Why libertarian?

One of the greatest myths clouding libertarianism (at least in Iceland) is that the followers of the ideals of induvidual freedom, free markets and limited government are just doing it "for the money". They are supposed to be young men in black suits and white shirts working for their dads financial company, selling and buying stocks and bonds all day, driving around in a sports-cars and living in a big house in the suburbs.

Needless to say - this is complete bullocks. Of course libertarians, like most others, are fighting for a fair and just society where everyone has food, clothes, housing, education, health care and some money to spend outside work. The myth itself is rubbish, but sometimes I think: Why is it that the right-winged are those who are thought to be obsessed with money, and the Left is the friend of the poor, hard-working labour?

The answer to this thought illudes me most of the times, but once and a while the picture becomes clearer. The Left is, in my opinion, a big bag of empty promises. In it's extreme form it creates death and sufferings for millions and millions of people, whether it's from slow and ongoing starvation (Soviet socialism - communism) or plain and simple executions and torture (National socialism). In it's weaker forms, e.g. the so-called "Third way", it creates pain and sufferings through countless numbers of "small" government interferance and special interest policies for institutions like labour unions, the Greens and left-feminists. Also, the third-way-leftist seem to be very keen on government-run health-care systems and school-systems, thereby creating sufferings by suffocationg market laws. However, all of this is covered up nicely with distrust-phrases against the free market and shoutings against buisness-men who do well and make more money per year than most of us see in our entire lives. Propaganda of that sort is easy to use because the man who has little or nothing will easily be tempted to envy and to hate those who do better. No considerations have to be made regarding the reasons behind one mans success and another mans failure. No-one mentions that the millionaire is more likely than others to invest in new technologies and ideas, and in the process of increasing his own wealth create new jobs and push into society newer, better and cheaper ways of doing or making the same things and new things which could improve our lives.

But the most remarkable about the good-will the Left has is still not explained. We all hear propaganda all the time and we are usually quick to filter the right from the wrong in our sensible logical heads. However, in the case of politics this process seems to have huge reluctance. The facts should, under any normal circumstances, suffice to eliminate the Left. Economic freedom has time and time again proven its powers to strengthen democracy, lengthen lives, raise the living-standart of the poorest of poor and so on. Countless pages of pure facts show that when government is limited to protection of induvidual rights in their broadest scale, and when government impedes and protects private property rigths in as many areas as thinkable, then lives improve for all. Why this hasn't been made clear to the public is a wrong which I aim on making right.

The mistery of the success of the Left will remain a mistery for me for now. I hope that can be cleared out somehow.