This is the portion of the leftist/libertarian agenda that they have so effectively advanced in our schools and throughout America in the last 50 years. Some of this is physically in the schools itself, the rest of it is in the curriculum, and cultural teaching of the schools.
Here is the leftists agenda hidden behind the Libertarian Party curtain.
Libertarian Party Platform:
Throw open the borders completely; only a rare individual (terrorist, disease carrier etc.) can be kept from freedom of movement through “political boundaries”.
Homosexuals; total freedom in the military, gay marriage, adoption, child custody and everything else.
Abortion; zero restrictions or impediments.
Pornography; no restraint, no restrictions.
Drugs; Meth, Heroin, Crack, and anything new that science can come up with, zero restrictions.
Advertising those drugs, prostitution, and pornography; zero restrictions.
Military Strength; minimal capabilities.
The Libertarian Party. And, they were influential in the culture, such as free sex and drugs?
Actually, I think the cause and effect goes the other way. As the ‘50s gave way to the ‘60s, the culture changed. I don’t know, some combination of the Greatest Generation moving through the life cycle, along with protests against the Vietnam War. Maybe the invention of the Pill. A lot of things were going on.
But, one of them wasn’t the Libertarian Party. The Libertarian Party came about during the 1970s. During the ‘60s, you had Bill Buckley who had some libertarian impulses, but was basically a conservative, and Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan, who were Western-style conservatives.
There were some individual Libertarians who were influential back in those days. Milton Friedman was an unofficial advisor to Nixon. Alan Greenspan, who for a time was associated with Ayn Rand, was an official advisor to Nixon. The fellow who wrote Goldwater’s line “Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in pursuit of justice is no virtue,” Karl Hess, was a libertarian. (But, he lifted that line from Cicero.)
So, even before the Libertarian Party, there were some influential Libertarians. But, no Libertarian Party, and nothing approaching a movement. When those things started to develop, you did have the emergence of the kind of Libertarian you’re talking about, whom Ayn Rand called “right-wing hippies.” Murray Rothbard, known within Libertarian circles as “Mr. Libertarian,” and a long-time associate of Ron Paul, called them “Leuftmenchen” or “air people,” for their lack of means of support. But, we’re talking of a subgroup of a group that was pretty small to begin with, no member of whom ever was individually influential.
To move the clock ahead a few decades, during the 1990s, there emerged a new consensus in the democratic world, the “neo-liberal,” or “conservative-liberal” view. Tony Blair and Bill Clinton reflected this view in the left-of-center parties. They kind of grabbed on to the economic policies of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. From the left-of-center view, this means that a market economy could support a secularized welfare state, Of course, today, with Barack Obama, we have the return of a radical left, multi-cultural and socialistic agenda.
I’m sorry but I don’t think we have yet to see the emergence of new, vigorous leadership in the center-right parties of the democratic world. Prime Minister Fujimori of Japan and President George W. Bush were promising, but were overcome by circumstances. Chancellor Merkel of Germany has been unimaginative and old school. Perhaps the most successful “market-liberals” have been the Polish Civic Party and the Swedish Moderate Party. But, their countries are on the small side.
In our country, “conservatives” constitute the majority, but that’s combining the libertarian- or economic-conservatives along with the social-conservatives and national security-conservatives. It’s a bit of a trick to keep all three of these balls in the air, and only certain leaders can do this on a sustained basis.