One suspects that the purpose of TIME?s four-page feature on the Libertarian Party has more to do with taking votes away from John McCain than with contributing to readers? edification, but it is interesting to note the manner in which writer Nathan Thornburgh describes libertarian ideas:
The central goal of Libertarianism is hard to disagree with: freedom. Defining it is another matter. Party members I’ve met often speak of freedom as if it were a phantom limb: you’re born with it, but it gets taken from you by the bureaucratic violence of the EPA, the ATF, the DOE, the DEA, the U.N., NCLB, NAFTA and–above all–the IRS. Freedom’s restoration is the magic moment when the nanny state melts away and you can see the life you were supposed to live before the tax auditors and environmental regulators and drug warriors all came to rope, brand and pen you in for life with their endless rulemaking and intrusions.
If the freedom that lives in the Libertarian imagination has an earthly home, it is the American West.
Thornburg tries to turn a relatively simple concept ? freedom ? into something that sounds bizarre. Perhaps he should read David Boaz?s The Politics of Freedom to develop a better understanding of libertarian ideas.
