As a westerner myself I'm compelled to agree with TB on his frontier point. I wonder though, how to square that supposed libertarian impulse

>A place where people who don't want to run other people's lives

With the reality of conquering the native Americans, taking their land, and forcing them to live according to "our" way of life. How exactly does that not count? Manifest destiny certainly wasn't a Ron Paul foreign policy.

Indeed, beyond outright conquest that libertarian notion rather downplays the fact that missionary work among the Indians was one of the key drivers of early migration to the Oregon Territory. The goal being quite explicitly to convert them not only to the teachings of Jesus in a theological sense, but to adopt an American way of life -- giving up nomadism for farming, dressing more modestly, etc (the Chinese say similar things today about bringing modernity to the Tibetans).

There's certainly some truth to that sentiment. It probably does apply fairly well to the "Mountain Men" fur trappers of the early 1800s, or to people moving out to the Alaska bush even more recently. But the politicians and the busybodies have typically come right on the heels of the first frontiersmen.