Libertarians now come in all sorts of flavors!

In the Ace of Spades blog, Buck Throckmorton writes about libertarians and their favorite forms of authoritarianism.

Ace recently had some fun at the expense of self-proclaimed libertarians whose politics are clearly far-left, even though they choose not to identify as Democrats.

In my younger days I kind of considered myself a libertarian, until I realized that the most vocal libertarians tended to be either pot-heads or anarchists. Nowadays I don’t even know what “libertarian” means any more, nor do I understand why people identify as libertarian when their agenda is actively anti-liberty.

Libertarians actually seem to come in all sorts of flavors now – none of which have much to do with limited government. Here are some of the libertarian sub-groups and the poster child for each:

SOCIALIST LIBERTARIANS: Megan McArdle. McArdle’s form of principled libertarianism compels her to vote for a communist, Bernie Sanders, because she disapproves of Donald Trump using his 1st Amendment right to mock journalists.

POLICE STATE LIBERTARIANS: Rep. Justin Amash: Amash’s principled libertarianism believes that unelected officials in America’s intelligence agencies, including the CIA, have a duty to try to unseat politicians that the deep state doesn’t approve of. Further, he supports spy agencies trying to frame and entrap law-abiding associates of those politicians as punishment for politically consorting with the wrong people.

TAX AND SPEND LIBERTARIANS: William Weld: Weld is a big government tax and spend liberal. As Massachusetts governor he not only went on a major spending spree with taxpayer money, but he was also anti-2nd Amendment, and a big fan of eminent domain. Weld was the Libertarian Party’s Vice-Presidential candidate in 2016, which makes perfect sense in a world where libertarian doesn’t mean libertarian.

BAKE THAT CAKE LIBERTARIANS: Gary Johnson: While Johnson is certainly a classic libertarian when it comes to dope – the dude likes to toke – he supported the government’s right to shutter a bake shop for not creating a custom cake that violated the business owner’s Christian faith. All the same, as Libertarian presidential candidate in 2016, Gary Johnson was the top choice among people who had to lie about the fact that they were actually going to vote for Donald Trump.

CORPORATIST LIBERTARIANS – Koch Brothers: The Kochs’ brand of libertarianism believes the government’s role is to serve and protect the largest corporations, providing them with a steady supply of cheap foreign labor, and protecting those corporations from upstart competition.

TECH TYRANNY LIBERTARIANS – Silicon Valley Executives & NeverTrump: Libertarian tech company executives atone for their massive profits, unfathomable wealth, and monopoly market shares by de-platforming citizens for expressing the wrong opinion. The authoritarian dream of denying Americans their Bill of Rights protections is being realized by outsourcing tyranny to monster tech monopolies. NeverTrump “conservatarians” who want to elect Democrats and have Trump voters de-platformed from American society are well represented here.

It seems that the definition of libertarian has transitioned. It was once the identity of individuals with varied “leave me alone” priorities. Now it is simply a euphemism embraced by anti-freedom leftists who no longer want the stigma of identifying as a Democrat.