Well, for the record, I'm 26 and categorized myself as libertarian about 2 years ago or so. I often think of what you're talking about as my friends marry off - if I have kids someday, what would I say to them about drugs, for example?
The consistent libertarian in me says that I would talk to them about "free choice", from the standpoint that I can't prevent them from doing something they're hell-bent on doing. I suppose I'll teach them the best I can with a strong emphasis on "family", so that they're less inclined to use drugs.
However, something tells me that if I actually had my own flesh and blood running around in this world, part of me might be given a degree more of peace by thinking in the dominant paradigm - that drugs are just a little less available because of our laws so my kid is a degree more safe.
I imagine you're laughing at me now, saying to yourself that I couldn't possibly know anything about having a kid until I actually have one. Perhaps......
Until that day comes, I can only speculate. To me, however, with what I know now, it makes sense that drugs are first a cultural problem that cannot be solved through legislation and that if I'm depending on the law to prevent my kid from using them, I shouldn't be a parent in the first place.
Sounds to me like you know a lot more about parenting, or at least who should be a parent, than a good many of those who post to FR.
Maybe that's it. Think you might have hit the nail on the head. A bunch of these people have had a son, daughter, brother, sister, go bad, and had messed up their lives. So rather than blame the loved one whose life went to ruin, or blame themselves, or their parents, etc., they blame society, and ultimately every perceived libertarian aspect of society.
Some of these people believe themselves unable to handle freedom, so they want to make sure you and I don't have any either.
Actually, I'm not laughing at all-- I'm delighted to hear the thoughts of someone looking ahead in their life and planning as well as one can how to deal with potential problems. The way I see it, libertarianism is a perfectly rational philosophy, which would work perfectly if man were a perfectly rational animal-- but of course, he isn't. The aspect of it that most appealed to me when I was younger was the emphasis on freedom, making one's own judgments, and self-reliance. Like many young people today, my attitude was, "It's my life, and if I am hurting myself (which I never thought I was), well, that's my right." The same argument can be carried to an extreme and used to justify suicide. The biggest problem with that attitude, which many of us completely deride and discard until we become parents (or contemplate doing so) is that none of us was raised in the wilds by wolves. Many, many people-- parents, other family members, youth group leaders, dedicated teachers, and friends make enormous investments of time, energy and love in all of us. Without those investments, although we are loathe to admit it, most of us would be nothing. If you want a graphic and thought-provoking demonstration of how we are inextricably tied to one another, just attend the funeral of a young person, especially one who died by their own hand.
Libertarianism also seems to me to provide nothing to tide one over when rationality fails, and we face the occasional emotional pits of life. Viktor E. Frankl writes movingly of what really sustains us in his book "Man's Search for Meaning", which draws extensively on his experience in a Nazi concentration camp. Frankl found that those who survived lived for something larger than themselves-- whether for God, or for a family member, or for a passion for music, or science or some other intellectual endeavor. The self simply wasn't enough to sustain them-- they had to believe that there was something larger and more valuable than themselves that they needed to serve. In my own, much lesser trial with borderline depression, I can say that I believe Frankl is right.
No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main.... Any man’s death diminishes me because I am involved in Mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
-- John Donne (1572-1631)