Statists of one stripe or another

Dale Amon relates a useful story, on how to explain why Libertarians are neither left nor right:

A week ago, in conversation with a very liberal friend in New York, I found a parable that rewarded me with a look of sudden comprehension. I again tried it with someone on the airplane back to Belfast and was similarly rewarded. It was a parable-ized form of something which happened to me about twenty years ago in the Skibo Hall student union building at CMU:

If you put a Democrat, a Republican, and a Libertarian alone in a room together, the Republican and Democrat will eventually team up against the Libertarian. This is because both of them believe the power of government could be used for enormous good . . . if only they were the one controlling it. The libertarian wants to destroy the machine.

I think this makes it clear why, in the end, both Democrats and Republicans are our 'enemies'. They like the machine, they believe in the machine . . . and they both will defend it to the death. Make no mistake: if we become powerful enough to be a real political threat, they will both turn on us.