Is Libertarianism the “intellectual” version of Scientology?

Libertarian political and economic philosophy really only holds up if you ignore the masses of historic empirical evidence. Consider argle-bargle like how selling water rights to American companies is great for the local economy of South American countries, or how eliminating the minimum wage law or the income tax would increase our national economy. To the weak-minded, it makes sense, because they can ignore all the vast wealth of evidence that says it doesn’t. Add to that the bizarre lack of capacity for compassion when it comes to society – I mean, even many of the creatures that preceded us had a level of social intelligence, and compassion above that of libertarians. The selfishness, weak logic and bad scholarship that suffuse libertarian responses tend to reinforce the idea that, if they weren’t paid so well to spew anti-government propaganda by plutocrats – like the Koch brothers and other crony capitalists with feudalist, self-interested political philosophies –  libertarians would play no greater role in public debate than do the followers of, say, L. Ron Hubbard.