Even though I am the Libertarian Party candidate for US Senate, I don't believe that the answer to every question is to go to the Libertarian Party Playbook and plug in the relevant quote. My general assumptions might go that way, but the particulars of a situation might not.

Much of my thought this way comes from reading Robert Anton Wilson, who emphasizes again and again that "The map is not the territory" or alternately that "The menu is not the meal."

This comes from a guy named Alford Korzybski, who stated, "A map is not the territory it represents, but if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness."

Often, roadmaps tell me just where I am with my car, and how I can get to where I need to go. Sometimes they just aren't accurate representations of what I actually get on the ground and at the wheel. Sometimes, that picture on the restaurant menu doesn't look like the stuff that shows up on my plate.

It is more important to me to make the best interpretation based on observed facts on the ground in a particular situation rather than having the Correct Libertarian Response. I used to be really bugged by the famous Emerson quote that "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." In this type of context, though, I have come to see the wisdom of Emerson.

This goes to my apostasy from some people's idea of the libertarian playbook in foreign policy. A lot of times, normal libertarian individualist assumptions about human behavior don't fit the particular facts on the ground in some parts of the world.

By the way, my relatively hawkish views may be in disagreement with some of the current Libertarian Party, but how far off I am from the libertarian playbook depends very much on exactly who's playbook we're reading from. Probably the top two modern intellectuals inspiring the creation of the contemporary libertarian movement are Ayn Rand and Robert Heinlein. Not that it is a relevant argument in favor of my outlook, but I'd bet both of them would be pretty much in my camp on most of these issues.

Classical liberal or libertarian thought tends to work on the premise that humans will naturally tend to seek their own self-interest. What's in it for me? We design our political thoughts to harness that natural healthy selfishness to the greater good. Thus, Adam Smith's famous observation that the baker doesn't give us a tasty loaf of cheap bread out of the goodness of his heart, but out of his own self interest in wanting to make a buck by SELLING us the tasty loaf cheaper than his competitors.

That kind of thinking seems to describe most human behavior most of the time, but seems less than useful in dealing with suicide bombers and jihadists. In practice, a good many people in the Muslim/Arab world seem to be more motivated by a desire to see US suffer rather than any idea of getting anything positive for themselves. Parents who willingly send their children out to blow up Jews and infidels are simply not motivated by any desire to better themselves.