Do not conflate beliefs with the people who hold them

I don’t know why you would qualify this. People and ideas are different things. Disagreeing with a person instead of an idea is lazy and obligates you to start over whenever a different person repeats the idea. (Or you can take the expedient of pre-judging the entire class of people who share an idea.)

Libertarianism is immoral

You’ll like this: suppose we say it represents a different kind of morality.

“People should fend for themselves” is not a cogent political philosophy, but if we are limited to sound bites, it is correct. What is the alternative, that people should not seek to advance their own interests? In practice, everyone fends for themselves.

Saying that people should look out for their own interests says nothing about what happens when some people inevitably make bad decisions or have bad luck or otherwise fall on hard times. When I consider my own selfish interests, one of them is that I live in a world where people do not go hungry in the midst of wealth, where people can practice their innate social and altruistic instincts, where predators are not a protected class. Most people who hear this will say “Sure, me too, but not everyone is altruistic!” If most people start by saying “me too,” that’s a good start.

Good for us. So, what stops me from feeding the homeless or hiring a foreigner? What stops the poor from finding affordable housing or making money braiding hair?

Outsourcing our interest in helping others to the government is like outsourcing our interest in being protected from foreign conquest. It works, somewhat, but with considerable costs. I think it is worth discussing the costs and benefits of possible alternatives.