What's wrong with Libertarians?

It all started with Ayn Rand but if you talked to the college students who were covering traffic signs with bumper stickers they might tell you it started with Ron Paul. By either measure, it seems like Libertarianism is ascendant. Atlas Shrugged returned to the Top 10 lists when the 50th anniversary edition came out and Tea Party members are routinely seen holding signs asking "Who is John Galt?" Ron Paul, while never a serious contender for the Presidency, created more excitement among his base than even the Republican nominee did.

Low taxes, less government, less regulation, and more freedom; what's not to like? Now we are in the midst of a populist revolution that supports all these positions. It seems like Libertarianism is front and center and people who have never read Ayn Rand or paid attention to Ron Paul have caught the bug. Unfortunately, libertarianism rejects the Tea Partyers as jingoistic and unfriendly to civil liberties.

Why is this happening? Certainly not all libertarians feel this way. It's a truism that gathering libertarians is like herding cats but enough subscribe to this line of thinking as to keep the two movements separate.

Many in the libertarian movement do not like the War on Terror. One notable exception is Larry Elder. But many libertarians blindly subscribe to the idea that we are trading freedom for security in the War on Terror. What could these libertarians do before the Iraq invasion that they cannot do now? Even ridiculous answers like "not having to talk off one's shoes at the airport" do not hold water. That occurred as result of Richard Reed AKA the Shoe Bomber who preceded the Iraq invasion. You can still speak freely, operate as an independent economic agent, and enjoy full privacy rights as you could before September 11th.

Libertarians tend to come down on the side of civilian trials for terror and closing Gitmo but why? These are not American citizens and their stated goal is an act of war and not of criminality. They do not even qualify for Geneva Convention rights because they are not uniformed soldiers and do not fight for a nation. Guantanamo was a necessary location to keep prisoners and avoid the sticky legal challenges sure to pop up. In the past, FDR imprisoned those who would make such challenges and Nazi war prisoners were actually kept in Ohio, California, Mississippi, Arkansas, Oregon, Georgia, Texas and Nebraska. Roosevelt also incarcerated Japanese Americans who were not prisoners of war or even charged with a crime. Similarly, Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus in the Civil War. By comparison, infractions like Abu Graib and Guantanamo fail to shock the conscious.

Far from fighting this war with a disregard for civil liberties, this may well be the war in which we have stood by our principles most faithfully. While there is always room for improvement, libertarians should stop wringing their hands about terrorists and stand with the Tea Party or else the movement may very well pass them by.