Liberty and Love

Cathy Reisenwitz writes about people in the libertarian movement who turned out to be Nazis.

How can that happen, as the two ideologies are diametrically opposed?

Well, I could see it in the words of Acton, taken in isolation:

Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.

The political end is liberty, but what you do with liberty to achieve your personal ends, or good, or happiness, is up to you.

That’s why some bigots see a libertarian legal order as an opportunity to carve out the life they want. Through property rights, including racially-restrictive covenants, free association, and freedom of contract, they could, theoretically and if their numbers are large enough, self-segregate into their own communities, excluding any and all they find undesirable. They could ban certain behaviors and demand conformity on their own land and in their own contracts.

I view bigotry as a vice, not a crime, so if some people of like mind want to use their liberty to isolate themselves from the open society, I wouldn’t try to stop them. But this is why libertarianism can attract racists and intolerant religionists just as it can attract people culturally on the opposite end like sex workers, recreational drug users, and non-conformists.

What seems at odds with the concept of liberty as the highest end, is to use that liberty to voluntarily place restrictions on personal freedom in the name of…