Close enough...
A sincere belief in liberty presupposes that you must allow libertines who might glom on to your movement to hurt themselves without intervention. Freedom comes with costs that too few are willing to pay.
This tolerance ends when those same people start hurting others or their property in their quest for self destruction.
That definition works for me, and I’ve become pretty much a small l. LIke Santorum told Ron Paul (paraphrasing) “I don’t believe in “no government” and just vote no on everything like you do, I believe in small government that only does what the constitutions says it should do”.
To the extent that libertarianism stands for getting gov’t out of our lives, I think most conservatives support that.
“This tolerance ends when those same people start hurting others or their property in their quest for self destruction.”
Just so-everyone is responsible for their actions-f*** with someone else and you go to jail, get fined, etc-that is, if you are lucky enough to survive your intended victim’s ire...
St. Thomas Aquinas wrote about this in his Summa Theologica.
It is hard for some to get their heads wrapped around that view. To them, it is patently obvious that if something is bad, it must be outlawed. They either reject or ignore the unintended consequences of their position, and the fact that it ultimately leads to a conflict with the small government aspect of conservatism. This is why we have the massive government we have.
Mind you, I have disagreements with some self-identified "libertarians." I reject the idea that, for instance, allowing the state to enforce a mandate that others recognize same-sex unions as marriage is somehow libertarian. It isn't, and is actually precisely the opposite of libertarianism; it is statism, and denies people religious freedom.