Trego's Mountain Ear

L. Neil Smith defined it this way:

Who is a libertarian?

“Zero Aggression Principle”

A libertarian is a person who believes that no one has the right, under any circumstances, to initiate force against another human being for any reason whatever; nor will a libertarian advocate the initiation of force, or delegate it to anyone else.

The Zero Aggression Principle is a fairly simple concept.  In some of Smith’s other writings, he described his purpose as “What I want to accomplish artistically amounts to nothing more than fulfilling the promise of the American Revolution.” 

I’ve been asked about what constitutes a libertarian, and I have to admit that libertarians come in a lot of types – and probably the first thing to notice is the difference between big L libertarians and small L libertarians. 

The big L identifies the party – sometimes it includes small l libertarians, like Michael Badnarik, the 2004 presidential candidate.  Badnarik believed in a free market economy, where the government’s sole purpose was to protect individual rights from force and fraud.   On the other hand, in 2012 and 2016, the party nominated Gary Johnson, who had been a Republican with a handful of libertarian leanings.  There can be a lot of difference between libertarians.  This year’s candidate is Chase Oliver – and his quote that comes to mind is that armed gays are harder to bash.

Part – possibly a large part of my libertarian perspective – comes from Max Weber’s definition of government:

Not all sociologists base so much of their theories on Weber as I do – but his matter-of-fact definition makes it hard to buy into anything beyond a limited government.

This chart shows libertarians as middle-of-the-road, with beliefs in common with both the right and the left:

This chart offers a little more perspective:

This site includes the world’s shortest political quiz – click the link, and find out if you have any disturbing libertarian tendencies:Advocates for Self-Government