[dr_who]

The left and so-called "moderates" (and mandy "conservatives"/RINOs) vilify libertarianism. The main if not the only reason for the left side of the spectrum (including the MSM) to do this is because it frightens conservatives into repudiating most of their own agenda. The left is afraid of libertarians because the left's time came and went a century ago. Conservatives have good and bad reasons to be opposed to libertarians, but this country will continue to decline until the mainstream political debate shifts to conservatives and libertarians.

[the invisib1e hand]

the left is the enemy, on this we agree (see my rant).

But a "defense" of libertarianism appearing in "Reason" is a bit of stretch, unless the Contradictions Editor is on holiday.

[dr_who]

Don't fall for the paranoid bullshit coming from people like Joe Conason.

Note that the left tries to frighten people with the prospect of a world without state power. It's a gigantic straw man when you consider how often congress repeals laws compared the the times they pass new laws, not to mention the size of our government and the recent "health care reform" bill. They want everyone to think that we are at the mercy of BP and Goldman Sachs. They certainly get some blame for when shit happens, but they always want to replace a large bureaucracy with a much larger bureaucracy even though the government has an awful record at regulating and policing the private sector and the world. For evidence of this, review the events of the last decade. Forget personal responsibility when its obvious that the politicians in power (including a few Republicans and the entire Democrat party) couldn't care less what voters think about graft, corruption, and patronage.

[Twotone]

I don’t understand the snotty jibe at Tea Partiers. The TEA Party movement has nothing to do with an economic downturn & everything to do with over-reaching government. Something a libertarian (small L or not) should be able to get behind!

[decimon]

As a child of the 1960s, I was one of you. I wore a “Madly for Adlai” button, delivered Kennedy brochures on my newspaper route...

Huh? Stevenson was the Democratic nominee in 1952 and 1956. He lost the nomination to JFK in 1960.

[loveliberty2]

Tea Partiers, by and large, are constitutionalists! They understand that "We, the People's" written Constitution places "The People" over "the government" they structured by that constitution. They do not advocate "no government." They advocate constitutional government.

Those who attempt to portray Tea Partiers in derisive, derogatory, or simply misinformed ways, are either deliberately misrepresenting them for the sake of their own agenda (Obama, Clinton, and the rest of the so-called "progressives"), or they are misinformed and ignorant.

Tea Partiers have read enough of their nation's real history (not the revisionist one perpetrated upon them by the "progressives") that they understand their role versus those who would set up a political class to rule over them. They understand the difference between freedom and slavery, between tyranny by government and liberty by the Constitution's limits on those in government.

In other words, Tea Partiers are of that same mind as America's Founders, who fled Europe to escape what today's regressive "progressives" are trying to inflict upon them in 2010.

Tea Partiers are more learned and more intellectual than the current crop of so-called leaders who look down their collective noses and sneer--including that ex-President who fears that their rhetoric is somehow likely to incite violence. Shame on you, Mr. Clinton, for, of all of them, you probably know better.