The genuine difference is over the degree of mutual responsibility between a citizen and his society. The Libertarian view is that the citizen has no responsibilities...

Wrong. Libertarians have plenty of responsiblities. The libertarian view is that a citizen should not have unchosen "responsibilities" forced on him by his government.

When the government takes money from me and does not spend it on vital and legitimate functions of the government, or even things where you get some value in return, but just gives it to another citizen in return for his vote (and not just needy citizens, either), where exactly is the flow of "mutual responsibility" here? In what way do I benefit from this "mutual" arrangement? This is where well over half of our tax money is going. Or maybe the key is to just make sure you're on the receiving end, and not the producing end.

...Then there's the classic Republican view: Citizens and the government are both beholden to business.

I don't even understand this one. How is a citizen made "beholden" to a business? In what way does a private company use armed force to make me do their will, or to take my money?

And am I to be led to believe that Democrats do not accept corporate political contributions? They are in the pocket of corporations, and vice versa, as much as the Republicans. They just have the nerve to look you in the eye and lie in their teeth about their concern for the "Little Guy."

These slogans sound good, but don't stand up very well to close examination.

And finally, the neoconservatives think that the citizen should serve the purposes of an expansionist State. You must find it rather uncomfortable, as a Libertarian, to fiercely support a neoconservative President and a Republican Party hijacked by the neocons. It's not really a mystery why Bush has expanded the government so dramatically, and is willing to run deficits as far as the eye can see, all in service of an aggressive and expansionist State.

I have made no secret of my dissatisfaction with a party that has seemed to abandon the ideas of limited government, so I don't know what "fierce support" means. I do know what the goals of the modern Democratic Party are, though, and I do not see their socialist ideas as an improvement. I do know that Bush is better than any of the current crackpots the Democrats are running, and I still half expect Empress Hillary to come rolling into the Democratic convention on her Sphinx carriage and save the day.

Both parties seem to be headed for the socialist cliff. The only difference is that the Democrats are punching the accelerator, and for many years, at least SOME Republicans were trying to put on the brakes. The best that can be said for a lot of them now is that they are just lifting their foot from the accelerator.

And I am still irritated at being lectured on deficits and expanded government by a political philosophy and party that has saddled us with the entitlements which will be responsible for almost 100 percent of our future debt in the next fifty years. Of course, after the prescription drug bill, now the Republicans can share the blame.

Whatever happened to that principled Libertarian isolationism?

For a lot of libertarians, much of it fell with the twin towers. It has become obvious that the ideals of the Founding Fathers of a nation living on its own, self-sufficient, and shielded by two oceans and a month's sail from the horrors in Europe and Asia, isn't going to work any more.