One of the biggest challenges with the libertarian movement is that it attracts people who like libertarianism not because of the non-aggression principle, but because it enables them to legally engage in certain activities.
An example would be how Barry Goldwater, a proto-libertarian, was able to win some solidly Democratic Deep South states in 1964, the first to do so since Reconstruction. It wasn’t because those Southerners had a libertarian moment. No, it was because Goldwater opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Although Goldwater supported civil rights and voted for previous civil rights legislation, he felt that the 1964 act was an unconstitutional infringement on the rights of private businesses. However, there were many voters in the South who were swayed to vote for Goldwater not because they were libertarians, but because they supported discrimination, and despite their support for Democrats from Reconstruction through the New Deal, anti-discrimination laws were enough for them to break nearly a century of party loyalty.
During the pandemic, I was dismayed by anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers who used libertarian rhetoric to engage in reckless behavior that harmed not only themselves, but others, especially the immunocompromised. It’s one thing to be saddened and taken aback by the extraordinary powers governments at various levels took during the pandemic. Unfortunately, any type of principled opposition to government overreach during the pandemic was overwhelmed by all sorts of selfish, reckless acts. I was completely dismayed by the behavior I’ve witnessed, disappointed not only with various levels of government, but also with some conservatives and libertarians who managed to make COVID a “culture war” matter.
It turned out many of the libertarians I’ve looked up to were just very articulate right wingers. When push comes to shove, they’d excuse people like Trump, Le Pen, Putin, and the like, justifying them under the guise that we’d be worse off under a standard-issue Democrat or a social democrat like Sanders or AOC. I’m not a Democrat by any means, but the past decade has shown the damage that MAGA-style right-wing populism could do to a country. I’m not a Bernie Sanders supporter, but Bernie or even AOC would be less destructive to society than Trump and his allies.
I am completely saddened by the culture wars and how we are unable to solve structural economic and political problems in America because we are mired in the culture wars. This is tearing our country apart and may make the world worse off as other nations fight to fill in a power void made available by a descending United States.