Why the Libertarian Party will never be a major party

I must say, I usually enjoying the musings of a good Libertarian, even if I disagree with them as much as I agree with them. But their is a reason many Libertarians align behind small government conservatives and not the occasional candidate their party comes up with, and that is because the Libertarians are a bit over the top on many things. And that is what is preventing their party from become a major party. Take this story out of New England, for instance:

A Keene man who planned to try to board a flight carrying nothing but a Bible and a copy of the Declaration of Independence was arrested Saturday at Manchester Airport.
Russell Kanning, 35, was arrested after refusing to comply with security screening procedures and refusing to leave the screening area, according to the Rockingham County sheriff's department. He was charged with criminal trespassing and was being held at the Rockingham County jail.

After that vague account from the Boston Herald, I knew there had to be more to the story than just this guy carrying a Bible and the Declaration of Independence on board a plane. And there is:

On Saturday, Russell Kanning will try to board a flight from Manchester to Philadelphia, carrying nothing but a Bible and a copy of the Declaration of Independence. In what he calls an act of civil disobedience, Kanning, a 35-year-old accountant from Keene and a staunch libertarian, will refuse to show identification to airline officials or submit to a security search.

That more detailed "preview" came from Foster's Online out of Dover, NH. His arrest had nothing to do with the Bible and the Declaration of Independence. It had everything to do with his planned refusal to show ID to security and his subsequent obstruction of security officials.

Now, it is easy to see the Libertarian argument here-government overstretching it's reach into our lives, blah, blah, blah. The problem for Libertarians in this case is that part of government's purpose is to protect citizen's from foreign powers, and one could easily make the case that terrorists fall into that foreign powers class. Because of that, most all of us, even though we complain about it, are willing to trade the liberty of not showing an ID to board a plane for the assurance that security, in this case run by the government, will ensure that a terrorist will not murder us while we are on that flight. We do this because we realize that airliners are incredibly vulnerable to being blown out of the skies or hijacked. In otherwords, most people put reality before ideals. Hardcore Libertarians put ideals before reality.