There is a bias which the conservative movement has to work with because the source of that bias is an observation which is in part true. Conservatives naturally prefer things as they are; they also tend to be pro-athletic and somewhat disinclined towards school, and tend to be suckers for the call of noblesse oblige. The last descriptor is what gives the conservative intellectual his or her “in,” as conservatism’s duty ethic does incline one to study profundities that don’t violate common sense. This can proceed up to the level of an idée fixe - throwing away career and prospects to find wounded truth and give it aid and comfort.

But any individual matching the above characteristics isn’t really an intellectual by nature. A lot of conservatives have a liking for the intellectual life, but when asked to sit at the intellectual’s desk, they show a recurring and somewhat distressing tendency to take off and go hunting.

Which presents a bit of a problem for those kinds of souls who share conservatism’s goals but who find the sight of a young man or woman marching to the library in step with an invisible John Philip Sousa track, or one that listens to a policy speech with an unshifting glance that says “booted,” somewhat evacuative in the stomach area. It’s the same old “Ulster marriage” arrangement – the fundamental incompatibility of soul between the scholar and the gentleman – that has always shown up. As long as conservatives admire and seek to emulate the Prussian gentleman, there will always be a bit of the Marx in the dedicated scholar.

Those people who truly believe in the worth of the sedentary life, who are genuinely convinced that the introvert is genuinely superior, who see an eyes-shut facial posture turning into an eyes- open posture at the sound of a striking song as an annoyance rather than an inevitability, really need an alternative faction that shares a genuine love of that kind of lifestyle. That faction is libertarianism – it’s America’s “schoolboy conservatism.”

Even the way it’s introduced shows this. Instead of singing the glories of the native land and explaining why traditions keep people from fighting each other, libertarians always pull out their basic political philosophy first. The standard libertarian “axiom” is: “Everyone has the right to do as they choose provided that they do not interfere with the rights of others.” The first deduction from this is always: government intervention into society should be limited to the punishment of force and fraud: anything beyond this means the “politicization of society” and the introduction of power relationships (domination and subordination) into relations where normal social intercourse should suffice.

A true conservative would see in the above a secularization of the Golden Rule. But for libertarians, the “Axiom of Non-Aggression” has a profundity of scope that encompasses the entire history of the human race.

It should come as no surprise that libertarian writings are all over the place, including in the Internet. The most popular introduction to libertarianism, for decades, has been Ayn Rand. (She was instrumental in getting libertarianism off the ground with a repudiation of conservatism ‘way back in 1962.)

Rand is really proto-libertarian: her own attitude towards libertarianism could be best described as – well, Saturnine. Which might make you wonder how a woman who repudiated all political parties and all philosophies except for Aristotleanism became an intellectual icon rather than a neglected crank.

The journal/organization that has the fairest claim to being the Jupiter of the movement is Reason. They’ve been around since 1968. (Another libertarian journal that got started at the same time, Persuasion, has long gone to the doomed.) A glance at their Site will show you what writings the Non-Aggression Axiom has wroughteth, along with their underlying attitude towards everyday life.

One of their attributes of character is the regular foisting of thick books upon the readership. Since one of the sources of libertarianism was a collective cry of protest against modern economics, which seemed to those not entranced by it to be a sophisticated recapitulation of mercantilism, most of these thick books deal with economics. If you dip into libertarian thought, it’s almost inevitable that you’ll pay a visit to the Ludwig von Mises Institute. If only for this.

There are lots of other libertarian resources all over the Net, and most are a reflection of the above three combined with the usual individual variants. Once you’re familiar with the “Big Three” above, you’ll see what most of the rest are driving at.

But as far as libertarians as people are concerned, the following page should give you an indication as to whether you’ll fit in there or not. Do you consider this to be high humor? If so, you’ll fit into the libertarian world fine.

If not, you won’t last long, your level of energy and enthusiasm notwithstanding.