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I read the words of loony loners who claim to be above the law. I read with incredulity a discussion about the private ownership of the oceans … and the Golden Gate Bridge. I read of nostalgia for the Ante Bellum South; about who is and who is not a Federalist

Maybe that's because we become bored with the same old dogma of those who attack Libertarians and head off into the realm of silliness for entertainment reasons.

I'm not a Libertarian. I'm a Conservative, I think. It's hard to know what is or is not conservative these days. This constant attacking of each other over neo and paleo nonsense leads me to believe that true Conservatives are a dying breed. In fact, I think Libertarians are more Conservative than Republicans these days.

”I'm not a Libertarian. I'm a Conservative, I think. It's hard to know what is or is not conservative these days. This constant attacking of each other over neo and paleo nonsense leads me to believe that true Conservatives are a dying breed. In fact, I think Libertarians are more Conservative than Republicans these days.”

I understand your confusion. Let me see if I can help: conservatives traditionally wish to conserve something. In a few cases they wish to restore something that has been destroyed by the Left. One such impulse is to rein in omnipotent government: one under which that which is not forbidden is compulsory. Another is to resist and roll back the secularization of society.

Conservatives understand human nature as being essentially prone to sin (or prone to do evil for those who reject theology). For that reason, humans need to be restrained by the bonds of law, custom or religion. The less informal bonds restrain them, the more they will need to be restrained by laws. As a result, conservatives favor religion and the public display of society’s disapproval of those acts which break society’s traditional taboos.

As an aside, this is one of the reasons that even non-believers like Jefferson paid homage to religion. Jefferson realized its utility in restraining those passions that would otherwise require elaborate laws and an overbearing government to restrain.

Libertarians, on the other hand, generally either disdain or hate bonds on human nature from religion or custom. Ayn Rand went on lengthy, and not very literary, rants about the evil of religion in her books. The Libertarian impulse is toward self-reliance and non-interference, which is fine as far as it goes. However, carried into practice in a society that is truly libertarian, would result in a society that few people would be prepared for.

In a libertarian society there would be no public assistance. Since such a society would be Randian, there would be no faith based assistance for those who fall on hard times. Lose your job, can’t pay the rent, get evicted in mid winter? Tough. Not my responsibility and I‘m not going to interfere. Shoot up with heroin (perfectly legal) and fall into a coma? Get the Darwin award. Crash your motorcycle into a tree and see your brains fall out? Well, it’s a free country and you’re not my problem, man. And, from society’s point of view, would we not all be better off if the jobless, the addicted and the careless were gone? All we would have left were the hard working, the strong and the skilled – a society of ubermenschen - and isn’t that the ideal Randian society?

There have never been societies like this, but it’s not one that I would care to live in, even if I were one of the top dogs. For those who fall into the gears to serve as object lessons for the rest, we have a distopia.