A1. What is a libertarian?
The word means approximately "believer in liberty". Libertarians believe in individual conscience and individual choice, and reject the use of force or fraud to compel others except in response to force or fraud. (This latter is called the "Non-Coercion Principle" and is the one thing all libertarians agree on.)
A2. What do libertarians want to do?
Help individuals take more control over their own lives. Take the state (and other self-appointed representatives of "society") out of private decisions. Abolish both halves of the welfare/warfare bureaucracy (privatizing real services) and liberate the 7/8ths of our wealth that's now soaked up by the costs of a bloated and ineffective government, to make us all richer and freer. Oppose tyranny everywhere, whether it's the obvious variety driven by greed and power-lust or the subtler, well-intentioned kinds that coerce people "for their own good" but against their wills.
A3. Where does libertarianism come from?
Modern libertarianism has multiple roots. Perhaps the oldest is the minimal-government republicanism of the U.S.'s founding revolutionaries, especially Thomas Jefferson and the Anti-Federalists. Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill and the "classical liberals" of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were another key influence. More recently, Ayn Rand's philosophy of "ethical egoism" and the Austrian School of free-market capitalist economics have both contributed important ideas. Libertarianism is alone among 20th-century secular radicalisms in owing virtually nothing to Marxism.
A4. How do libertarians differ from "liberals"?
Once upon a time (in the 1800s), "liberal" and "libertarian" meant the same thing; "liberals" were individualist, distrustful of state power, pro-free- market, and opposed to the entrenched privilege of the feudal and mercantilist system. After 1870, the "liberals" were gradually seduced (primarily by the Fabian socialists) into believing that the state could and should be used to guarantee "social justice". They largely forgot about individual freedom, especially economic freedom, and nowadays spend most of their time justifying higher taxes, bigger government, and more regulation. Libertarians call this socialism without the brand label and want no part of it.
Home
