I absolutely suck at defending or promoting libertarianism. Whenever it comes up in a debate, I'll either remain quiet, or end up losing yet more friends and family. One possibility is I absolutely suck at rhetoric, which is probably true, but before I get into that, I'd like to point out a major rhetorical issue I've been having. I think the issue is that libertarianism is just way too abstract to make the case for, and as evidence of this, I've played the other side and have been able to convince people of socialism incredibly easy. When I argue for socialism, all I have to do is bring up the other side's biggest emotional issue, and then describe a very concrete program that the government could do to solve it. You can always very concretely "see" the solution. When I argue on the libertarian's side, I either have to bring up "the seen and unseen," which is either too abstract and the other side isn't going to care about the unseen because they have such a huge emotional investment in the seen; or I try to bring up how not having government in the way would make things better, which still involves a very theoretical and hopeful argument about actors coming in after removing certain barriers to entry/etc.. Or I have to argue about the issue of conceit and hubris in government planning and how their proposed government solution likely wouldn't work (in practice, this approach has been one of the work arguments that--although it never worked either--at least garnered me some respect at the end of the discussion, mainly because people think I'm discussing ways to _improve_ the suggested governance of the program as opposed to outright arguing against it). I have three possible conclusions here: 1 - There's a reason the socialist debating points win so easily: which is that they're actually correct, and I'm fooling myself. 2 - Libertarianism has a serious philosophical issue with being too abstract. 3 - I really, really fucking suck at debating. I'm thinking it's the third, but I have to say I'm getting more and more sympathetic to 1 as I've been able to win debates (EASILY) by lying that I'm a socialist. Thoughts? Am I right? If so, help appreciated. If not, let's hear it.