Libertarian: "A Republican who owns a bong." (TRex at FDL on "Jane Galt")

[swag]

http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/09/12/late-nite-fdl-thoroughly-mediocre-megan/#more-11607

I don’t know how many of you have been following the fortunes of Atlantic Monthly’s latest Ivy League Affirmative Action hire, Megan McArdle. She’s the blogger formerly known as Jane Galt, a Randian “Libertarian” whose musings on economic policy and the social safety net are so painfully vacuous and shallow that Paris Hilton would be ashamed to sign her name at the bottom. She makes Ana Marie Cox look like some kind of Girl Chomsky.

Once when we were in our twenties I asked my twin brother what exactly a Libertarian was. “A Republican who owns a bong,” was his highly informative response.

That explains a lot.

Most people go through an Ayn Rand phase. Generally somewhere in those dark years between A Catcher in the Rye and the onset of Still Life With Woodpecker. After Old Yeller, but before On the Road (basically, somewhere around one’s junior year of high school), many an American teen has tackled Atlas Shrugged and spent a couple of weeks spouting geysers of rhetorical dreck about self-determination and Teh Individual before some helpful older person takes them aside and explains that it’s awfully hard to enjoy your speedy new roadster when there’s no roads, which are paid for by taxes, etc, etc.

Unfortunately, that helpful older person never intervened in McArdle’s case. From her writing, it appears that she was dumped straight from her gilt-edged creche into some gold plated veal-pen of a preparatory school, from whence her parents’ money wafted her into the rarefied airs of the Ivy League, which summarily spat her into her current sinecure at the Atlantic. Presumably all without ever scrubbing a toilet, waiting a table, or doing anything that would spoil her manicure or muss her boarding-school bob.

. . . more

[ThoughtCriminal]

1. Or likes porn

My experience with "Libertarians" is that they don't care if the President uses the Constitution for toilet paper as long as they get a little tax cut, can abuse their employees and dump toxic waste into the water table.

[Mythsaje]

2. Oh, I don't know... One of the first and most strident opponents of Bush's imperial plans

was Harry Browne. Economically I think the Libertarians are dumb as a bag of hammers, but from the beginning they opposed the war for many of the right reasons (and some wrong ones too, for that matter).

I think this kind of broad brush insult is a bit unfair.

[ThoughtCriminal]

3. I have yet to meet a freeper

Who does not consider themself to be a libertarian.

[Mythsaje]

4. Really?

I doubt the Libertarians would claim them.

[gateley]

5. Ron Paul is an ardent Constitutionalist -- as are most Libertarians, I believe.

And I think you're being unfair in your wording regarding abusing their employees and dumping of toxic waste. I think you're confusing them with REPUBLICANS.