Agree to Disagree.

Republicans Jim DeMint and Marco Rubio disagree on how the United States should approach immigration policy, but no one doubts that they are both "conservatives." Conservatives argue about gay marriage, economic policy, defense spending, and just about everything else under the sun. We've all seen how contentious the Republican primaries can be (and have listened to the media tell us how the Republican Party is fighting itself to the death). If there are pro-choice Republicans and pro-life Democrats, why can't there be libertarians who disagree on some policies but agree to concentrate on the fundamental issues that actually matter?

Most people hear this argument and immediately go to the worst possible examples, like black tar heroin or underage prostitution. That's because we've all been conditioned by the media and the two-party establishment to think that way. When you hear "Republican" you don't immediately think of "banning abortions even in the case of incest." While that is a view that some Republicans may have, it is neither prevalent enough, nor important enough, to be allowed to define the entire party. Yet we allow that to happen with libertarians.

So, let's get this out of the way right up front: Yes, some libertarians want to legalize drugs. Within that group some want to legalize every drug that man can create. Others would prefer to focus on a narrower list. But the truth is that none of that matters because legalizing drugs is not an important part of the libertarian agenda. In my mind, it's not even a small part of the agenda. It's irrelevant, inconsequential-a diversion.

Of course, legalizing drugs gets a lot of attention because it makes for great sound bites and helps to make the entire party look insane-but it's not at all relevant to the larger cause of freedom. Deciding you don't want to be a libertarian because some sliver of the party wants to be able to smoke weed is like deciding that you don't want to be a Republican because some sliver of the party wants to outlaw alcohol. Who cares? Neither has any relevance to the future of America and, by the way, neither is going to happen.

Regardless of where you stand, legalization of fill-in-your-vice-here is not anything that we should be debating. It not only does a disservice to the country, but it also helps continue the false media narrative that has been built about libertarians over the years. Surely we have more vital things to talk about, anyway. Things we can agree on. We have watched so many liberties evaporate over the last few decades that it's almost embarrassing to hear people give any time to the "should we legalize heroin?" nonexistent debate.

What we should be giving time to are issues like the government takeover of health care, restoring religious and market freedoms, reducing regulations that prevent people from starting and growing businesses, getting monetary policy under control, and cutting the growth of the welfare state.

We should also be explaining to Americans that libertarians offer the only real alternative to a system that has been completely infected by progressivism. Democrats offer virtually no policy idea that doesn't expand the welfare state or the regulatory burden or give Washington more control over our everyday lives. Republicans usually aren't far behind.

When Newt Gingrich was asked about Wisconsin congressman Paul Ryan's efforts to reform entitlement programs, he didn't say it was "about time we got rid of socialistic programs and replaced them with market-based alternatives." Instead he attacked them as "right-wing social engineering." John McCain has cosponsored bills in support of "cap-and-trade" and against gun rights. Plenty of Republicans have supported bailouts and higher taxes and hordes of new regulations-the very things that used to be supported only by Democrats.

Where'd You Put My Drugs?

A recent Gallup poll asked Americans about the things they believed were important for the president and Congress to deal with in the next year. Here are the issues that people believe are "Very" or "Extremely" important: The economy-93 percent,

Unemployment-89 percent,

Federal budget deficit-84 percent,

Corruption in government-83 percent,

Education-79 percent,

Health care-78 percent,

Terrorism-76 percent,

Social Security-78 percent,

Medicare-71 percent,

Situation in Afghanistan-71 percent,

Gas and home heating prices-68 percent,

Illegal immigration-64 percent,

Taxes-66 percent,

Situation in Iraq-62 percent,

Environment-59 percent.

You'll notice that there is no item called "crack consumption" or "heroin needle exchange program" that makes it into the top 15. My guess is that they probably don't make it into the top 100, either.

All of this has provided libertarians with an opportunity to cut through the nonsense and take their message directly to the people. The drug "debate" is nothing but a red herring; let's not get distracted.

YOU DON'T HAVE TO BLAME AMERICA TO BE A LIBERTARIAN I've already mentioned how popular Ron Paul is, but have I mentioned what a lost opportunity Ron Paul is for the libertarian cause?

First, the good: If I were president, the first thing I would do is name Congressman Paul as my Treasury secretary. For me, he's the only candidate who's run for president in recent years who is completely serious about slashing spending, reducing the size and role of government, and taking on the Federal Reserve.

The Two-Party Train

Just in case you're the kind of person who needs actual data before you'll believe an argument, here are some statistics from the Heritage Foundation's 2012 Index of Government Dependence. If this doesn't prove that the two parties are taking us to the same place at different speeds, I don't know what does. Here are some of the lowlights: The number of people dependent on some federal government programs grew by 7.5 percent in two years under the Obama administration. That's the largest increase since the Carter administration.

67.3 million Americans rely on some federal program.

Spending on dependency programs now eats up more than 70 percent of the federal budget.

In 2009, 49.5 percent of Americans paid no federal income taxes, up from 14.8 percent as recently as 1984.

34.8 million Americans were not represented on a federal taxable income return in 1984. Today that figure is 151.7 million.

And, man, would it be a fun ride. A Beck administration would lean heavily on Ron Paul to make numerous decisions regarding the economy-and as a bonus, Secretary Paul would drive everyone else nuts. As you can imagine, the Fed would be audited or shut down entirely on day one. Departments would be slashed. The establishment would be in hysterics. Good times.

But, as much as I absolutely love Ron Paul's views on economic policy, I can't stand his positions on foreign affairs. In fact, I believe most of what he proposes is downright dangerous-and, more important, it is not reflective of how most libertarians think. And for commonsense libertarians that should be pretty exciting: if you can combine real libertarian thought with smart and precise foreign policy, you'd have a candidate who might actually have a chance at the Oval Office.

Two weeks after 9/11, while Americans were still grappling with grief in the wake of the worst attack on U.S. soil in our history, Ron Paul was on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives blaming the United States for terrorism. Paul claimed that the Muslim world had seen our defense of Kuwait during the First Gulf War "as an invasion and domination by a foreign enemy which inspires radicalism" and that terrorists "react as some Americans might react" if a foreign country had invaded them.

And his mind didn't change much with the passage of time. Six years later he was at a presidential debate when this exchange occurred: PAUL: Have you ever read the reasons they attacked us? They attack us because we've been over there; we've been bombing Iraq for ten years.

Q: Are you suggesting we invited the 9/11 attack?

PAUL: I'm suggesting that we listen to the people who attacked us and the reason they did it. . . . If we think that we can do what we want around the world and not incite hatred, then we have a problem. They don't come here to attack us because we're rich and we're free. They come and they attack us because we're over there.

That's obviously a ridiculous stance, but since I'd prefer not to get ten thousand emails from Ron Paul supporters claiming that I'm trashing their guy (I'm not; I'm just trying to illustrate the difference between him and true, small-l libertarianism), I want to be precise about his foreign policy. Paul describes himself as a noninterventionist, not an isolationist. In an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer, he explained: "An isolationist is a protectionist that builds walls around the country. They don't like to trade. They don't like to travel about the world. And they like to put sanctions on different countries. . . . Nonintervention is quite a bit different. It's what the Founders advised to get along with people, trade with people, and to have-practice diplomacy, rather than getting-having this militancy of telling people what to do and how to run the world, and building walls around our own country."

Google It

I'll have to mobilize my research team, but I'm pretty sure that Islamic radicals were targeting Americans long before we showed up in Iraq. The Islamists' ransacking our embassy in Tehran in 1979 comes to mind, as does the 1983 truck bomb attack on the American barracks in Beirut in which 241 American soldiers were murdered. It was the deadliest single-day death toll for the United States Marine Corps since Iwo Jima.

It's a great-sounding argument and I understand where it comes from; we're as war-weary as we are broke. If we don't pull our military back, the argument goes, there will be no country left to defend because we'll collapse under the weight of our own debt. This is the perfect storm that I've been talking about for almost a decade now and, as a result, there are no good choices left.

But you have to look at this from another angle. We can survive even the worst economic depression if we strengthen people and communities. But we cannot survive being blindsided by a large-scale attack from Islamic extremists. That is a clear and present danger, an existential threat to our country. So you have to make a decision: where do you focus? You can't do it all. Is the Fed more dangerous than Islamist extremism? Maybe in the long term-they both take away from our freedom-but only one has the chance of taking us down overnight.

I don't want to be the "policeman of the world" any more than Ron Paul does, but that doesn't mean we can simply shut our eyes and pretend that the world no longer has any evil in it. We can't fall into the same trap that our politicians so often do and react so far in the opposite direction that we make America less safe and less able to defend herself. The world may have changed, but not the fact that there are many people who would like nothing more than for this country to no longer exist.

I'm only bringing up Ron Paul's foreign policy to point out that this view is a recurring theme with him, not necessarily with libertarianism. There is nothing inherently libertarian about not being willing to fight for freedom or protection, and there is certainly nothing libertarian about blaming America for violence perpetrated by others. There is no reason that libertarians can't make the argument that the United States has both a moral right and a national obligation to defend itself-and the liberty of its citizens-from threats that develop around the world.

Yet most of the media, and many voters, are under the impression that Ron Paul's brand of libertarian isolationism is the position that all libertarians hold-as though Paul is somehow the national spokesperson for the cause.