In this short clip from Tom Woods’ YouTube channel, Tom responds to a hit-piece on libertarianism from The American Thinker (sic). It’s from September this year, so not quite hot off the press, but he gives a very succinct explanation of the libertarian position and the separate, though connected, issue of Misesian economics.
Thomas Woods is correct.
Those who confuse being a libertarian with being a libertine are just flat wrong.
Indeed a libertine is (and always has been) more likely to be a statist – hopeing that the collectiive will fund their “life style” (thus “freeing them from work”).
The “frree love” – “flower power” types of the late 1960s were not exactly pro free market economics, rather than the contrary.
A libertarian is more likely to say “you can not save souls by coercing bodies” that claim that humans are (or should be) simply mindless pleasure seekings.
To side with Gladstone – of one thing I am certain, it is not by the state that we will get moral improvement.
Rather than to deny that there is any such thing as morality.
HOWEVER……
It is possible for a libertine to also be a libertarian (i..e to believe in the private property rights based nonaggression principle). Just not a very useful libertarian.
O.K. brother – you get drunk in the corner if you want to.
Just do not expect me to buy you another bottle.