Paranoid Libertarians Strike Back

Last week, I wrote a column on "paranoid libertarians," defined as people who have a wildly exaggerated sense of risks to liberty, who adopt a presumption of bad faith on the part of government, who have a sense of victimization, who ignore the problem of tradeoffs, and who love slippery-slope arguments. Paranoid libertarianism can be found on both the right and the left, and as I noted, paranoid libertarianism should be distinguished from libertarianism as such.

In some circles, the column has produced a bit of stir and a cry of "foul." Invoking Justice Elena Kagan's skeptical questions during oral argument in the Defense of Marriage case, Damon Root at Reason responded, "Is Elena Kagan a 'paranoid libertarian'? Judging by Sunstein's definition, the answer is yes. Welcome to the brave new world." Acommentator at Antiwar.com asked, "Is it really necessary to catalogue the long history of US government surveillance and targeting of dissident political groups?"