I’m a lifelong Libertarian. Came to it back in my college days when a political science class taught me there was a label for people who thought like I do. I never felt like I belonged with either the Republicans or Democrats. My reasons are primarily emotional rather than rational, in summary:
It’s none of your business.
Why can’t you people leave me alone?
In general, “let me do my thing, you can do yours”. This leads me to reading some of the authors that Roderick_Femm mentioned above. Others I’ve read include Clair Wolfe, Vin Suprynowicz and Peter McWilliams. Actually joined the party at a gun show in the 90s. Much of it is that being free of any need to actually govern they can remain ideologically pure.
Was active for a while, but have since come to the conclusion that the American people mostly don’t want to be free. At least not any more than they already are. Not if those people get to be free (for differing values of those people). So I don’t make much effort these days.
Was very disappointed in the response of many of my fellow Libertarians to covid tho. Yes, you are free to not wear a mask or not get vaccinated. And others are then free to not let you into their stores/restaurants etc. Too many people boasting of lying/cheating to get around restrictions. What ever happened to the fraud portion of “don’t initiate force or fraud”?
Still do vote L tho. For as long as I’ve been a voter I’ve lived in districts where by the “doesn’t have a mathematical chance of winning” standard voting for the D is “throwing your vote away”. Might as well put an accurate label on my meaningless protest vote.
It is perceived to align with some people’s values (truly or not), and has the advantage that it has no real political power. That makes it great for people who want to be ideologically pure, and/or never see their ideas put to the test (and likely fail). Or just be able to truthfully state they voted while avoiding any association with anyone actually in power (I can sympathize with the latter desire, I admit).
I remember my father talking to me about joining the Libertarian Party back in the 70’s. To him they were proposing to be strict Constitutionalists, limiting the Federal Government to only those things specifically granted by Article 1, section 8 of the Constitution. Namely, regulating commerce between the States and internationally, defending the borders, coining money, establishing post offices, and collecting taxes only to the extent needed to pay for those listed duties. Everything else would fall to individuals and the States.
I don’t think that pipe dream of his ever reflected reality.
Based on the few Libertarian party people I’ve known, this is like 90% of the motivation.
The guy from college who actually was a Libertarian Party candidate for Senate from Texas a few elections back was one of those guys who always thought he was the smartest guy in the room, and didn’t adjust his behavior when confronted with people smarter or as smart as he was. He was arrogant and insufferable, and generally a dick.
I don’t doubt that he gravitated to the Libertarian Party because he felt like the mainstream parties were too stupid and Libertarianism was for smart people like him. +
When I saw that he was running for Senate as the Libertarian candidate, I knew not much had changed.
This was basically my story. As a young adult, I briefly flirted with Libertarism. I voted for the L candidate (Ron Paul) in the 1988 presidential election.
Despite the reasons Chronos lists, I did have some real issues with either being a D or an R. I’m in favor of keeping guns legal. But I’m also an atheist, and have always been pro-gay-rights, and pro-abortion-rights. And although I live in a state with pretty high taxes, I’m not as fanatically tax-phobic as are some L (and R) friends of mine.
I no longer have any interest in Libertarian politics. Or for that matter, any strict ideology.
The sister of my lifelong friend is a very successful lawyer, and a capital-L Libertarian. One thing I’ve come to believe from arguing with her is that strict ideologies reduce your and understanding and effectiveness.
Example: When we were discussing the financial crises in various European governments in the early 20th century, she was in agreement with me that the excessively generous civil service jobs, pensions, and health care funding played a role. But she admantly refused to believe that corrupt tax collection practices (i.e. people bribing IRS employees to tear up their tax bill, which was a major problem in Greece) had anything to do with it. She can’t bring herself to admit that taxes are ever a good thing. So, as smart as she is, her L ideology has left her with a partial lack of understanding of the problem.
This is why I abandoned considering the Libertarian party after briefly considering it back in my early 20s. The Libertarians talk big about, as you say “let me do my own thing, you do yours”. In practice, however, “doing my own thing” often involved things that infringed upon other people’s rights and freedoms. Back in the day when I was in my early 20s (the late 90s) this usually meant environmental issues. I kept noticing that Libertarians favored people having a right to do whatever they want on their own property, even if it adversely affected their neighbors*. Now it seems to extend to all sorts of other issues, including, as you note, various public health related matters.
*Cattle ranchers being “free” to let their cattle pollute a stream with their waste, when others downstream use the same water source to irrigate crops, was a major one where I lived at the time. There was a case where lettuce became contaminated with E. coli in such a manner, and the local Libertarians approach to the issue was basically “too bad for the downstream farmers, they just have to live with it because everyone should be able to use their own property as they see fit”.
Back in the late 80s I worked with a young man who was a full-fledged Libertarian. He argued that the government should not be involved in the building of roads and bridges, maintaining that a private company would keep the roadway better maintained (while charging a toll, of course). And if somebody overcharged, well, another private company would come along and build another road and charge cheaper tolls.
my experience with libertarians is that they’re contrarian know-it-alls who love the idea of having this one special idea that’s “too real” for the “boring mainstream parties” who actually “govern.” They aren’t interested in actually making things work in the real world, they want to sit on the sidelines, heckle, and occasionally turn themselves blue because nobody’s going to tell THEM that they shouldn’t ingest colloidal silver, dadgum it
The main appeal is you get to maintain your ideological purity by sticking to a party that can’t win and therefore can’t be held responsible for anything. I feel the same way about the Green Party and most other third parties.
Sure, but (nearly) every Libertarian voter knows perfectly well that their party has no chance of winning the presidency or even a single seat in Congress. It’s a protest vote. The Libertarian Party is, to a certain flavor of conservative, what the Green Party is to eco-liberals.
TBH back in the day, like 15-20 years ago (when everyone on the right seemed to self identify as libertarian), I did see why people were into it. If you are into the the liberal part (pro LGBT, abortion, etc rights. Anti government surveillance and militarized over funded police, anti war, etc.) but also didn’t like taxes and government regulations. It did at the least seem like a somewhat well thought out and consistent political philosophy. Fundamentally flawed in a bunch of ways (the most obvious IMO, the logical leap from not liking taxes to paying taxes being a grevious imposition on your human rights akin to having your right of free speech or habeus corpus taken away) but I did get it.
I feel kinda dumb for all the time in spent arguing in good faith, when almost every single one of those self declared libertarians (that I personally knew or in the public sphere) jump right on board with Maga, and clearly never gave a crap about liberty. It was a fig leaf because before Trump, saying you just hated brown people and wanted bad things to happen to them, and a nice facist dictator to tell you what to do, was looked down upon.
I don’t know. But I have an anecdote that shows how utterly irrelevant they have become in the age of Trump when all the supposedly non-partisan freedom loving libertarians jumped ship to become Magats….
During the first Trump administration I met a coworker at DC brewpub. We noticed it was a little busy and there was some kind of event going on. It turns out it was the libertarian candidate for president launching his campaign! Not a fundraiser mind you, he was literally launching his campaign for POTUS from a medium sized brew pub (and he hadn’t booked the whole thing just a few tables at the back)