Why are *so many* Libertarians so smug and annoying?

[Deus Naturae]

When calling people smug and annoying, it is generally best not to do it in a manner which possesses both of those qualities.

First, let's take a look at the world of academia....

I know of very few academics or economics departments in the United States (and even less in the rest of the world) who take Austrian economics seriously. Libertarian political philosophy has always seemed to me to be a fifth-rate attempt to plagiarize the work of John Locke or Thomas Jefferson, and a few other people who are selectively quoted to appear "clever."

If Jefferson and Locke are the only libertarian philosophers you knew of, I suggest doing some reading. Also, where have you read this philosophy that you consider to be plagiarism? I'd be interested to know if your view if based on actually reading literature about libertarian political philosophy, or simply anecdotal evidence based on observations of random posts on the internet.

As for Austrian economics, I would think that that is generally the case with most unorthodox economic views. In addition, I think it would be hard to find many economists, here in the states at least, who support protectionism or rent control. Yet these policies still enjoy considerable political followings. Of course, if you're really interested in finding Austrian academics, this would probably be a good place to look.

It's also worth noting that Austrian economics isn't the only "libertarian" economic school.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

How many philosophers do you know? On what basis do you assert that libertarianism is passively dismissed, more so than other philosophies?

You must be logged in to read this quote.

I honestly don't know what you're talking about here. Other than a few Objectivists, I've encountered few libertarians who were strongly hostile towards religion. At this point, I would think libertarians, even atheist ones, would be considered more favorable to religion, then, say, progressives, due to growing controversy about the government's authority to coerce religious groups (the Obamacare contraceptive mandate, for example).

You must be logged in to read this quote.

The latter meme is not exclusive to libertarians, in my experience. The former is clearly a result of Ron Paul's use of the phrase.

[Deus Naturae]

Thanks for the responses....self-bump here.

I have realized that the Libertarian/Randian understanding of rights is quite asymmetric. Selfishness is a virtue-provided that you are the one acting in a selfish manner. Others cannot act in a purely selfish, egoistic manner; for by doing so, they would necessarily be screwing everyone else over.

If everyone acted purely out of selfish, self-interested calculation, then what's to stop any individual from stealing or destroying another's property? Nothing. So much for "absolute" property rights.

This is why the Libertarian doctrines of Ayn Rand, Hayek, etc. are self-refuting and self-contradictory. The standard of egoism must ONLY apply to you, and not anybody else in society.
Otherwise, you have purely anti-social behavior among individuals in society. Therefore, this is not a viable ideology.

First of all, where do you get the idea that Hayek was a Randian anti-altruism type? Libertarianism isn't centered upon self-interest above all else, and I'm not really sure where you got the idea that it is.

I can't really speak about Rand, though I imagine you could find some sort of response to your argument if you did some research. Regardless, Objectivism isn't the same thing as libertarianism. 

[Deus Naturae]

First, let's take a look at the world of academia....

I know of very few academics or economics departments in the United States (and even less in the rest of the world) who take Austrian economics seriously. Libertarian political philosophy has always seemed to me to be a fifth-rate attempt to plagiarize the work of John Locke or Thomas Jefferson, and a few other people who are selectively quoted to appear "clever."

Which leads me to my next point-I know of almost no serious student of philosophy (let alone an actual teacher of philosophy) who takes Libertarianism seriously as an intellectual tradition. Note that this is not the same as understanding something, yet disagreeing with it-plenty of intellectuals have disagreed about all kinds of political and philosophical traditions, and often passionately, at that. The Libertarian movement seems so absurd, that most people don't even bother to mount a serious argumentative challenge to it, because they know it's not worth it.

I suspect the main reason you aren't encountering many libertarians in academia is twofold:
1) You're leaving out a huge gaping whole of subject areas where you will find plenty of libertarians in academia and that's hard science. Areas like philosophy and to a lesser extent economics are social sciences that include significant value placed on ideals like empathy and expression, which aren't generally ideals libertarians are predisposed to.
2) Most of academia is funded by the government. People who believe the government shouldn't fund social institutions are distinctly unlikely to sign themselves up.

On this vein, I need to add one more thought, that your immediate deferment to representation in academia as the intellectual depth of an ideology might be an example of smugness on your part.

Not to mention, the overlap between Libertarianism and "F you, Dad!" atheism, cannot be ignored. So much for serious commentary or debate in the religious sphere.

Here I'll have to agree with Deus Naturae,  while there certainly are obnoxiously rebellious atheist angsty libertarians, the progressive movement poses a far more dangerous threat to the future of religion than libertarianism does since while libertarians typically want the government out of moral issues, the progressive side doesn't want the government out, they've made up their own brand of morality that they want the government to impose instead of Christianity, which they expect universal support of and if you disagree they'll raise all hell in faux moral outrage about how you must be some sort of troglodyte who dares to question the completely unproven claim that there is a arc of social progress toward "morality", which is more or less defined as the freedom to immediately toss whatever last undying sliver of virtue might possibly hurt anyone's feelings (unless you disagree with them, in which case they cannot tolerate intolerance). They also act as though whatever happened more than like 5 years ago was some distant era where even though by there standard almost everyone living would be bigoted moron who needs to go crawl back under whatever rock they slithered out from under, except that since it was before we reached out modern enlightenment of the last ten minutes' attention span, we can't consider the thoughts and actions of the people living then by today's standards because it's just beyond them. The latter is far more narcissistic, self-righteous, and smug than libertarians could ever dream of being.

Damn it!  Am I really going to agree with a post made by TJ?

I agree with the bolded part especially when talking about American history.  This shouldn't be surprising when one actually considers the root of American "Progressivism", which was pretty much a self-righteous crusade by upper crust WASP types in both parties to contain the influence of the dirty radical socialist immigrant tides that presented a clear danger to American Capital.  If you can't beat them by brutal police force or government agents, throw them a metaphorical bone every once in a while to prevent them from getting "restless".  By the same mark, today's "progressives" seem to read a version of history where they and their liberal protestant Yankee Republican ancestors were responsible for the salvation of all mankind from the forces of white southern and Catholic reactionary racist capitalistic bigotry.  Since then, naturally, the parties have flipped whereby the enlightened educated non-bigoted liberal elites are now Democrats and their dumbass racist theocratic conservative prole opponents are now Republicans.

A lot of conservatives don't do themselves much justice either, who don't seem to be able to consider that times have changed either.  You can see such a problem inherent in people like Oldiesfreak, who can't seem to process the differences between political parties from the 19th century with those that existed in the mid-late 20th century.  It's almost like an inverse of the above.  There might be a few who think the Civil War was justified and it was not about slavery, but those are a minority compared to those who believe (and you'll see this regurgitated by talking heads all the freaking time) that Republicanism has been consistently for the rights of minorities against the evil always racist segregationist Democrats who should not be trusted because they supported slavery 150 years ago.  On this website, as much sh*t as I will get for this, I must admit that our more conservative posters seem to be more enlightened about taking context into the times with how our political ideologies have developed over time and the whole "judging people by their times".

Consequently, as a result of these inherent reader's point of view bias (my side must always be the ones who were the anti-racists, basically), neither atypical "progressive" or "conservative" seem to take the time to consider why people in the past felt differently from themselves.  Fundamentally, this is more of a refusal than just ignorance to consider points of views from a time that people needn't consider and a misguided belief that all things can be broken down into a few simple categories that remain undisputed throughout history.  There are good guys and bad guys.  It is black and white, there is no room for grey.  Rather ironically, in the end both sides agree on one thing: that the enlightened elites whose revision they support are in the moral right and that the opposition was universally bad.  It's a narrative that by nature is pro-hierarchy and designed to justify all negative acts against people who didn't feel the same way about their side on the grounds that "they deserved it".
[/avoid Class War rant]

Basically, the reason why smugness exists in such a large scale among the politically devout, whether it be libertarian (I could go all day long about the flaws with libertarian bias, if need be), progressive, conservative, etc. etc. etc. etc. is because people see things through rose tinted eyeglasses that depicts the world universally in alignment with their own thoughts and actions and that any deviance from it is an abnormality worthy of damnation.  Holy hell Batman, I could barely read the preview of this post through the crimson red coloration of my eyes.

EDIT: For the record, I've talked to PR lots of times over issues like this.  He's actually one of the more intelligent posters on the board who does take sh*t in context.  I'm sure he just wants to know why some Libertarians are so absolutist and rigid in their thinking.  He'd probably be one of the first, in private, to admit there are a lot of pretentious "progressives" out there.  Hell, he brought up the progressive fear of immigrant Socialists to me about two years ago in an IRC chat.

Of course you can't judge people on their morality a 100 years ago but how does that fly in theory of moral absolutionism/relativism? Could it simply be that there is a right and wrong, but no one is perfect and no one will know it until the Second Coming or whatever you believe and that time is a context but not a shield from judgment?

Does time simply determine who is left, not who is right?

Evaluating actions as right/wrong doesn't necessarily have to be connected to evaluating actors as good/bad or whatever.