“Where “conservatives” and “libertarians” fall out is over the Nanny State in any form.”
Exactly right. The nanny state - social engineering - is a travesty whether it comes from the left or the right.
Agreed. Having the best intentions in the world doesn’t count for much when you lose power and your political enemies use your own tools against you. Extrapolate that enough, and you have todays political climate.
That's a rather simplistic notion. For example, it ignores history, such as the widespread existence of "blue laws" back in the days when the modern Nanny State did not exist.
A more useful discriminator between "conservatives" and "libertarians" might be found in their respective ideas of the place of the individual in society.
Conservatives tend to believe that while individual rights should be respected as far as possible, they cannot be considered without reference to the larger social group. A conservative would say that "community interests" are real, and that the exercise of individual liberties must be weighed against their effects on other people. As such, "community interest" could be considered to be a valid justification for curtailing certain individual liberties.
My experience with the more vocal libertarians at FR has been that they tend to reject the idea that "community interests" exist at all. As such, any attempt to moderate the exercise of individual liberties is dismissed as "nanny state - social engineering ... a travesty". Hollywood, with its abundance of human train wrecks, is a great example of how this philosophy plays out in real life. In that light, I see libertarianism as an infantile and destructive belief which has its roots in the same fundamental narcissism that drives liberal Democrats.