the fact that the same people who are most invested in the libertarian framing are the ones who believe a secret government agent has been working for the last four and a half years to extrajudiciously round up pedophiles and liberals.
FWIW, that's not even close to true among the Libertarians I know. And as a Libertarian myself, I know quite a few. The set of people who "believe a secret government agent has been working for the last four and a half years to extrajudiciously round up pedophiles and liberals" may include a few actual Libertarians, but I would posit that most of the so-called "Libertarians" in that group have only the thinnest grasp on what the Libertarian perspective is about, probably haven't read/studied Libertarian ideology extensively (or anything else for that matter), and are merely repeating a few superficial talking points they heard somewhere that may - by happenstance - align with Libertarian perspectives.
But a whole ton of people on "your side" of this debate are quite clearly not serious about regulatory overreach.
Those people sound more like the fringe of the "Tea Party" movement... populist, anti-establishment and perhaps "anti government" only in the sense that they don't like the current government. But these aren't, by and large, people who have rational, well-reasoned, comprehensive arguments for the need to reduce the size and scope of government across the board.
> And as a Libertarian myself, I know quite a few.
Yes, but obviously that's not a representative sample. My point was that the population of genuine libertarians for whom this seems like a first principles argument is dwarfed by the general population of Q-adjacent social conservatives who are happy to adopt libertarian framing but really just want the government to do what they want.
the population of genuine libertarians for whom this seems like a first principles argument is dwarfed by the general population of Q-adjacent social conservatives who are happy to adopt libertarian framing but really just want the government to do what they want.
FWIW, that's not even close to true among the Libertarians I know. And as a Libertarian myself, I know quite a few. The set of people who "believe a secret government agent has been working for the last four and a half years to extrajudiciously round up pedophiles and liberals" may include a few actual Libertarians, but I would posit that most of the so-called "Libertarians" in that group have only the thinnest grasp on what the Libertarian perspective is about, probably haven't read/studied Libertarian ideology extensively (or anything else for that matter), and are merely repeating a few superficial talking points they heard somewhere that may - by happenstance - align with Libertarian perspectives.
But a whole ton of people on "your side" of this debate are quite clearly not serious about regulatory overreach.
Those people sound more like the fringe of the "Tea Party" movement... populist, anti-establishment and perhaps "anti government" only in the sense that they don't like the current government. But these aren't, by and large, people who have rational, well-reasoned, comprehensive arguments for the need to reduce the size and scope of government across the board.
YMMV, of course.