by Jeff Deist
Mises.org
I recently was invited to speak at the annual convention of the Texas Libertarian Party, and was struck by how libertarians cling to an outdated and counterproductive conception of the political landscape. In particular, many libertarians remain wedded to a misguided understanding of what the threat to liberty really is, where it comes from, and thus how we ought to fight against it.
That’s why we’re still saddled with clichéd 1980s phrases like “neither Left nor Right,” “low-tax liberals,” and even the cringeworthy “capitalist means, socialist ends”—all in evidence among the literature describing libertarianism on tables in the convention hall.
It is, of course, a virtue and a defining feature that liberty is neither left nor right.