Whereas hyperbole is perfectly acceptable, right? 
Why you always feel the need to take any discussion of this sort into the twilight zone is beyond me.
No it isn’t.
Libertarianism is a pretty extreme and generally quite nasty movement with a thin gloss of noble-sounding rhetoric to pretty it up. Pretending they are reasonable is just handing predatory people an extra advantage over you.
Calling them and their philosophy psychopaths is a bit beyond saying they aren’t reasonable, in your opinion. If you can’t see the ridiculous hyperbole in your remarks then I urge you to recalibrate your equipment, because the readings are skewed.
I wish the author had seen the libertarians at my college. He would have dropped his thesis in an instant. I’ll never forget this one guy, a skinny-fat weirdo who would harangue you about Ayn Rand with a fervor that would make the most hard core Christian street preacher gape with astonishment. I remember when he asked me for help removing a tick that had bit him. I was going to demand a 5000 word essay on why it would be in my rational self interest to remove the tick before I helped him, but I couldn’t do it so I just got some tweezers and a friend with steadier hands than I have.
Peripheral question: libertarians generally believe in the good of human nature while liberals believe in the vices of humans. If liberals believe humans to be flawed how can a flawed liberal lead a country?
Is it okay to have libertarians ideas rather than being whole-hog libertarian?
Co-signed, although I didn’t bother to associate with any of the “libertarians” in college after getting a taste of the “libertarians” in high school. The typical profile was: a 40ish looking teenager who wanted to hang out in the teachers’ lounge and was really, really into war gaming. Ugh!
If you ever want to watch one of these types head explode, just point out to them that Ayn Rand despised libertarians. For all they go on about Ayn Rand, it’s funny how they never seem to know that.
Maybe libertarians are just overcompensating for having small penises.
Libertarians tend to be naive about human nature. They have a simple ideological system that gives facile answers to complicated questions. They are able to overlook the flaws in their rose-colored view of the world through extensive use of the “No True Scotsman” fallacy. When libertarian ideas are tried and fail in practice, such failures are always attributed to a lack of ideological purity. (“It wasn’t lack of regulation that crashed the economy! It was a failure to completely deregulate everything!”)
It contrast, liberals tend to be pragmatists. They know that human beings can be cruel and selfish as well as noble and generous and that a just society needs to take into account the behavior at both ends of the moral spectrum. As a result, they tend to favor solutions that are more complicated and nuanced than the one-size-fits all approach of libertarians. It seems odd that you’d prefer to be led by a wide-eyed innocent … but then, as I said, libertarians tend to be naive about human nature.
Both statements are cartoonish oversimplifications. I’m not sure there’s any truth in either one. Even if the bit about liberals is true, being flawed doesn’t mean you’re unqualified to lead. Nobody is perfect.
Libertarians sometimes believe in the “goodness of human nature”; many however believe that nearly everyone but them is vermin and deserves whatever happens to them. They consider themselves superior beings who don’t need government aid or protection because of that superiority. They tend to be big believers in a variation on the “just-world fallacy”; everyone gets what they deserve unless the Ultimate Evil of government interferes. If there is injustice, unfairness or oppression government and only government is or can be at fault.
As for how a flawed person can lead a country that’s simple; there’s no unflawed people in existence so there’s no other option.
It depends on the idea in question.
Why does it seem as if the majority of this board enjoys shitting on libertarians?
This kind of thing doesn’t help:
Libertarians have a reputation for being sexist jerks. Going on about how you’re “more manly” and not “weak and feminine” really isn’t helping, and is in fact something that deserves to be shit on.
If you don’t want to be shit on, maybe you shouldn’t crawl into the bottom of an outhouse.
Oooooh! I get it now. They are the men with the tweezers and a magnifying glasses.
Women are sometimes libertarians too. They just keep it a secret so that other people won’t think these women are packing penises.
Marley, your post #18 was damn near perfect.
Richard Parker, I’m with you on 3+3=8. But 8 is also 0 plus 0. Thank you for explaining calculus to me finally.
As for the article in the OP, maybe she or he should start with a carved in stone definition of “masculine.”
No, that’s what makes Vulcans superior. “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one.” A logical, but not a libertarian, thing to say.
Who gives a shit. Honestly, why the fuck would I care who hates me as not “manly” due to my politics.
Someone needs copy. But this liberal fag ain’t giving them any.
The stupid. It hurts.
John Wayne on vacation in Acapulco. Got the legs for it, give him that…