by

if it smells like a libertarian…

Two comments from the same online magazine in the same week:

[So-and-so] is a libertarian for good and for ill—mostly for ill, as libertarians tend to be.

— Nick Catoggio

As a libertarian, I do spend some time sleepless at night, sometimes wondering why it is that literally every person who holds my ideas who gets elected to office is a schmuck.

— Kevin Williamson

As a Definitely Not Libertarian who definitely does not like or even believe in libertarianism, I do not lose sleep wondering about this. Libertarianism takes a reasonably good thing that exists (in unknown capacities) within much bigger and better things and makes it a “highest good” if not a stand-alone aim. And nothing — no history or anthropology or sociology or theology or desirable future — warrants that claim or aim.