My Libertarian Friend Just Won't Give It Up

[ChoppinBroccoli]

He's actually not all that good a friend. More of an acquaintance. But he's one of these guys who grew up with rich parents, had everything handed to him all his life, got out of college and lived off of his expense account for a few years, then moved down to Florida and took a job as some kind of investment banker/financial adviser, or some such nonsense. Now he's this harcore Libertarian and Ron Paul supporter who spouts Ayn Rand and constantly bloviates about the genius of the Free Market and how private business is the solution to all the world's woes, if only the evil government would stop poking their noses into everyone's affairs. I recently got into a heated discussion with him because he's one of these "pie in the sky" Libertarians who thinks that all you have to do is walk up to a person with a problem and say, "If you work hard enough, you'll succeed," and everything will be fine. That's one thing I absolutely HATE about Libertarians: they're all very good at telling OTHER people how hard to work, and that they don't need a leg up from anyone, yet all their lives, they've had everything handed to them. I'm not kidding, I actually had a friend (a different friend) who, while preaching about the evils of compound interest, specifically with regard to car loans, said that with the exception of buying a house and getting an education, you should NEVER take out a loan for anything. Yeah, that's all well and good, but what about the 99% of us out here whose only transportation would be the old shoe-leather highway if not for car loans? And, once again, he's another guy who grew up in a rich family and was handed everything in life. Not to mention the fact that when Mr. Self-Sufficient started his own Chiropractic practice, his friggin' PARENTS bought him the $7,000 X-Ray machine he needed to get started.

Well, just tonight, the original guy (the finacial adviser, not the Chiropractor) started recruiting everyone who would listen (via Facebook) to check out whatever new Libertarian screed he'd discovered. This time, it was the Elbert Hubbard essay, "A Message To Garcia." Without ruining the story for you, it's a work of fiction in which a soldier in the Spanish-American War is given a mission, and completes it without asking for any help and blah blah blah, you know, the whole Libertarian Party line. This was my response to him:

"I wonder if Hubbard's opinions changed after his death. You see, he died when he was riding the Lusitania (yes, THAT Lusitania) across the ocean, on his way to Europe to speak out against the war. That's the cold irony of the whole "all you have to do is work hard and you'll succeed" myth: sometimes life drops you in the middle of the ocean and torpedoes the boat out from under you. And no matter how hard you work on swimming to shore, most of the time, you're gonna drown."