This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, February 27th, 2014.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Libertarian have been taking something of a beating in various media,

and it's not exactly clear why.

From Chris Christie to cast Sunstein, the fear of a libertarian planet seems more present than ever.

Gene Healy, a vice president at the Cato Institute, argues that the substance of those fears

is still largely unknown.

Yeah if you listen to a lot of the commentary from various pundits and

politicians it's like there's a specter haunting American politics the

specter of Libertarianism and when you look at how much political power libertarians actually have, it's a little ridiculous.

It's never before have so many been so scared by so few with so little political power.

Now, Salon has been very outspoken for several years now, it seems.

Yeah, they have a sort of daily two-minute hate against libertarians.

They're constantly warning progressives

about libertarianism as if it's some sort of social disease.

There's, you know, if they warn progressives not to make common cause with

libertarians on marching against the NSA.

They even seem to think that libertarianism has infected iPhone apps.

They recently ran a piece called The Secret Libertarianism of Uber and AirB&B.

Who else has been more recently picking on libertarians?

And why are they doing so, more importantly?

You're seeing a lot of the same anti-libertarian paranoia

...