About

This is the online diary of a bleeding-heart libertarian from America's Dairyland. If, however improbably, you have arrived here from the last century via a time machine, you may find yourself surprised that the twenty-first century is not the libertarian era that many from your own time promised was only a moment away.

That promised time never came.

Instead, libertarianism compromised its principles during a turn-of-the-century fusion with a conservatism that, itself, descended into autocratic nativism. The association seemed reasonable at first — when conservatives were more reasonable — but it has been many years since this misshapen conservatism was reasonable.

Fusion brought assimilation and assimilation brought degradation.

And so, and so, all about is the rack and ruin of libertarianism.

Libertarianism demands more than indifference to bigotry and autocracy; liberal democracy deserves, indeed requires of us, a libertarian defense.

Libertarian Diary is published pseudonymously by Attorney Frank Gilbert Slinkard under the name John Adams. Adams, of course, is not within the libertarian pantheon. Rightly esteemed as an American patriot in favor of independence, he later fell short as an American president in favor of restrictions on speech and immigration.

The choice of the pseudonym is intentionally ironic, as a reminder that with government, as with much else, a good start does not assure a good finish.

(And yet, and yet, Adams's Thoughts on Government (April 1776) are as admirable, with less of the slaveholder's insincerity, as any of the Founders' writings.)

Blogger Adams was graduated from @Penn, @WilliamandMary, and @CornellLaw. He lives with his family (including two Siamese mixes) in a small and beautiful Wisconsin town.