If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.

It may not be immediately obvious, but Mr. Machia is in the minority of politically active libertarians in that he eschews the two major parties. Most people who seek policies of greater freedom do so from within the two big parties. And they generally lose that fight to those who seek to regulate, regulate, regulate. This is true with the Democrats (regulate business, regulate firearms, regulate hate-speech, etc) and Republicans (regulate relationships, regulate substances, and secretly monitor that which cannot be regulated). Libertarians who fight from within either of these two parties are on a fool’s errand.

Our plight was recently highlighted by an article in The Economist:

America may be the land of the free, but Americans who favour both economic and social freedom have no political home. The Republican Party espouses economic freedom—ie, low taxes and minimal regulation—but is less keen on sexual liberation. The Democratic Party champions the right of homosexuals to do their thing without government interference, but not businesspeople. Libertarian voters have an unhappy choice. Assuming they opt for one of the two main parties, they can vote to kick the state out of the bedroom, or the boardroom, but not both.

But the situation is even worse than this, as the two main parties repeatedly fail to deliver what they are advertising.

Democrats actually oppose gay marriage and even civil unions. Remember the way Bill Clinton burned the gay community with “Don’t ask, Don’t tell”? Why do Democrats have the support of the gay community?

Democrats are the self-styled party of inclusiveness and diversity, but they have no problem violating those principles for partisan mud-slinging based on race, creed, etc. And it’s not hard to make the argument that they have long taken the black vote for granted.

Meanwhile, Republicans are not giving us smaller government. They are fat on pork, and are so different from the 1994 GOP that even Dick Armey says they have compromised their agenda and will lose their majority in the House.

Again, why would any lover of freedom vote for either of these two parties? The only answer is pragmatism, though we know that is a formula for failure in the long run.

The Economist article concluded with an ironic, painful note that the situation is, of all things, market-driven:

Libertarians are ignored partly because they are hard to find, not least because they just want to be left alone. (There is a Libertarian Party, but it gets hardly any votes.) Politicians can reach social conservatives through churches or union members through their unions, but where do libertarians gather? Parties will always court the votes that are cheapest to court because, for once, they are spending their own money.

Libertarians have been hoping that the internet will be the place to find and organize like-minded, anti-government Americans. According to polls, there is a large, silent minority of us in this country - enough to control the outcome of any election, if we could only be organized toward a common goal. But we instead concentrate on our differences - some fight primarily for social freedom, while others concentrate on economic liberties. So long as that is the case, we will only get lip service from the two parties of power and big government.