By Eric Peters
Eric Peters Autos
September 26, 2026
Perhaps the most admirable thing about libertarianism is that it's simple and for that reason, easy to understand. The core concept is that everyone ought to leave everyone else alone - so long as they are doing the same. It's a reformulation of the Golden Rule, which - ironically - most people say they agree with and teach their kids.
At least, they used to.
Contrast the libertarian concept - the principle of leaving other people alone so long as they do the same - with the chaotic jumble of often-contradictory positions that don't define what a Republican or a Democrat is, because nothing is defined when it is a constantly changing chaotic jumble of often-contradictory positions. One example is the Republican practice of "mending" - but not ending - authoritarian programs such as Obamacare. "Mending" in this context is a working synonym for agreeing with the basic merit of whatever the "program" is but saying we can make it "work" better. Another example is the "de-criminalization" - gaslighting, phone home ! - of by definition not-criminal mere use/possession/sale of some "drugs," such as marijuana (and alcohol, too). It is teeth-achingly incoherent to style a political party as being the "freedom" party when it meters the freedoms people are permitted to have. What you've got is a single party that has a slightly different take on which freedoms it will meter and for what purpose.
In other words, you have the same party.
That is why Voting Harder - whether for Republicans or Democrats - makes no meaningful difference. More people than ever before are beginning to understand this and have decided to stop voting altogether. They have figured out that voting is not just pointless but destructive, as it empowers and legitimizes the illegitimate.
By nature most people still act - in their day-to-day lives - in congruence with the leave-people-alone principle. They don't pester their neighbors; in fact they try their best to be neighborly because they want to be treated neighborly in return. They wave and smile and even offer to help with things sometimes. They don't march up to the neighbor's door, ring the doorbell and hand the neighbor a bill for "services" the neighbor did not ask for or use. Yet these same neighborly people will vote to have someone else do that to their neighbor. This is profoundly morally schizophrenic when you think about it. An action almost everyone understands to be wrong when done by the individual - who would feel ashamed to do it - becomes just a part of the way things are when it is done at a distance, by people sanctioned to do it by this construct called the state.
The libertarian concept is that it is wrong in every instance to use force against people who've abided by the principle of leaving other people alone. This latter can also be expressed as not having caused any harm to anyone else. That it is controversial to espouse the idea that people have a right to be left alone provided they are leaving everyone else alone - i.e., they have not caused any harm to anyone else - is remarkable in view of the fact that most people agree with this idea in everyday life and even teach it to their kids. Yet it all gets dumped when interactions pass beyond the boundary of the neighbor's property line. The same person who would never march up to the neighbor's door to demand money for "services" the neighbor did not ask for or use feels no shame in doing exactly the same thing to the neighborhood - via the ballot box. Rights are individual, which is why they are vitiated when things are collectivized. It is why those who want to vitiate individual rights use the collective to advance collectivism.
How easy - and how hard ! - it is to regard everyone as a neighbor, who has the same right to be left alone that you want for yourself and which you probably respect as far as your next-door neighbor.
That is the core of libertarianism. It is not libertinism. It is not freedom from responsibility. It is nothing more - and nothing less - than being a good neighbor, to everyone.
This article was originally published on Eric Peters Autos.