My Path to Libertarianism

     Why did I become a libertarian?  For that matter, why does anyone adopt any viewpoint?  I’m of the school that says that it results from a combination of factors.

     I remember reading about a study which showed that our brains might be wired for either a conservative or liberal bent.  Some combination of the structures and the chemistry of the brain might account for why people take one approach or the other.  I have always been individualistic by nature; I think my liberatarianism started there.

     My parents raised me and my siblings to be self-reliant.  They are multiple-generation Vermonters, and people from Vermont are legendary for valuing self-reliance.  They had to do so to survive.  They also value tolerance, in the true sense of the word.  People in Vermont tend not to ask what your political or church affiliation is.  It’s none of their business.  Vermont still has town meetings, where everyone can have a say.  True to the generalization, my parents are pretty open-minded.  Although they are very traditional and “straight,” they accept other people who are not.    I think my parents passed on to me these New England concepts, both directly and indirectly, intentionally and unintentionally.

     When I was a teenager I read a book that changed my thinking irrevocably.  It was entitled Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal by Ayn Rand and others.  It was a book of essays that explained what capitalism really was and how it had never been fully practiced.  It exposed the lies that monopolies are created by free enterprise and that the free market caused the Great Depression.  From then on I was a libertarian at heart, though I identified as a conservative and a Republican.

     During that time I read Animal Farm  and 1984.  I also read Witness by Whitaker Chambers and quite a few essays by William F. Buckley.  I read the novels of Ayn Rand and listened to the speeches of Ronald Reagan.  I evolved into a fully convinced capitalist and anti-statist.

     I thought that Ronald Reagan would take our country in the right direction.  Although he did not get us all the way to freedom, he was able to shift things for a short while.  I was happy, because the economic prosperity of the 1980s helped propel my family a few steps up the socio-economic ladder.  I was in college and was starting my career in those days.   Although things were not perfect, they were better.  I remembered the 1970s all too well.

     I was very much caught up in the Conservative Christian movement.  Like millions of other people, I thought that participation in the Republican Party was the ticket to transform America.  Then along came George Herbert Walker Bush, then Bill Clinton, and then George Walker Bush.  Although he is a crummy person, in some ways Clinton was a better president than the Bushes.  At least you got what you expected, what he promised.  The Contract With America was put forward during Clinton’s adminstration.  What a flop that turned out to be!

     During this election I stuck with the Republican Party one more time.  We nominated John McCain.  Need I say how disappointed I was? 

     No more.  I’m a libertarian.  I am now also a Libertarian.  I am not a radical libertarian, nor a perfect one, but it’s definitely what I am.