I can’t really agree with you that Libertarians are a faction of the Republican Party. Feel like that would be untrue by definition and many libertarians are at

I can’t really agree with you that Libertarians are a faction of the Republican Party. Feel like that would be untrue by definition and many libertarians are atheists, want weed legalized, disagree with war mongering, etc., and so while there is some policy overlap (just like there is with Democrats) it’s more of happenstance than being a faction. Both Republicans and Democrats tend to want to increase the size and scope of government and redistribute wealth based on their own priorities, which is something that generally is opposed to libertarian ideals. If you take more serious libertarians they’re probably saying defund welfare and the military. > Where they most obviously break their own rules is environmentalism and climate change, where people are reducing the value of other people's property via pollution without getting a contract to allow that. Ok so there’s a lot to unpack here and libertarians come in different flavors but it’s actually consistent. Most libertarians who actually know what they’re talking about would argue a couple of things: First, someone else polluting the environment is a breach of contract even if it’s not formally signed. Your actions would be causing loss for another person. There’s difficulty in assessing blame, but in clear cases like pollution of an upstream river libertarian philosophy would indicate loss on the economic side. The hard part here is what to do about it, and that’s where you start to see more flavors of libertarianism emerge and get interesting. Second, libertarians would likely say not that climate change isn’t a problem but the market can solve the problem better than the government can. This isn’t “breaking their own rules” but is instead completely consistent with libertarian philosophy and is rationally defensible. This is especially true given any study of economics shows evidence of this being the case in some or many industries. I personally disagree, but you can’t outright attribute this thought to malice. Here’s a trivial example! Why is the government subsidizing fossil fuels and oil and gas companies? Libertarians would argue that this market intervention by the government is leading the government itself to hold at least some responsibility for climate change. I think your assessment of libertarianism is at most casual and your critiques are not wholly consistent. Comments like “this leads to flat out hypocrisy and denial” are baseless and easy to throw around. Same with “protect the power of the wealthy and the elite” - like what do you think Republicans and Democrats do?? I think you have this straw man of what you think libertarianism is and you just want to attack and blame everything on that. It’s like blaming everything on Hillary Clinton or something.