In a comment on my recent post on the debate between Nick Gillespie/Matt Welch and David Gordon, I challenged David Gordon to give instances where Gillespie and Welch have claimed that one must have certain tastes or attitudes in order to be libertarian. Recall that that was Gordon’s original charge.

In a comment responding to my comment, David gives what I would guess is his best shot. Read the comment for yourself.

Notice that his first two paragraphs are quotes in which Gillespie and Welch appear to be talking about their own tastes and values. There is no evidence in those quotes that they think people who don’t share their particular tastes or values are somehow less libertarian.

In the third paragraph is their empirical claim that more mixing of races and of various other categories makes it harder for some to impose on others. That may be true or false–I think it’s true–but there is no evidence in that quote that people who think it’s false are less libertarian.

So my original claim–so far, at least–stands. In nothing that David Gordon has quoted is there any sign that his claim about Gillespie and Welch is correct.

David does make one good point, though, not in response to me, but in response to Bryan. Bryan writes in both of his posts (here and here) as if he thinks someone who doesn’t share someone else’s tastes or who dislikes someone else’s tastes hates that person or wants that person to disappear. David Gordon answers elegantly, “But there is a great deal of space between approval and hatred, and there is nothing incongruous in thinking that libertarians can occupy various points within that space.”