 What is a Libertarian? It really depends on who you ask, and many suggestions have been made by supporters and detractors alike, but the only given in this question is that there are far more myths surrounding what makes a Libertarian than there are actual things that make a Libertarian. The typical explanation is a Libertarian is a free market capitalist who triumphs liberty over security. After all, if you want a command economy where food and shelter are provided for you free of charge, where security is gained at the expense of liberty, there's already a place for that, it's called prison. On the other side of the fence, some say it is a person who is socially liberal and fiscally conservative. Liberals say they are conservatives with weed. Conservatives say they are liberals with guns. Communists say they are fascists, fascists say they are communists. Maybe after all the biggest indicator that you are a Libertarian is how quickly people are to put false and polarising labels on your ideas. Truthfully, while there have been many good attempts, I don't believe it's possible to give a single definition of what makes a Libertarian. Rather it should be considered an umbrella term of ideas that share common foundations and goals but differ almost only in application, because there are some things that all Libertarians want – freedom, peace, and prosperity. These three principles are embodied as goals in the subline of the legendary Libertarian Lou Rockwell's blog, anti-state, anti-war, pro-market. What bigger destroyer of freedom exists than the state? What inhibitor of peace than war? And what enabler of poverty than the suppression of free exchange? Humanity can never achieve freedom, peace, or prosperity through government. Government is the only institution on earth that has ever carried out genocide. Governments have countless times legalised slavery, murder and theft in complete defiance of morality. In the 20th century, governments killed four times the amount of their own citizens than citizens killed each other. That has to beg the question of how powerful governments can ever be considered a force that exists to protect you when they are far more statistically likely to kill you than anyone else. When the fate of your life lies in the hands of a man with a gun pointed directly at your face, wouldn't you rather be the one in charge of the gun and in charge of your own protection? These are the reasons why we give such great adherence to the ideas within the United States Constitution, as the American Revolution and the Republic it created are undoubtedly the greatest events in all of Libertarian history. What makes it so sad is how far the Republic has fell from this grace, the Constitution being trampled on by donkeys and elephants alike to suit their own purposes at the expense of your liberty through the guise of democracy. If the founders were alive today, they would have started shooting a long time ago, as America was created to be a state of limited government, non-interventionist foreign policy and a bastion of free trade. Now the branches of government don't debate whether or not to tax and spend, only how much. They don't debate whether or not to go to war, only if they should just bomb countries or totally invade them. And they give no consideration at all towards infringing on your privacy, your person and your property. The rattlesnake in the famous Gadsden flag is you, an individual, and the unseen foot being warned away from treading is that of the state, the institution of force and violence. Ever seeking out new ways to subdue the individual in a never-ending march towards total domination and corruption. The libertarian is the man who doesn't salute, who refuses to give an inch to tyrants and their cronies, while all around him other individuals are hypnotized by the delusions of collectivism. To understand libertarianism more broadly, you have to understand where it comes from. In the long line of influences that form the modern pillars of libertarianism, we begin with Aristotle in ancient Greece, 2300 years ago. All of the great philosophers of this time said some very wacky things that modern people would reject like defensive slavery and such. But where Aristotle broke so much ground were his considerations on the rights of a human and most importantly, why do we have them. Modern conceptions of rights have fallen a very long way from this, as human rights stopped being thought of as innate to humans by their nature alone, but being some granted privilege from an authority on a piece of paper, which give rights with one hand, but impose forced moral obligations with the other. Like the United Nations, who apparently graciously bestow rights upon us, which we wouldn't otherwise have, so we have to bind ourselves in order to be free, like some Orwellian Newspeak. Institutions cannot grant you rights, your rights exist within you and any external force can only try to take them away at worst or leave them alone at best. The question of why we have rights is more important than what rights we actually have, and unless rights are ordained by human existence itself, they are not inalienable rights but are alienable privileges. Your human rights can never be given or taken away, they can only be allowed to flourish or be suppressed. Humans have never stopped considering this origin question as it flowed from Aristotle through to the revered theologian Thomas Aquinas who made the non-secular argument that it is the unique human potential for the powers of reason which grants rights, to then John Locke who argued that human reason naturally grants three pillars of rights, life, liberty and property. Humans cannot have reason without their life, the human mind and body must be free for reason to be truly experienced, and reason allows humans alone to create, understand and defend property. In my opinion, a good Libertarian is one who is so deeply passionate about natural rights that it stirs their soul just thinking about it. If you've watched my videos before you might be sick to death of hearing me talk about rights, especially if you came here for my talks about economics, but even just writing those two sentences explaining the origin and justification of rights made the hairs on my arms stand up and gave me butterflies, I just love it. It's such an amazing and purely rational explanation of what it is that makes us human. But like I said, there is no clear Libertarian consensus on even this because Libertarian is too broad of a term to narrow down even the question of human rights. In Rand, it's considered by just about everyone who has ever heard of her to be a Libertarian, but because she rejected the inalienable natural rights argument in this framework, she explicitly said herself that she is not a Libertarian. But even this needs historical context. At the time she said this, Libertarianism as we know it today was only just getting started. The truth is, Libertarians should be called Liberals. As our framework comes from classical liberal Enlightenment thinkers such as John Locke, but in America, since the time after the Second World War, the term liberal came to mean someone who is ostensibly pro-government as a means to altruistic ends, quite possibly the total antithesis of what liberal originally meant. To make this matter all the more confusing for you, in most of Europe liberal is still used to mean someone who is a free market government skeptic, but despite the change in the name, the history of Libertarianism is liberalism. As the term Libertarian was originally used to describe anti-government socialists, but at the time of the 1950s, the name hadn't been used for decades and a new name was needed for classical liberals who in turn had their own name stolen by the new liberals. The American revival of classical liberal ideas took on the name Libertarian and headed by Murray Rothbard took on a radical direction by exploring the questions the old liberals asked and took them to their fullest logical conclusions. So now we come back to Ayn Rand. She wanted nearly all of the same things that these new Libertarians wanted, but didn't use the classical liberal rationale to be her reasons why. And as such, she did not call herself a Libertarian. But here we are 50 years later and the name has become much more broad, to the point where it's hard to argue that her own philosophy of Objectivism doesn't fall under the now umbrella term of Libertarian. And I think the best way to answer the question what is a Libertarian is to say it is someone who falls safely within the right Libertarian quadrant of the political compass. Someone in this quadrant will have the previous common grounds I mentioned before. Freedom, Peace, Prosperity, Anti-State, Anti-War, Pro-Market, Life, Liberty, Property, they all mean the same thing at the end of the day. The only glaring differences you'll see among people in the quadrant is how far these grounds should be taken, how they are best achieved and how they are best protected. Our community is a fragmented one, but one that I have immense faith in, as our logic is impeccable and our arguments are brilliantly rational. Libertarianism has been rapidly growing since Ron Paul to the point where the Libertarian Party in America is the fastest growing party and quickly becoming a contender to the Republican Democrat duopoly. All in all I believe we just need to be able to shake hands and start moving together in the same direction and not worry about how far the destination actually is until we can see it on the horizon. If you were curious about Libertarianism and stumbled across this video I really hope it helped explain to you a very brief history of our ideas and what we stand for, but there's only so much I can do in 2000 words. If you're new to this I'm sure you will have many, many questions and if so I encourage you to check out the Libertarian community on Instagram, give me a follow while you're at it, where you can find some very smart people to answer your questions. Watch some more of my videos to see if a question of yours is addressed and when you're ready for more in-depth and nuanced discussion go ahead and join my discord server where you can talk with myself and some very well read people to have friendly debates with. Take it easy.