Eventually, it happens to all of us. You’ll be talking to someone, online or in person, who seems completely normal. Then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, the person will say something really weird, like “You can’t fix a problem like underpaid public school teachers by just throwing money at them!” or “Why do they need tax-funded traffic lights at this corner? All the cross-traffic’s already stopped, which shows the Free Market works!” or “Hitler was a Communist! They called themselves the ‘National Socialists’ for a reason!”

You, my friend, have just made the unpleasant discovery that you’ve been talking to a Libertarian.

Now don’t get me wrong! Most smart people are, to a certain extent, libertarians with a lower-case “L.” We all like to be left alone to determine the course of our own lives without state intrusion. But Capital-L Libertarians tend to take those admirable sentiments to their logical extreme, wanting to shrink fire departments and public libraries and FEMA down to the size where they can be drowned in Grover Norquist’s bathtub, or, failing that, at least stabbed to death like Marat.