>Has anyone on the list debated libertarians?
I've done it on the net, on the radio, and at parties, with opponents ranging from name-brand flacks like Michael Tanner of Cato to anonymous newsgroup loons. My experience is that you'll get a lot of abstract priciples and soundbites but not much in the way of argument from evidence. I debated/interviewed a Cato hack on my radio show on Social Security privatization and, when cornered, she kept repeating the mantra, "You don't want the government managing your retirement portfolio, do you?"
One of my favorite topics is the development of the computer and the Internet, which they typically take as a story of of plucky individualist entrepreneurs. I've patiently tried to make the argument that both were subsidized for decades by the Pentagon and that nonprofit institutions like universities played an important role throughout - and it's only relatively recently that profit-seekers have played a leading role after the government paid the basic research and startup costs. (The Pentagon lobbied private industry and Wall Street from the late 1940s into the 1960s to get involved in funding and development, but there was little interest.) The typical response I've gotten from libertarians is either to deny this is the case, or to claim that if taxes hadn't been so high the private sector would have done it, and better than the government.
Someone - I wish I could remember who - once defined libertarianism as boiling down to "I got mine, so fuck you!"
Doug