re: #82 Killgore Trout

Is there something about libertarian thought that leads to this or has libertarianism just become a dumping ground for quacks by chance?

On my own authority, as a sometime libertarian and misanthrope: What leads people like me toward libertarianism is an attitude of “LEAVE ME ALONE”. Our greatest fear is that somebody out there is going to mess with our heads.

This is in fact what really does happen in school, and in government employment, and in the too-big-to-fail sorts of “private” company; and it is indeed a Brezhnevite drain on the human spirit (and, IMO, this is not likely to improve over the next four years). But where someone like you might just bitch about it, or even join the Republicans; a misanthrope lacks that faith in human processes, and (if overly isolated) is susceptible to darker obsessions.