Libertarians

You read the blogs enough and you can get the sense that a good portion of libertarians are thoughtful and sensible (if myopic). This may well be true, but it’s really not close to the whole story. When the Libertarian Party nominated this guy, a few of libertarian bloggers groaned. I assumed this was just in response to doctrinaire debates on the finer points of libertarian ideological correctness. Clearly, it was more than that–this guy is nuts, even for a libertarian.

I’d be fascinated to hear a principled libertarian defense of this plan (via Pandagon):

He proposed that convicted felons serve the first month of their sentence in bed so that their muscles would atrophy and they’d be less trouble for prison guards

As I understand it, libertarianism places the highest priority on liberty above all other social goods. For many, protecting individual liberty is the only possible acceptable role for governments to perform. Imprisonment is a tremendous violation of liberty. It hardly seems consistent with libertarian philosophy to look for gratuitous and cruel ways to increase the restrictions on liberty of prisoners.