Collegiate Times

The men and women sitting at the Libertarians at Virginia Tech booth during Gobblerfest 2009 were asked a single question more than any other: "Are Libertarians liberal or conservative?" The question is reasonable, but difficult to answer. First a libertarian and a Libertarian (a member of the political party with the same name) can often have huge separations in terms of beliefs. The answer to the question could be different depending on the actual subject.

It's very true that modern libertarians share many similarities with the classical liberals of the Enlightenment. However, the modern term "liberal" is used to describe an ideology that has less in common with libertarianism than it does with its "conservative" opposition. It's fair to say that libertarians mostly reject labels of liberal and conservative. Instead libertarians hold a system of beliefs that emphasize maximum individual liberty.

This is a viewpoint often in opposition to modern liberal and conservatives who tend to speak in terms of national identity and common good. I reject these types of collectivist concepts as nothing more than baseless catchphrases - each of which gives me an unpleasant sense of Orwellian vagueness and false unity for all.

For those who were wondering - I didn't just make a typo. I am a libertarian and have been identifying myself as such for many years. Coming out of the closet in a world full of left-right thinkers and party politics wasn't easy. I soon learned that there were others like me, each also falsely being identified as Republican or Democrat depending on the daily topic of conversation.

Feedback for my past editorials has been mixed unpleasantly with comments involving pesky phrases like "liberal" and "conservative." I certainly may find myself occasionally sharing viewpoints with each of these labels. I point to this as evidence that I am an individual with my own brain. I hope most readers understand that not everything is left or right.

So what is a libertarian? A libertarian is an individual who believes in the values of small government and free market economics. In both social and economic issues, libertarians tend to favor personal liberty over state involvement. Ideally, this means a nation with fewer laws and less government involvement in every aspect of your daily life.

Libertarians specifically tend to favor certain stands on issues, such as: less gun control, an end to drug prohibition, less taxation and absolutely no foreign military intervention. Libertarians also oppose any crime where a victim - other than the accused - is not expressly identifiable.

Libertarianism is all based on the concept of self-ownership. This is a belief that you own your own life and that absolutely no person or group can claim ownership over your life. With this comes a concept called the non-aggression axiom, which states that it is wrong to use aggression as a means to personal, political or economic gain. If you own your own life, you must also respect that others own their own lives as well.

I think this is a concept that a lot of people from all political affiliations can really get behind. Most people certainly do not enjoy violence, and they certainly do not thrive on the concept of harming their neighbor.

Yet, a lot of people seem to support various government programs that are funded - under threat of violence - through forced taxation. If I choose not to give a percentage of my income to elected people in government, then there is little doubt that the end result is that I will be thrown in jail. Taxation by its very definition is an act of aggression; it's a system that allows one group to steal from another without fear of legal repercussion.

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