I just posted over at Inkandescence the first of a couple posts throwing cold water on an utterly understandable movement among many of my best and favorite people in favor of not just a protest vote but an actual, continuing advocacy of the Libertarian Party.  This first one, mostly concerned with principles of practical political advocacy for Christians, crescendoes thus:

Despite [and I might here have just as well said “precisely because of”!] my profound love of the Anglo-American tradition of enumerated liberties against the imagined total reach of government, rooted properly in the natural law tradition that recognizes that each human creature’s transcendent obligations to God and other people, in justice and in charity, individually and in marriage and the Church, are such as demand that no merely secular power claim the right to bind the conscience or impede the performance of these duties; despite my adolescent passion for Locke and Bastiat and von Mises and Hayek, despite my ardency in favor of the “historical best” nature of the United States Constitution and the openness to an honest natural law reading of the Declaration of Independence; despite having for years labelled myself a “civil libertarian” and still defaulting to libertarian arguments and principles whenever a merely American and Constitutional question is in view (though I then often have to correct myself)–despite having longed for decades, literally more than half my life now, to be able to vote for a candidate labelled Libertarian Party or Constitution Party or Taxpayers Party, and having not a few times actually cast sober or protest votes for them–despite all this, I fail to see how it is possible to faithfully relate Christianity to secular regimes and then advocate in favor of the Libertarian Party. Now, go back and note my concessions, and remember that I wish I could agree with you, friends & family who want the Libertarians to be right. But…they just aren’t.  And I would have to sin by taking counsel of despair for all effectual advocacy, or sin by advocating what I know to be utterly unconscionable, to support them.  We’ll have to find another way.

(source: Why I failed to be Libertarian, in spite of myself. – Inkandescence)

Anyway, I would be happy to hear discussion of the matter.