The principled rejection of all proactive coercion, whether by individuals or by groups.
(See also: Non-Aggression Principle.)
[bk]
The libertarian position is that there is no legitimate initiation of force. Whether or not there is justification for reactive force is outside the definition of libertarianism, but do note that the pacifist position presumes the libertarian position: you cannot oppose all use of force without also opposing the initiation of force. To be true therefore to pacifist principles requires an acceptance of the libertarian position ...
bkMarcus, A Brief Introduction to Philosophical Anarchism
[bk]
Libertarian Partisans (a.k.a. minarchists) "are self-governors in both personal and economic matters. They believe government's only purpose is to protect people from coercion and violence. They value individual responsibility, and tolerate economic and social diversity."
World's Smallest Political Quiz
[quiz]
A libertarian is a person who believes that no one has the right, under any circumstances, to initiate force against another human being, or to advocate or delegate its initiation. Those who act consistently with this principle are libertarians, whether they realize it or not. Those who fail to act consistently with it are not libertarians, regardless of what they may claim.
[elNeil]
Libertarianism is a direct attack upon the mystique of the state. It recognizes that the state is only an abstraction and reduces it to the actions of individuals. It applies the same standard of morality to the state as it would to a next-door neighbor. If it is not proper for a neighbor to tax or pass laws regulating your private life, then it cannot be proper for the state to do so. Only by elevating itself above the standards of personal morality can the state make these claims on your life. . . .
Wendy McElroy, Demystifying the State
[mac]
Libertarianism has become a descriptive term for the individualist political doctrine in recent years largely because the nineteenth-century word 'liberalism' has been used by semi-collectivist creeds, especially in America.
[krauth]
The fact is that libertarianism is not and does not pretend to be a complete moral, or aesthetic theory; it is only a political theory, that is, the important subset of moral theory that deals with the proper role of violence in social life.
Murray N. Rothbard, Six Myths About Libertarianism
[rothbard]
Libertarians favor the abolition of all States everywhere, and the provision of legitimate functions now supplied poorly by governments (police, courts, etc.) by means of the free market. Libertarians favor liberty as a natural human right, and advocate it not only for Americans but for all peoples.
Murray Rothbard,
The Libertarian Manifesto
[available online]
[rothbard]
'Libertarian' is another term for Free-Market Anarchist, though it often includes softer-core fellow travelers such as minarchists.
The word originally was used by free-thinkers in relation to religion to mean those who believed in free-will over determinism (which is not all that bad an association for us) and then became a euphemism for anarchist in Europe in the 19th Century.
It was revived by Leonard Read in the 1940s to mean those Classical Liberals who refused to join the rest of the Liberal Movement into becoming soft-Left statists, and who had largely joined the U.S. Old Right coalition against that kind of Liberal, bordering on fascist, New Deal.
With the election of Eisenhower and death of Robert Taft, the Old Right coalition disintegrated. Buckley pulled the pro-State conservatives into his New Right while Murray Rothbard rallied the Isolationist (non-interventionist in foreign policy) Libertarians into alliance with the New Left. New York-based Rothbard became an anarchist in 1950 and defined the hard-core position accordingly. Robert LeFevre accomplished the same in the Western U.S.
[sek3]
Libertarianism elaborates an entire philosophy from one simple premise: initiatory violence or its threat (coercion) is wrong (immoral, evil, bad, supremely impractical, etc) and is forbidden; nothing else is.
Samuel Edward Konkin III, New Libertarian Manifesto
[sek3]
In its broadest meaning, the word libertarian applies to anything that is for Liberty and not against it. Many American libertarians in particular wish to limit the label to people who believe the free market is essential to Liberty, leaving out the (mostly European) libertarians who just as fervently believe in some form of socialism and collective property. And while some Libertarians cling to the State as somehow capable of defending Liberty if only kept small enough, the modern Libertarian Movement that we know and love (or not) considers the State (involuntary government) a necessary or unnecessary Evil but definitely an Evil. In fact, the State is generally perceived as the institutional opposite of Liberty.
[sek3]