The 5th Empire - Libertarian Rapture

The difference between a libertarian and an anarchist is about six months.

- Unknown

Looking at party politics, it would appear that libertarians are a rapidly diminishing breed. Elections everywhere end up with victory for either openly socialist parties, or conservatives with totalitarian ambitions. Libertarian parties are non-existent, or marginalized to such an extent that they might as well not exist at all. However, closer scrutiny reveals that something deeper is going on.

There's a large number of people refusing to vote, and a substantial portion of these have libertarian sympathies. This is clear from comments I come across on Zerohedge and Facebook. People are waking up to the fact that the state is the enemy of liberty and that any attempt at reforming it is doomed. Instead of voting, they declare themselves sovereign.

This was vividly demonstrated in a poll made by the Norwegian Libertarian party on Facebook. It asked its members about their views on how large they wanted the state to be, and the overwhelming majority came out in favor of "no state at all". The Norwegian Libertarian party isn't getting any votes because most of its members have turned anarchist since they joined. It's nothing but a stepping stone towards awakening.

Once we realize that we don't need the state for anything, we also realize that there's no point in convincing anyone about our position. We can ignore the herd, and do things our own way. Security, justice and insurance can be handled privately. We don't need to appoint third party actors to arrange for this. On the contrary, an important aspect of practical anarchy is to avoid such people as much as possible.

The disappearance of libertarians from party politics is not what it seems. People are not giving up on the idea of liberty, they are embracing it. What we are seeing is a Rapture of sorts, where libertarians leave the political landscape in favor of real life experience. We are no longer merely talking about liberty, we're living it.

Café de Flore

People - By Arnaud 25 - Own work, Public Domain, Link