I Was a Card-Carrying Libertarian: Confessions of a Black Sheep Republican
Boy do I agree with you Stephen, I followed a similar path – I subscribed to Reason for a time, I voted L every chance I could for any election.
But the anti-war stuff from libertarians mystifies me. It seems to me that the core belief that people can live with minimal government support is based on the assumption that neighbors help each other.
Well, at a macro scale spreading freedom to other societies is simply the same concept on a larger scale.
It’s crazy to be against helping Iraq (for that’s what is really going on there now, more so than a classical war) because of the huge dividend the world gets from a society where people are free to study what they want and express themselves how they like (far more so than any potential recruiting any terrorist organizations get – note how that aspect has entirely dried up in Iraq already!). And with an Iraq grateful to America for assistance, we also get a nation of willing translators and potential agents to help us deal with other countries not as friendly…
How anyone familiar with what a dictatorship or fundamentalist government does to women supports the status quo of the world today is beyond me.
Perhaps there is some way to jump start a new wing of the Libertarian party that has an explicit plank of allowing for defense and helping other nations as appropriate.
