Libertarians: Live Free AND Die

I get a kick out of libertarians, and it’s not where kicks are well received. Libertarians preach rugged individualism and self-sufficiency and rant against Big Government like there’s no tomorrow…and in their view there will be no tomorrow as long as BG gets in the way of individual freedom.
The latest iteration of their uproar over BG is their call to repeal Obamacare because it requires everyone to buy health insurance. One of their representatives, a federal judge in eastern Virginia, recently ruled that requiring health insurance is unconstitutional. Libertarians can take care of themselves, thank you, and no government should be able to require a person to buy anything he doesn’t want. The problem with this thinking is that when the libertarian gets sick enough to go to a hospital, unless he has a lot of spare cash in his mattress, we the people who do buy insurance end up paying higher premiums because the cost of the libertarian’s stay in the hospital is spread among us premium payers. In other words, the libertarian ends up mooching off the rest of us.
Another pet peeve of the libertarians is gun control. However, thanks to them and their great lobby, the NRA, we have loose and easy gun laws in this country. This looseness enables Mexican drug cartels to sneak across the border in Texas or Arizona, but particularly in Texas, and buy all the semi-automatics and ammunition they need to add to the 30,000 of corpses they have already strewn around northern Mexico. Our libertarian-inspired gun laws or lack thereof have enabled drug cartels to assume such power in Mexico that the Mexican government can’t begin to gain control of its own country. No wonder Mexicans want to come to the United States. We have made Mexico unsafe for habitation, thanks to our libertarian gun laws. But that’s just part of the story.
Of course our libertarian attitude toward drug use in the U.S. has also provided the funds for the cartels to be able to buy the weapons to kill their people, but that would be pointing the finger at a whole different species of libertarians who think they ought to be able to ingest any substance they feel like and to hell with the law and the social and economic cost to the rest of the law-abiding public. Drug users are unwittingly willing to sacrifice Mexican lives and the health of American culture for another selfish hit toward personal oblivion. It is their liberty to do so, they insist.
But maybe there is a silver lining in this selfish behavior as other libertarians see it. If the drug-addled libertarians keep buying drugs, most of which come from Mexico, and the cartels then can buy more guns from the U.S., America’s trade imbalance is improved. Moreover, if the cartels help keep down the population in Mexico, we can make those libertarians in Arizona happy because there will be fewer Mexicans crossing the border to take American jobs. It’s a win-win for everyone, except Mexicans. But who cares about them. After all, the libertarian motto, which is featured on the New Hampshire license plate, is “Live Free or Die.” Translated, it means we’ll live free and you’ll die. But that’s your problem, not mine. After all, we’re all libertarians and should look after ourselves. That’s what “real America” is all about.
Then again, if we go back to the libertarian healthcare issue, why not let them have their way and not require health insurance. However, when they show up at the hospital with a life-threatening injury or illness, make them pay up front for any anticipated costs. It may take a while to assess their situation, but they can simply plunk down a $100,000 - $500,000 deposit, depending on the severity of the case, and any surplus left after service will be returned to them. If the libertarian can’t produce the deposit, that’s too bad. He can go take care of himself. In that case, the motto shifts to “Live Free and Die. But a “real” libertarian wouldn’t have it any other way.