Libertarians are anarchists who would lose in a knife fight.

[Squilliam]

rocketpig said:

Squilliam said:

It is a shame that in these debates a strong liberal is classed as someone who would want people to become dependant on government handouts and a libertarian is someone who is classed as a person who doesn't care about the suffering of the people or whom wants to foster a plutocracy, a ruling class of the wealthy.

I don't understand this, either. Ideologically, Libertarians are split right between the parties. 

For example, people are often surprised when they find out I'm a Libertarian but have voted Democrat. They seem to think Libertarians are just an offshoot of the GOP. Once the GOP started spending money like drunken apes, I saw no point in putting up with their intolerance any longer and have been splitting a lot of my votes since that time.

I have voted right wing, left wing and even the far left wing green party!

Though personally in my country last election I was hoping the right wing party (National) would form a coalition with a left wing party, which actually happened funnily enough. It seems to me that when different sides like for instance libertarians and liberals in your context can work together that the outcomes for both can be better than each working alone. The biggest failing IMO of liberals is that they don't understand incentives and what drives people to actually succeed and in my personal experience the libertarians need to share the liberals political distrust of larger corporations and their ability to distort the free market.