What is a Libertarian Anyway? 

Instapundit has linked to an article on Opinion Journal discussing this very topic. The premise of the article is, "Do libertarians have more fun"? I think we do... but just for grins, I think I'll go through the characterizations in this article point by point. I haven't done that for a while:

But that's the straight-faced answer. When those who still haven't quite grasped the nature of this political party or its adherents ask, "So what's a Libertarian, anyway?" it can be summed up with any or all of the following quips:

- A conservative with an unhealthy preoccupation with sex.
- A Republican with a wild side.
- An amoral Republican.
- Someone who thinks he should get a medal for being home in time for dinner and helping the kids with homework regardless of what the lower part of his anatomy was doing earlier in the day.

First of all... I don't consider any preoccupation with sex to be unhealthy. If more people were preoccupied by it... maybe we wouldn't have the obesity problem we do in this country. Secondly, I don't think we deserve a medal... but a pat on the back might be nice. Here are some more:

Libertarians generally bill themselves as fiscally conservative but socially liberal, a translation of which came from Yale Law student Angus Dwyer at a recent gathering of New York conservatives: "a cheapskate who can't keep his pants zipped."

Let's set the record straight here. We're not cheapskates. Not wanting to give the government all our money doesn't make us cheapskates. Quite to the contrary it means that we like to spend a lot of money, and want more of our own money back to spend on ourselves. Condoms aren't free you know. Well, the good ones aren't anyway.

Mr. Dwyer elaborated: "It's hedonism combined with the desire to not be made to take account for the needs of others. It's a person who thinks about the public commonweal in terms of how much he has to pay to support it. It's 'I don't give a sh--, and I'm not paying for sh--.' "

Wrong again. We do give a shit. We just realize that we all don't agree on what we should give a shit about. So instead of the government telling us what to give a shit about, we'd rather have our money back, so we can give that money to the causes we personally do give a shit about. Wow... that's a lot of shit. Saying that because we don't want the government to be advocates for a cause doesn't mean that we won't become advocates ourselves once the government quits doing it. That's just short sighted.

Comedian Jeff Jena defines a Libertarian as a Democrat who wants to own a gun, or a Republican who wants to smoke pot.

Hopefully they aren't playing with their gun (and I mean a firearm, not... well... you know) while smoking pot. That would just be dangerous.

The Libertarians' atheism, together with the hedonism-as-a-virtue outlook they share with Democrats, allows them to laugh with the left at the "Puritanism" of the right.

Who said anything about atheism or hedonism? This is a political party, not a religious organization. Why does it always seem to come down to this choice? It's articles like this that give libertarianism (small 'l') a bad name.