Can non-religious libertarians account for their libertarianism?

Please allow me to plagiarize myself without using quotation marks for a moment.

As I wrote in my last blog post, according to a poll on the Libertarian Party website, most self-identified libertarians in a recent poll are Christians.

Following Christians, the non-religious (including atheists and agnostics) make up the next largest group of liberty lovers.

In fact, those with no religion, which would include atheists and agnostics, accounted for 39 percent of those polled.

However, when you add Catholic, Baptists, Methodists, Lutherans, and "Other Christians" together, Christians collectively make up 46 percent of the poll.

Those who identified "Other Christian" made up 24 percent of the poll.

Muslims made up the smallest sliver of the poll, coming in at 1 percent.

This is all well and dandy. But the real question is can atheists and agnostics and other non-religious people account for their libertarianism?

Do non-religious libertarians have the proper foundations to ground their libertarianism?

Given their materialism, why should they be libertarians at all? On secular grounds, why should they be libertarians over Marxists? Is it all a matter of preference on the materialistic view?

The best essay that I have read that answers these questions is one I came across earlier this year by Gordan Runyan in his essay "God - the Only Ground for Freedom (or, Why Secular Libertarianism is a Bust)."

Here's a good summary paragraph from the essay:

As I have shown in my book, Resistance to Tyrants, it is only Christianity, with its special revelation, a full Bible breathed out by the one living God, that is capable of supplying the philosophical and moral foundations that will allow human freedom to weather the storms and remain standing. Christianity is the basis for genuine libertarianism. Atheistic libertarianism is the contradiction. It only ever gets anything right by stumbling into a biblical principle now and again. It is the proverbial blind squirrel that manages to accidentally find a few nuts. 

Read the rest.

God - the Only Ground for Freedom (or, Why Secular Libertarianism is a Bust)

by Gordan Runyan

Most Libertarians are Christians (or have no religion)

According to a poll on the Libertarian Party website, most self-identified libertarians in the poll are Christians. Following Christians, the non-religious (including atheists and agnostics) make up the next largest group of liberty lovers.

According to a recent poll that the author took part in, most self-identified libertarians who took the poll are Christians or have no religion.

In fact, those with no religion, which would include atheists and agnostics, accounted for 39 percent of those polled.

However, when you add Catholic, Baptists, Methodists, Lutherans, and "Other Christians" together, Christians collectively make up 46 percent of the poll.

Those who identified "Other Christian" made up 24 percent of the poll.

Muslims made up the smallest sliver of the poll, coming in at 1 percent.

Catholics made up the third largest portions of libertarians at 11 percent. And "Other non-Christian religions" and Baptists were almost matched at 6 percent and 5 percent respectively.

The wording of the poll was as follows: "I consider myself to be a Libertarian politically and the word that best describes my religion is."

It then gave the choice of what you see above.

18,906 had taken the poll at the time of the author's taking, which was around 8:00 p.m. on September 17, 2015.

It was located on the front page of the Libertarian Party website.

Editor's Note: The author is a Christian in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, or the Reformed Tradition.