What’s a brief definition of libertarianism?
, it was extremely libertarian in its founding, but due to the religious and social mores of the time, there were all sorts of restrictions on what people could actually do — including some vagrancies laws that basically didn’t allow certain people to even walk into certain cities unless they lived there or had jobs. And of course, the status of blacks and women, which were horrendous in libertarian terms pretty much until the mid 20th century, prevented the political philosophy from functioning in a libertarian way. So no, libertarian remains a cause whose full flowering remains for the future while being rooted in core American ideas. The 19th century, despite popular myth, was not an era of rampant laissez-faire, which I discuss in my book. Do libertarians have more political power today than 30 years ago? Doherty: They do, though most of that influence is not through the political party with the word “libertarian” in its name. That party’s done very well for itself as a third part
