Mom asks me what "libertarian" refers to in the blog header. In the interest of keeping our reader informed, here's an excerpt from a CATO Institute article, The Coming Libertarian Age.

Libertarianism is the view that each person has the right to live his life in any way he chooses so long as he respects the equal rights of others. Libertarians defend each person's right to life, liberty, and property--rights that people possess naturally, before governments are created. In the libertarian view, all human relationships should be voluntary; the only actions that should be forbidden by law are those that involve the initiation of force against those who have not themselves used force--actions like murder, rape, robbery, kidnapping, and fraud.

Most people believe in and try to live by that code of ethics. Libertarians believe it should be applied to actions by governments as well as by individuals. Governments should exist only to protect rights, to protect us from others who might use force against us. When governments use force against people who have not violated the rights of others, governments themselves become rights violators. Thus libertarians condemn such government actions as censorship, the draft, confiscation of property, and regulation of our personal and economic lives.

That's it in an admittedly very small nutshell. Anyone interested in learning more should start out at Cato's website. I don't agree with them on everything, but they certainly come a lot closer than either the Democrats or the Republicans.