compromise so that most people get most of what they want.  But there are always loosers - right now a lot of the loosers are sexist, racist twits who want the right to impose their racism and sexism on their business practices (and other aspects of their lives), a right that the majority has taken away from them so these people are the people screaming loudest that the current form of government doesn’t work.

I used to be a big fan of the idea that we should have more smaller nations, each run according to different rules and then we could where to go and live by principles that we personally favoured.  However this idea has lots of flaws in practice even if you think it really would be a good idea in theory.  I live in the UK, which is now part of the EU, which now has a law that says I can move wherever in the EU I like whenever I feel like it.  So in *theory* I can say “which of these countries do I think has the best system of government, the best laws, the best health service etc. etc.” and move there - however in *practice* I don’t speak any language other than English (so finding work in a non-English-speaking country would be hard), in *practice* I don’t want to move away from my friends and family; and of course in *practice* many of the people who would benefit most from moving from one country to another are the people least likely to be able to, for instance there was a news story about a young Polish girl who wanted an abortion and couldn’t get one in Poland, it might be in the interests of young Polish girls to move to a country where abortions are easier to obtain however when you are still legally a child you are basically stuck with what your parents choose, a problem faced by many children.  (of course in practice for most of the people in the world moving to a different country is a legal minefield, but obviously in the ideal world I was imagining this would not be the case)

I think Thom Hartmann put it best:  “Libertarians are Republicans who want to smoke pot and get laid.”

one wonders if imagining yourself as a leftist makes it even easier to oppress women, because you’re telling yourself that’s not what’s going on.

I’m reminded of a family dinner where my stepsister had a foot in a cast, and her husband had the audacity to complain about getting tired of chasing their child around when he was supposedly a physically fit man at the time.