Nick Gillespie on The Libertarian *Era*!

"If you read the weekend papers," writes Nick Gillespie, "you already know this much: Libertarians are the new black." On a virtually daily basis, he observes, the media are pounding out more and more stories about how a rag-tag crew of believers in fiscal conservatism and social liberalism are threatening to take over the Republican Party while drawing plaudits from the likes of George Will and Julian Assange.

Gillespie argues:

Far more important—and far away from the muddy field of politics—ongoing experiments in living proceed apace, with individuals, communities, and entrepreneurs plowing ahead with new and different ways of getting on with their big thing. Amazon.com founder (and Reason Foundation donor) Jeff Bezos buys the Washington Post, experimenters unveil vat-grown beef, thousands flock to Burning Man, and more kids attend schools of choice (public, private, nonprofit) than have in decades. In a world you can get an infinite number of drinks at Starbucks and a dozen or more strains of weed at your local medical marijuana dispensary (the very ones Obama has raided like a drug-war Republican), choosing between column A and column B just doesn't cut it anymore.

If the long-term, decentralist trends described in books as different as Moises Naim's The End of Power, Grant McCracken's Plenitude, and The Declaration of Independents are at all true, we can forget about the Libertarian Moment and start jawing about the Libertarian Era. At least it will give the legacy media something to fill their pages while they're still around.