Left libertarians claim, as the name suggests, to be both leftists and libertarians. According to one of their most forceful critics, the Bionic Mosquito, they cannot make good this claim. Their leftism pushes aside their professed adherence to libertarianism. He has recently found a striking illustration of the way such people abandon liberty. A left libertarian approved the state’s endeavor to put circuses out of business. He did so because people, in his view, have no right to own animals. Animals, he claimed, must be “freed from their confines.” To achieve this end, the left libertarian is prepared to violate property rights, as commonly understood, on a massive scale.

The Best of David Gordon