I like the Libertarians economic ideas and agree with their theory on when the govt should interfere with private citizens. But the party has become more and more socially radicalized and more resembles the RATs with their approval of deviance.
Regardless, the dirty little secret is that most Americans want nothing to do with freedom. It’s just a buzzword. They welcome more govt with open arms. A true freedom movement has no chance.
The thing about the Libertarian party is that it has a left and a right wing. When I was in Tennessee years ago and fiddling around with libertarianism, the party there was made up of a bunch of grumpy old guys who kept a copy of the constitution in their pocket. They struck me as hasically rightwing types who just were very serious about things like limited government and individual liberty. I would almost bet that the party in places like California would be full of a different sort of character — for whom libertarianism is more like an exotic form of liberalism.
"Freedom" does not mean the same thing as "License."
"Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites, - in proportion as their love to justice is above their rapacity, - in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption, - in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters."