Spare a thought for conflicted libertarians

Published: August 15, 2007, 12:51 am

You've gotta feel sorry for libertarians. On the one hand, they're all for the freedom of the individual to do whatever s/he wants with their own property, they believe in free markets, they oppose government attempts to regulate or otherwise interfere in market outcomes and so on. Margaret Thatcher was their heroine, and they naturally support (though generally expressing disappointment in) what you might loosely call right wing economic policies. On the other hand, they're supposed to believe in the liberty of the individual to do pretty much whatever they want as long as they don't interfere with the liberty of others. Consequently one would expect libertarians to oppose and condemn the increasingly repressive measures adopted by governments as part of the new permanent Global War on Terror. The problem for the poor buggers is that the parties that adopt right wing economic policies have overwhelmingly tended also to be enthusiastic early adopters of repressive measures

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