[xrp]

OH, BUT ALL YOU LIBERTARIANS WANT TO DO IS SMOKE POT, MAKE DRUGS LEGAL AND NO BORDERS!

[wagglebee]

Just curious, is Free Republic a conservative or a libertarian forum?

[RebelBanker]

Around here, the impression I get is that the libertarians' major concern is believed to be legalizing drugs.

[bmwcyle]

Libertarians the other liberal meat.

[meandog]

I resemble this fact!

[Beagle8U]

Libertarian.....Armed liberal that doesn't want to pay taxes.

[nosofar]

It always seemed to me to be two kinds of Libertarianism. One is what I refer to as radical libertarianism or radical individualism summed up in the phrase "You can do anything you want as long as you don't hurt someone." The crux is the definition of 'hurt'. Usually the such people refer solely to physical or financial harm, those things that can be seen and measured. They are unwilling to accept that a person can be harmed emotionally or spiritually. They are unwilling to place any value whatsoever on culture or society, unwilling to acknowledge the social dimension of people, unwilling to acknowledge that harm to a person's culture harms the person. This leads to narcissism and hedonism (just to throw a couple of -isms out there) as people are forced to withdraw from society. We lose the small community and become conglomerations of individuals. For a view for hte more traditional libertarianism (actually classic liberalism as it used to be defined by Jefferson, Locke, et.al.), I'd read Hayek's "The Constitution of Liberty".

Admittedly there are those conservatives that believe in big government forcing their agenda on the populace just as there are liberals who believe the same thing. There may be justification in this view, too, but personally I don't accept it. I'd still prefer smaller central government with more autonomous local government controlled by people at the local level. People must also have the liberty to be governed the way the choose instead of a one-size-fits-all government imposed on them.

[ClearCase_guy]

As far as I can see, Libertarians support:

Legalized drugs
Open borders
No action against terrorists in other countries

I used to think that Libertarians had some good ideas. Now, I would never vote for one.

[Jaysun]

I can't buy into their liberal-like ideas of personal irresponsibility. They argue that each is in fact responsible for himself, and that's true. But social policy and ideas matter. It was a change in social policy and ideas that took us from a time when women who showed their ankles were sluts to today's plague of wanton perversion. Things like homosex aren't beneficial to a people but they flourish when social and political constraints are removed.

[Psycho_Bunny]

Personally, I've always felt that Libertarians are just Anarchists who bathe.

[Sooth2222]

"If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. I think conservatism is really a misnomer just as liberalism is a misnomer for the liberals–if we were back in the days of the Revolution, so-called conservatives today would be the Liberals and the liberals would be the Tories. The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is."

"Now, I can’t say that I will agree with all the things that the present group who call themselves Libertarians in the sense of a party say, because I think that like in any political movement there are shades, and there are libertarians who are almost over at the point of wanting no government at all or anarchy. I believe there are legitimate government functions. There is a legitimate need in an orderly society for some government to maintain freedom or we will have tyranny by individuals. The strongest man on the block will run the neighborhood. We have government to insure that we don’t each one of us have to carry a club to defend ourselves. But again, I stand on my statement that I think that libertarianism and conservatism are travelling the same path."

-Ronald Reagan

[samtheman]

I don't trust Libertarians on the subject of war. I don't believe they get it when it comes to fighting wars.

[therut]

I am a libertarian.

[Diddle E. Squat]

Why you might be already be a Libertarian

7. If you consider grammar rules a gross infringement of your liberty.

13. If you can't even cut-n-paste a headline...

[RightWhale]

one of the most misunderstood in American politics

What would be the best-understood party in America? The YEC Party?

[Dead Corpse]

I'm already a libertarian. I was even a Libertarian until the went all "anti-war at any cost conspiracy left wing barking moonbat open borders are good" on me. Now I'm just a libertarian again.

[Antoninus]

The libertarian ideology is one of the most misunderstood in American politics.

I would argue that it's most commonly misunderstood by libertarians themselves. Get a bunch of them in a room together and they agree on almost nothing--except that smoking pot is cool and looking at pornography is fun.

Libertarianism is the perfect ideology for the frat house--and for 50-year-old adolescents.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

My wife is already a librarian.

[GSWarrior]

Well, the people I work for are anarcho-capitalists. Not sure I buy into all of that.

[truth_seeker]

"The libertarian ideology is one of the most misunderstood in American politics."

This (mis?)understanding would be the fault of the libertarians themselves.

I remember the words of Harry Browne following 9/11/2001. He blamed America. It might as well have been Noam Chompsky, Osama bin Laden or Pat Buchanan blaming America.

The fact is most Americans DO understand libertarianism.