Author concludes:
Ron Paul may be delusional, but he is a consistent. Neither mass murder, terrorism, the advance of militant Islam, nor nuclear weapons in the hands of fanatical regimes will shake a libertarian’s faith in his dogma: We have no foreign enemies. If certain states want to kill us, it’s our fault. Nothing is worth fighting for — unless it’s abolishing the Federal Reserve System.
I am a small-l libertarian.
What you describe is exactly why I am not an upper-case L libertarian.
Libertarians are deliberately delusional about national defense.
I don’t know why, but there is no question Libertarians are profoundly naive about the world.
That is not a Libertarian thought. That is what a big government conservative thinks Libertarian thoughts are.
Of course, it follows that no Federal Reserve System would mean no control on the issuance of coinage. True libertarian position. It can be cloaked in patriotism but anarchy is the result.
There are 2 types of libertarians.... the capital L libertarian is a nut job like ron paul... the small l libertarian is very close to a fiscal conservative, and shares many similarities to social conservatives, therefore they must not be lumped into one category.... to say all libertarians are nut jobs is to say all republicans are conservatives... the conservatives are to the republican party what the small l libertarians are to the capital L libertarians....republicans don’t trust conservatives, and capital L libertarians don’t trust small l libertarians...
Hmmmm. Let's look at what Ronald Reagan had to say about libertarianism.
"If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. I think conservatism is really a misnomer just as liberalism is a misnomer for the liberals — if we were back in the days of the Revolution, so-called conservatives today would be the Liberals and the liberals would be the Tories. The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is.
Now, I can’t say that I will agree with all the things that the present group who call themselves Libertarians in the sense of a party say, because I think that like in any political movement there are shades, and there are libertarians who are almost over at the point of wanting no government at all or anarchy. I believe there are legitimate government functions. There is a legitimate need in an orderly society for some government to maintain freedom or we will have tyranny by individuals. The strongest man on the block will run the neighborhood. We have government to ensure that we don’t each one of us have to carry a club to defend ourselves. But again, I stand on my statement that I think that libertarianism and conservatism are traveling the same path."
- Ronald Reagan, Interview published in Reason (1 July 1975)
I never really considered myself a libertarian...small or big L...but I think I'll give more weight to Reagan's words than the opinions of some random guys on the internet. No offense. :-]