What’s a libertoad?

It’s a disparaging term for libertarians, coopted because we like to make references to toad-licking.  And because it’s funny when anti-libertarian tirades present the same old ridiculous straw men—contradictory caricatures that don’t actually describe the libertarians I know.

Yeah, we’re all a bunch of heartless, idealistic, isolationist, fascist, cultish, contrarian, selfish, racist, childish, greedy, utopian, dystopian, coldly rational, unrealistic, anachronistic, techno-fetishizing, Rand-worshiping wingnuts.  In addition to being stooges of corporatism, agents of chaos, delusional peaceniks, hypocritical ideologues, drugged-out libertines, and argumentative simpletons who have a limited capacity for understanding moral shades of grey and the beneficent complexities of social engineering.

We also like to make sacrificial offerings of the weak and helpless to the free market god.  Not because it’s necessary.  That’s just for fun.

Have I forgotten anything?

It’s possible that we are simple-minded.  After all, the premises we operate under tend to be simple.  Like

• the Non-Aggression Principle

and the ideas that

• other people are not your property
• sociopolitical and economic freedom are inextricably entwined
• and freedom to choose is desirable, even if it entails consequence.

So spare me your arrogant assumptions and well-intentioned coercion.
Just give me liberty, warts and all.