The libertarian can have no truck with 'left' or 'right' because he regrets any form of authoritarianism - the use of police force to control the creative life of man.

The solution to this problem [welfare-statism] must take a positive form: the restoration of a faith in what free men can accomplish.

Socialism takes and redistributes wealth, but it is utterly incapable of creating wealth.

True, the free market ignores the poor precisely as it does not recognize the wealthy - it is 'no respecter of persons'

Socialistic practices are now so ingrained in our thinking, so customary, so much a part of our mores, that we take them for granted.

The welfare state destroys the market mechanisms - lessens free choice and willing exchange. Simultaneously creating unnatural specializations, it must, granted statism's premise, resort to welfarism; that is, it must assume the responsibility for the people's welfare: their employment, their old age, their income, and the like. As this is done, man loses his wholeness; he is dispossessed of responsibility for self, the very essence of his manhood. The more dependent he becomes, the less dependable!

I would have government defend the life and property of all citizens equally; protect all willing exchange; suppress and penalize all fraud, all misrepresentation, all violence, all predatory practices; invoke a common justice under law; and keep the records incidental to these functions. Even this is a bigger assignment than governments, generally, have proven capable of. Let governments do these things and do them well. Leave all else to men in free and creative effort.