A) So many people automatically assumed that the purpose of my post was to advance Party interests and not to promote a more libertarian society, and
B) The degree of resistance (not so much from you but definitely Lainey and Gren) to even considering an alternative possibility.

While slightly different, that set of reactions seemed of a piece to me with the other examples I cited, with libertarians consistently being used as a cipher by everyone so that they can read their own interpretations into them rather than looking at them as they actually are.

1. The public as a whole doesn’t have a libertarian mindset
2. The public as a whole doesn’t understand what a libertarian actually is.
3. Libertarians haven’t done a very good job of selling the philosophy.

Actually you’re the one who should research before you splutter, Kevin: Corcoran used to lobby for National Audubon and presumably knew plenty of Sierra Club staffers back then; but the Club’s leadership now is dominated by “leftists in hiking boots,” to use Brenda Walker’s apt phrase.

Nor are the motives of NumbersUSA, CIS, or FAIR likely to be mysteries to Corcoran.

Of higher priority for you, Kevin, than advising people with waaaay more experience and knowledge than you to “rethink” should be a resolution on your part to actually **start thinking**. Here’s a place to begin, John Derbyshire’s “Libertarianism in One Country” ( http://www.nationalreview.com/blogs/print/219463 ). Key paragraph:

“As to why I think libertarians are nuts to favor mass uncontrolled immigration from the third world: I think they are nuts because their enthusiasm on this matter is suicidal to their cause. Their ideological passion is blinding them to a rather obvious fact: that libertarianism is a peculiarly American doctrine, with very little appeal to the huddled masses of the third world. If libertarianism implies mass third-world immigration, then it is self-destroying. Libertarianism is simply not attractive either to illiterate peasants from mercantilist Latin American states, or to East Asians with traditions of imperial-bureaucratic paternalism, or to the products of Middle Eastern Muslim theocracies.”

With the honorable exception of Hans-Hermann Hoppe, most libertarians are, as Derb implied, drooling idiots on immigration. (Libertarians’ typical argument is that ending welfare will end the mass immigration of tax-eating, Third-World peasants. That would be a great program on some other, magical planet where welfare isn’t so solidly entrenched. But on earth, only ending mass immigration is feasible on a time-scale that matters.)

Or you can look at the way rally organizers billed its goals:

“The rally was conducted by the Statewide Alliance for Restoring the Trust (START). The coalition is comprised of the GBC, the Greater Washington Board of Trade, the Maryland Chamber of Commerce, more than a dozen county and local chambers of commerce, and more than 50 organizations and businesses. It seeks to convince members of the General Assembly to adopt recommendations made by the state’s Blue Ribbon Commission on Transportation Funding to increase annual revenue to the transportation fund by $800 million.”