Word: libertarian
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...freedom that lives in the Libertarian imagination has an earthly home, it is the American West. If it has a temple, it's Nevada. It's not just the low taxes or the libertine veneer of Las Vegas; Nevada is free, I was told, in part because so much of it is populated by an unbroken and unbowed caste of ranchers, miners and homesteaders who believe in the primacy of private property...
...might guess, things that come between a Nevadan and his land don't sit well, and over the past decade, there's been nothing more disruptive than the environmental movement's good intentions. Nye County rancher Jim Berg, 68, doesn't call himself a Libertarian, but he thinks the GOP has lost its will to keep the government from affecting his livelihood. He has plenty of war stories about his county's showdowns with the Federal Government, including a 1991 standoff when armed federales came to confiscate cattle belonging to a neighboring rancher who had let his herd graze...
There is a lot in the complaints in the Libertarian heartland that sounds like nostalgia for an idealized American past. Jim Berg will tell you about grazing-rights grievances, but he's just as quick to lament the death of the ranching lifestyle. "My grandkids have scattered like quail," he says. "They've all gone city...
...tempting to think of Libertarianism as nothing more than old-school Republicanism, but it's always been partially left-wing, drawing from a long history of American anarchism. The modern challenge is to unite those two wings--or, as magician (and stalwart Libertarian) Penn Jillette told me, "Convince the dope guys that the gun guys are O.K., and vice versa." And many Libertarians believe the time is now. It helps that the U.S. has been throttled for a century by two parties whose core differences are narrowing. The current general election has seemed at times a contest about...
...Everybody is Libertarian about something in this country," Bob Barr told me over breakfast in midtown Manhattan recently. It's his best pitch, an oft-used explanation of why the Libertarian Party can leverage the country's many discontents. The strongest part of his message is the delivery. Barr is a level man with a rich, assuring voice. Even in a D.C.-standard-issue dark three-piece suit, there's something warm and tweedy about him--a perfectly calm spokesman for the often cantankerous ideas of his party...