In Europe, of course, libertarian still refers to what it did in the nineteenth century–the anarchist and anarcho-syndicalist wing of the revolutionary Left. I am not sure who stole the word in America for the pro-capitalist Right–Murray Rothbard?

Who cares if drugs and prostitutes are legal when the government is taxing you at a 90% rate and you have no money to spend on them?

You can always buy social freedom with money. The reverse does not work.

I guess “liberaltarian” describes me as well, though I tend to prefer the label “market liberal”, which was first suggested to me by Michael Rothschild (author of Bionomics). Anyway, the problem I’ve always had when consorting with so called liberals is that they seem to think the injunction against ad hominem doesn’t apply to them. It is routine to hear them talking about how stupid conservatives and libertarians are. Conservatives also don’t agree with me. But they don’t call me a moron either.

I suspect the root cause of this, suggested to me many years ago by the psychologist Peter Breggin, is that liberals believe they have a monopoly on good intentions. This is reinforced by their intellectual history, which embraces the notion of class struggle. The rise and fall of Nazism in the 20th century also did a lot to cement the notion of leftists as good guys, and everyone else as plain evil.

Outside of politics, I prefer the company of liberals. But Peter, I think, is quite right when he says that they simply do not understand what markets accomplish, or why we cannot do without markets. They are constructivists in Hayek’s sense of the word. They are the people who inspire the observation that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

I agree that the Democrats we’ve had in power have done no better on these issues than the Republicans. But we haven’t had a strong popular movement to hold either side’s feet to the fire. Democrats are war-mongers and drug-outlawers out of fear of Republicans calling them weak on defense and weak on crime, rather than because they think war is good and drugs are bad. It’s relatively easy to get liberals to join a movement; it’s relatively hard to get libertarians to join — my experience is that they have to feel personally targeted. During the Vietnam War, I believe many libertarians did protest the draft, leading to the end of the war. If they felt pot smoking would send them to prison, I think libertarians might join with pot-smoking liberals, to push for legalization. But, for the most part, the state knows better than to go after white, educated pot-smokers.