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

[Indy Texas]

I'm going to play devil's advocate here since I once was a hopefully far less smug or annoying version of what you describe and moved extensively in those circles in my young and reckless days.

Regarding Jefferson and Locke, I think there is a tendency among what I might call the "wrong kind of libertarians" to basically just take a bunch of paragraphs from the Federalist Papers or any other colonial era writing out of context and try to shoehorn it into their very 'Murica view that this country was founded to be all about stockpiling deadly weapons and rebelling against governments and defending our "God-given Constitutional freedoms" (because God totally wrote the Constitution and the world of the Biblical Middle East was such a liberty-lovin' place with its slavery and theocracy and absolute monarchy and high taxes imposed by Caesar). This sort of mentality seems disturbingly common among a lot of ex-military guys, particularly the kind who support people like Ron Paul and Adam Kokesh. Kind of ironic considering they are also the very people who literally personify the notion of the State as the sole holder of the "legitimate" use of force and violence.

What those people adhere to is a bizarre form of what you might call "anti-state authoritarianism."

But if you're interested in what might be called "classical liberal" writing, I would recommend Frederic Bastiat or Lord Acton. There's also that Scotsman by the name of Adam Smith. And, if you're looking for something witty, H. L. Mencken. I also still have a copy of David Boaz's The Libertarian Reader from ages ago, which is an anthology of writings that I think sum up what "real" libertarians actually base their philosophy on.