I am from the Washington D.C. area and I visit WashingtonPost.com at least once a day. I have noticed a recent increase in the number of opinion articles that have include the word “libertarian” (like this one today). Of course, they aren’t trying to persuade others to libertarian ideology, but to ridicule, marginalize or demonize it. This is in stark contrast to the previous strategy which was to ignore it and pretend it didn’t even exist.
Why are these opinion articles popping up? My answer is, because of the comments section. If you want to be popular and get a lot of responses on the internet then attack libertarianism. Libertarians live for the internet as a pulpit for their ideas. Nowhere else are they going to be heard so easily (to the delight of many).
The comments are my favorite part. There are those which are worthless that obviously came from bots, because they offer nothing in relation to the article just libertarian dogma. There are those which identify libertarians as naive children who, once they develop the rational portion of their brain, will realize the error of their ways. I imagine these people as those who see young people as a resource to
- Work to be taxed to pay for their early retirement -or-
- Fight wars for them -or-
- Both
The comments I really enjoy are the ones that actually respond to the author. I love it when authors say, “libertarians believe in free markets, but the market could never provide X good or create the Y security”. Those usually bring about arguments I have never heard before.
Posted by samduvall 