I just finished, last night, the sixth and seventh chapters of Brian Doherty's Radicals for Capitalism: A History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement. I skimmed the remainder. I'll finish the book later. Right now I'm depressed.

What a bunch of nutcases so many libertarians are, or have been! Bob LeFevre, Andy Galambos, Tom Marshall . . . these people seem just strange to me. Even the Greats seem problematic. Doherty structures his story around five major figures:

• Ludwig von Mises
• F. A. Hayek
• Ayn Rand
• Murray N. Rothbard
• Milton Friedman

I must say, re-reading Rand's life, again, fills me with revulsion anew. Though I enjoyed reading her novel The Fountainhead, as a philosopher she was a great . . . crank. Something of a loon. And her private life was a torrid mess, a perfect mirror of her chief error: egoism.

Mises' writings were very important to me. Well, a few of them were. But I've long felt that he closed himself up far too much, and his rigidity on method has always struck me as bizarre. I could learn from him, but never follow.

Hayek's writings would have meant more to me had I never read Herbert Spencer. I find his evolution as an economist interesting and instructive. But in philosophy and his general approach, well, the best in Hayek was covered earlier in Spencer, and I didn't need Hayek as much as other readers did. (Similarly, I didn't need Rand like so many others did. As a teenager I was reading more adult books, and thinking for myself without her help.)

Rothbard was a strange case. I entered the libertarian movement about the time he was going apeshit over the Kochtopus, and though I understood where he was coming from, he came off looking like a resentful ass. Rothbard always believed he alone possessed the plumb line, and always knew the proper strategy to achieve a free society. But his plumb bob swung like a pendulum in an earthquake. As a prophet, he was no better than your standard religious whacko. He lacked clear vision; what he had was pride. And as for him being a thoughtful dialectician, that's utter absurdity. Rothbard was through-and-through a dualist, to use Chris Sciabarra's terminology.

Friedman I always admired. He was obviously a great teacher and a great gentleman. He did a lot of good. He wasn't a perfect libertarian, but then neither am I. Never have been, never will be, it looks like.

The basic idea of libertarianism is this: all of politics and law can be wrapped around the idea of liberty-as-noninterference.

The trouble with this notion, as I quickly realized, and was made even clearer by reading Spencer, is that children don't fit in this picture; their needs aren't for liberty, at first, but for sustenance and education.

And, frankly, the basic idea of private property is glossed over quickly in most libertarian thinking. The inability of most libertarian theorists to honestly approach the issue of acquiring and maintaining property, and do so with philosophical rigor, astounds me, now.

Much of the libertarian movement seems childish to me. Perhaps much of my own attitudes are, too. But I can only progress at my own pace. And will, obviously, change only when I get evidence and reasoning to help me along. I remain in the libertarian camp, uncomfortably inhabiting territory somewhere among past giants, like Spencer, Molinari, Donisthorpe, Herbert, and others. In economics, I'm an eclectic, as anyone must be whose favorite economists include Ludwig Lachmann, Sir John Hicks, F.W. Taussig, and the great Carl Menger. But I also think that sociology, evolutionary psychology, social psychology, and other social disciplines should be united in a general scientific/philosophic approach. Even Rothbard believed the same, but his narrowness in the theory department prevented him from actually learning much from others.

Many libertarian dogmas I hold provisionally, as worthy of being tested in actuality, not merely in imagination. And I suspect our imaginations are, at the present time, challenged by the gulf that separates us from the living practice of real liberty. I think people will be better able to judge many disputable areas in libertarian thought better the closer society approaches real, actual, practical liberty.

I remain an agnarchist. At heart.

But I also remain very committed to a less imperial state, with power devolved down closer to the people, with individuals allowed greater scope to make decisions free of interference. I loathe most aspects of the modern state. I find the finagling of politics to be deeply dishonest, and the dominant ideologies of liberalism and conservatism to be based on separate sets of lies, untruths, and preference falsifications, the kind that make libertarians shine in comparison.

This makes me a neoclassical liberal, I guess. I prefer terms such as individualist liberal. I try not to use terms like market or capitalism to define my ideas or my life, for there is more to a free society than truck and barter, and the exchange of money. Or: there should be.

Further, I don't see the existence of public property as a major problem. Doherty repeats a great old joke (which I transcribe from memory, since my copy of the book is at home):

The trouble with libertarians is that they'd allow fornication in public parks!

What do you mean public parks?

I rent my office from the county I live in. The property is a building made for a school, now decommissioned. Its origin? A local family gave 18 acres to the county for a public park, to be used as a school as long as the school district wanted it.

Now, forget the school aspect. It's a park, now. It was a gift from private owners to the public. I helped design a financial structure that would allow the county to run the site and the building without increasing taxes. The renting of rooms in the building covers the costs of the public uses.

I am afraid I just don't see how this is wrong. This is probably another issue that most libertarians and I part company on. I don't see how public property of this sort can be construed as wrong.

I have trouble with the bureaucracy involved in doing anything with the park, and this system has to be tweaked. But the basic idea is not evil, to say the least.

So, I have no problems with at least one form of public property. There are many more that I think are likely required by good principles.

But it's been my experience that libertarians don't even want to hear about this stuff. Most libertarians are dogmatists.