In theory, libertarianism is about protecting liberties, such as your hopeful, rote definition purports, and social libertarians can live up to this, fighting for the social and civil liberties of citizens.
Have you read the platform of the LP? It's more than theory. It's also more than social, as the government taking and spending money is involved in nearly any political discussion at every level of government. See section 2.4.
https://www.lp.org/platformInstead, libertarianism as it has come to dominate the political arena in the United States...
We must live in different United States. Have you looked at any election involving a Libertarian? They're lucky to get 3% of the vote even in state elections. Even if you include so-called "Libertarian leaning" candidates, it's kind of hard to say it's a dominant force. Would you say Sanders or Clinton are libertarian? They have accounted for millions of votes and in some areas one or the other is thought to be the likely next president.
It has become a cover for eroding the kind of laws and regulations that have been put in place precisely to protect all our freedoms, an erosion pushed first and foremost by wealthy and powerful forces that seek to exert their interests over and against the interests of the majority.
So laws and regulation in the US are declining/eroding? Again, we must live in different United Sates.
Hopefully you won't consider GW University's Columbia College of Arts & Sciences a biased source. If you do, please cite a reliable contrary source. Here's their chart of pages of federal regulations from 1950 to 2014:
https://regulatorystudies.columbian.gwu.edu/reg-stats#Total%20Pages%20in%20the%20Code%20of%20Federal%20Regulations%20%281936%20-%202013%29Synopsis: There were < 20K pages in 1950. By 1960, a little more than 20K. By 1970, just shy of 60K. By 1980, over 100K, by 1990 over 120K, by 2000 almost 140K, and by 2010 almost again 140K due to a short-term decline circa 2004. Note the sharp spike up in 2011 followed by an odd similar decline in 2012, then back up near 180K in 2013 and 2014. While there have been some years like 2005 and 2012, the trend over time has been dramatically higher.
As for federal laws, the Library of Congress says this on their website:
At the reference desk, we are frequently asked to estimate the number of federal laws in force. However, trying to tally this number is nearly impossible.
Government source:
https://blogs.loc.gov/law/2013/03/frequent-reference-question-how-many-federal-laws-are-there/There are so many federal laws that even the folks at the LoC can't easily count them.
It's this kind of ruse "libertarianism," ironically, that has in a way led to the rise of Trumpian authoritarianism, as so many confused libertarians and Tea Partiers can't understand why the more extremely libertarian the political sphere gets, the less free and empowered they feel, so many start listening to Trump's facile and dangerous solutions to break out of the deadlock.
I've known some people that identified with the TEA party some years ago, and cannot understand why they like Trump. As I see it, they are just fed up with business/politics as usual, and have finally gone all-in on the "anybody but___" mentality, which is illogical, since "anybody" can certainly be worse than a reasoned choice. That's the case with Trump, who will be just as large a disaster as would be Sanders or Clinton. It's just a matter of how fast we want the nation's founding principles to be totally destroyed beyond what the Democrats and Republicans have done over the past several decades.
We have way too many people in this country that either have not or will not learn from history.
I agree money buys political power. I'd love to see true campaign finance reform to where regular people could stand a chance of winning an election, however I don't see that happening any time soon.
Ignoring politics doesn't mean politics will ignore you.
-Pericles paraphrased in <100 characters
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