Quote of the Day: Greg Gutfeld on Being Libertarian

This strikes me as pretty darn insightful:

I became a conservative by being around liberals and I became a libertarian by being around conservatives. You realize that there’s something distinctly in common between the two groups, the left and the right; the worst part of each of them is the moralizing. On the left, you have people who want to dictate your behavior under the guise of tolerance. Unless you disagree with them. Then the tolerance goes out the window. Which kind of negates the whole idea of tolerance. That’s the politically correct moralizing. Then when you become a conservative, the other kind of moralizing comes from religion. But if you remove both of those from the equation, what you’re left with is libertarianism.

From the right, you’ve got free markets. From the left, you have free minds. To me, that’s the only sensible direction.

I should add, though, that people do not do the obnoxious, annoying moral grandstanding only because they are "liberals" or "conservatives." The moralizing problem is one of degree: it becomes more and more prominent (and obnoxious) the farther one goes toward the edges, the far left and far right. Centrists and moderates don't preach nearly as much. Goodness knows I stay away from far right as much as I stay away from far left.