It's an obvious joke, but Bernie actually did pretty well in that crowd. A lot of libertarians are ultimately just rural voters who think anything out of Washington is the enemy, and thus anything anti-establishment is on their side.
That's libertarianism in a nutshell, though. A political ideology founded from liberalism which claims to reject all of liberalism while also being just the same as liberalism embraced by people who actually kind of hate liberalism. It's a lot of very confused voters registered to that party.
While you are entitled to your opinion I'm pretty sure I would be the authority having been in the party for over a decade. Libertarians in general care about the Non aggression principal. Beyond that we don't agree on much we are a contentious bunch.
Look, there's definitely some people who lean "libertarian" on paper who have valuable and interesting insights. Chuck Mahron/Strong Towns, for example. They're A+ in political ideas and messaging and you can definitely see NAP center stage if you read between the lines of what they are saying. Except I've never heard him use the word "libertarian". I suspect because he knows it is a poisoned brand and just generally doesn't like labels, though that's just supposition.
But apply some Bayesian theory here and don't engage in any No True Scotsmanship. If someone tells you they are a "libertarian", that information on its own should give you HIGH confidence the person is somewhere between "Republican who has a gay daughter he doesn't want to see lynched" and "total crank sovereign citizen type". There's 1,000 false positives for every true one.
If I were you, holding the sincere beliefs I have no reason to question you having, I would not want to be identified by that word.
Online in particular is a crap shoot. It's a small enough demographic that it's easy to be overrun.
In 15 years my local LP has gone from weird old racist fucks to younger people that are pretty fantastic. The 2020 state convention had me pleasantly surprised. We were heavily involved in supporting the pro-choice vote we had (and won) and, while the dinosaurs aren't dead, they were completely ostracized.
Everything is allowed except aggression, defined as disproportional (non-similar) force, meaning force that would exceed a targets momentary aggressiveness (see meter) defined as the total (cumulative) aggression applied by the target minus the cumulative force received (in response) by the target at that moment.
You're saying the only thing libertarians have in common is a poorly defined, subjective "principal"...
It's a belief in personal liberty, but the NAP is a useful analytical tool. Different people have different limits, though. It's a fairly robust way to approximate negative rights.
I'm glad you want to have a discourse and aren't being disingenuous, oh wait...
The NAP is a moral rule that states that any person is permitted to do whatever they want with their property except when such action agressess on someone elses property, which is in turn defined as the application of or threat of physical interference or breach of agreement. The principle is also called the non-initiation of force
You just establish robust self defense. Protecting strictly property isn't part of it. If someone is actively attacking you, your family, whatever, self-defense pops in. After that, a less fucky justice system that focuses on making the victim whole rather than retribution would be lovely.
It's pretty standard private property ideas. Most are still kind of stuck in the (leftist definition) capitalist version of property where you kind of assume everything is already owned by someone and we toil for property.
I don't think it's necessary to go down that path, but I'm sort of neutral on how society chooses to handle it. I prefer the more homestead/robust abandonment types.
Current standard property ideas require a robust central government to catalogue who owns what and enforce everyone's rights. Is that permissible under libertarianism?