I left the Libertarian Party today. It was a long time coming. There wasn't much to it, really, I just went online and changed my voter registration to NPA. Nothing will really change for me during the primary elections. It was more of a symbolic thing. I am no longer affiliated with a party whose ideals are a corrupted form of true libertarianism.   

   About twenty years ago, I joined the Libertarian Party because I believed in its stated ideals of personal freedom and limited government. I took their political quiz, and its cleverly worded questions placed me nearly as far "libertarian" on the grid as I could go. I listened to voices in the media that claimed to be libertarian, absorbing all of their information as an eager student. In time I came to believe that free markets were the magical cure for all of the world's ailments. I came to believe that anything remotely socialist was antithetical to freedom. I did not realize at the time, that what I was being sold was actually anarcho-capitalism.

   Oddly enough, the catalyst for this change was in studying the origins of libertarianism. The libertarian philosophy is rooted in socialism, not laissez-faire capitalism. The classic and modern forms of libertarianism are very similar except for that one difference. It's a fundamental difference, though. Libertarianism begins with personal autonomy. You cannot have personal autonomy when capital is unevenly distributed, as those who control more capital have at least some influence over the lives of those who control less. Capital always becomes unevenly distributed. A libertarian platform must contain a socialist economic policy.