Libertarians: Please stop telling me I’m no better than the Left.

As for libertarians who don’t believe that, you need to call out your fellow travellers who go too far. In the past week I’ve been told by self-proclaimed libertarians that I don’t believe in property rights, that my belief in liberty is no better than Obama’s, and that I don’t really believe in individual rights in general.

I’ve grown weary of libertarians pretending their political philosophy is uniquely free of basic assumptions beyond “Do no harm,” or suggesting that everything can be built from there. Imposing the interpretations of “no harm” I’ve seen here would eliminate all local laws on such things as zoning, smoking in public, and the preservation of historic districts.

Not all conservatives want to use the point of a gun to control what consenting adults to in their own bedrooms. In fact, I’ve never seen a call for that on Ricochet. What I have seen libertarians call for is the use of the point of a federal gun to do away with local laws that libertarians don’t like.

So permit me gently to suggest, if you’re truly interested in winning converts, a different tactic.

Thanks to the posts of the past month, I am now less disposed to listen to self-proclaimed libertarians. Surely that’s not the goal. I get that we have differences. Perhaps we also have points of agreement. But insulting conservatives, and insinuating or outright saying we are no better than the progressives and leftists, is not a good strategy for figuring out where we might agree — or even winning us around.