Commentary by Devin McCue, Sumner Newscow — Imagine there’s a 1st-grade glass with a reading challenge where everyone must read a book by the end of the year to earn a pizza party. It’s an easy goal with established rules that allow everyone to do their part to have a great time.

But there’s one student who doesn’t want to play by these rules. Instead, he thinks he shouldn’t have to participate because no one has cleared the rules with him, and he can make pizza at home if he wants to. Only he can’t. His parents would have to make it for him with the ingredients they bought, and he didn’t contribute to it at all.

Imagine this pizza party has been a tradition for over 200 years. And that cranky first grader based his entire life philosophy around not helping his classmates.

That’s what Libertarianism is.

Libertarianism is a political identity that claims no one should have to participate in society because no one asked to be born. The government should be weak to non-existent to enforce that claim. It ignores that nearly every liberty a Libertarian has comes from some government program and that they couldn’t exist without their big, bad “enemy.”

Despite not making a lick of sense, Libertarianism has gained a few seats in government, amassed a following of politically illiterate people, and even taken over a town in New Hampshire to disastrous effects. One might call that a successful third party, but only until you remember that the modern iteration of the ideology requires you to forget basic facts.

Facts like Libertarians grew up with public education, driving on publicly funded roads, using medicine approved for safety by the FDA, eating foods deemed safe by the same body, lighting their houses, plumbing their bathrooms with public utilities, having trash picked up by the City, and even reading this article on the well-regulated Internet.

At every turn, Libertarians are supported by some form of government program, yet still refuse to acknowledge the necessity of it because of a whiny “don’t tread on me” attitude. And that’s not even including that Kansas ranks fifth in the country in federal farm subsidies and took in $1.3 billion in 2021.

To be fair, Libertarianism isn’t all bad.

The party, in theory, supports abortion access, LGBTQ+ rights, marijuana legalization, abolishing the death penalty, “balancing” the federal budget, decriminalizing sex work, emphasizing peace efforts in foreign policy, and a few other positions.

In practice, however, every Libertarian candidate has almost exclusively supported right-wing causes, and their most prominent member in government, Rand Paul, routinely votes for enlarged military budgets and tax burdens on the middle class. The mere mention of maintaining a strong military is antithetical to the Libertarian idea of “tax is theft,” but contradictions are the name of the game in this party.

Speaking of which, other than the vague concept of “liberty,” the abolishment of taxes is the central cause of the Libertarian Party. Every Libertarian I’ve ever seen wails that the government doesn’t have the right to collect taxes to pay for the non-exhaustive list of benefits I wrote earlier. You’d have thought the Speaker of the House himself came to their workplace and mugged you out front.

Unfortunately, for Libertarians, the basic law and reasoning are against them again. Section Eight of Article One of the Constitution states, “The Congress shall have the power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States.” That’s the literal first Article of the document; they didn’t even have to get to the Bill of Rights to nail that down.

After taxes, you’d expect property rights or public education derailment to be next on the Libertarian to-do list, but it’s actually something far grosser: the age of consent. Time and again on national debate stages for the Libertarian Party, candidates claim the age of consent isn’t necessary or that child marriage is perfectly legal if there’s the illusion of consent. Just last year, an Arizona Libertarian promised to hold a “referendum” to determine a new age of consent.

It’s a gross argument that paints a lot of Libertarians as creeps, but I recognize that isn’t most of the Party. I advise the other members to get your weirdos in line before they go on TV and embarrass you.

The rest of the Libertarian platform is a laundry list of contradictions and logical fallacies. Ideas like everyone should protect their kids from established facts in education with guns that other kids use to kill them at school. No one should have a driver’s license to ensure safety on the rapidly degrading roads that should be defunded. Health care should be left to the open market (more so than it already is) so people can go broke faster for prescriptions that shouldn’t be approved to be effective.

Real top-notch intellectual stuff.

Finally, to close things off, I’ve seen a few Libertarian riffs on their infamous “Don’t Tread on Me” flag that I’d like to share.

The flag itself

Shining pee-yellow and proud over many a lawn, the crudely drawn flag is familiar to everyone. You might be surprised (or not at all if you’ve read this far) that simply buying that flag goes against the Libertarian ideology.

The owner of said flag most likely bought it on the publicly regulated internet, which contracted overseas with a sweatshop to sew it. The sweatshop is unregulated without worker protections to ensure basic human rights are maintained, which is, ironically, the most libertarian step in the process. After it’s finished, the flag travels via boats with internationally agreed-upon standards until it reaches our shores and is cleared by the government not to contain harmful chemicals. Every step along the process, from purchase to export to import, is taxed, ultimately landing on a flagpole as a success of the process it hates.

Don’t Tread on Me Mailbox

The United States Postal Service might be the single greatest federal government success. It’s affordable, fast, accessible anywhere, well-regulated for safety, and one of the biggest employers in the country. Putting the Libertarian flag on your mailbox is the best *chef’s kiss* moment I could imagine.

Don’t Tread on Me License Plate

I’ve lived in Washington D.C., which means I’ve seen a lot of Virginia license plates. For an additional fee, you can upgrade your license plate to the Libertarian flag. One of Libertarians’ largest critiques of gun control as well as car ownership, is against the idea of a registry.

I’ve heard people argue that the mere act of having a list of who owns what disqualifies owning that thing as a right. So, paying extra to make your registration an ironic joke to the DMV is as perfect as the mailbox.

So, when you hear a mob go to different public meetings and yell that “tax is theft” and that we should defund public programs, remember that they are like that first grader in the example above, and whether they like it or not, we’re all going to the pizza party.

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