Submitted by RSDavis, Jan 24, 2007 17:49

I would have loved to have been in the room for the discussion between Rand, Mises, and Hazlitt.

That being said, there are many different schools of thought within the libertarian philosophy, from the near anarcho-capitalism of Austrian school to the monetarists of the Chicago school, to the lockstep cultishness of the political/personal philosophy of Collectivism.

It would be near impossible to have a dogmatic checklist to see if one is a True Libertarian(TM), because the opinions vary on subjects as wide as the gold standard (the monetarists vs the gold bugs), the nature of altruism (everyone vs Rand), abortion, foreign policy.

The thing that all these people have in common is the love of freedom and limited government, and they all couch their arguments in the rhetoric of liberty. The truth is, even among libertarians, you can have two people arguing opposite sides of an issue, both with solid, liberty-minded arguments.

Libertarians are not as myopic as one might think.

- Rick

Note: Comments are screened, and in some cases edited, before posting. We reserve the right to reject anything we find objectionable.