I really respect the libertarians that I have met at Stanford. They tend to be intelligent people who believe in unconventional solutions to nearly insurmountable problems. I also think that their ideology is silly, and I refuse to be cowed by their reasoned arguments. It just feels wrong, and I am willing to leave it at that.

For those not in the know, libertarians believe that the government should have minimal power, and that most, if not all, problems can be solved through market forces. For instance, they tend not to believe in the criminalization of private acts, such as sodomy, drug use, polygamy, abortion. They are against high taxes, regulations like food and drug certification and workplace safety guidelines, government intervention in foreign countries, and social programs such as government-subsidized health-care, food stamps or unemployment insurance.

It’s an extremely attractive philosophy — if people were left to themselves, if they were kept safe and if contracts between them were enforced, everything would just sort of turn out okay.

Many of these programs, such as isolationism and ending the war on drugs, are ones I find attractive. The rest strike me as extremely radical and likely to end poorly.

But I try not to argue with libertarians, mostly because I know I will get schooled six ways to Sunday. Libertarians tend to be extremely well-read. They know what they believe, why they believe it, why it is better than everything else and they have the facts and figures to prove it. When you put someone like that against a scatter-shot thinker like me, who hasn’t done any research, I am bound to lose.

In fact I’ve been crushed in arguments by people who believed in a wide variety of silly things — opponents of global warming, intelligent design proponents, 9/11 conspiracy theorists and moon landing skeptics. If you wander onto their Web sites, you start to believe that stuff yourself. You can prove almost anything if you only cite the evidence that supports your view and twist the rest around.

These people find “anomalies” that run counter to the accepted wisdom. For instance, moon skeptics wonder why there are not stars in the background of the landing photos. 9/11 conspiracy theorists toss out all kinds of stuff about the melting point of steel. And intelligent design proponents wonder how the eyeball could have evolved in a single step.

My cursory research shows there is a bunch of people out there willing to spend hours refuting these arguments. But, to be honest, reading those arguments (and the resulting counter-arguments) seems like a waste of effort, and I prefer to just avoid the debate entirely.

From an early age, I was taught to challenge authority and be skeptical. I was taught that the essence of science is not to take anything for granted. But I am not a scientist. I am banking that these ideas are so likely to be false that the mental energy I would spend on critically analyzing them is a waste of time.

I still think libertarianism is extremely attractive. It is the sort of philosophy that purports to solve any problem. I am wary of anything that seems to explain so much (Buddhism falls into this category too, silly neo-hippies). In my experience, life is messy, and complicated, and the most reasonable solutions tend to be a jumble of stuff in the middle. Libertariansism strikes me as more of a religion, and as such it requires that you take a lot on faith.

My grandfather taught me to be wary of all-encompassing philosophies. He became a newspaper columnist after a life as a communist labor organizer in India. Despite retaining his belief in communism until the end of his life, he was immensely proud that his three daughters were educated in America and were safely ensconced in the capitalist system.

When they made fun of him for this, he used to say, “Every worldview has contradictions.”

This column will be inconsistent. It will be illogical. At times I will castigate those I praise at other times. I will make leaps of logic. And I will shy away from any over-arching worldview.

Perhaps in my belief that the world cannot be explained through any simple lens, I am just like the libertarians. Perhaps it is merely a dogma for me. But, if so, I am content with that.

Rahul Kanakia is a senior majoring in economics. If you hate how fuzzy-headed and confused he is, then you’re welcome to convince him otherwise! His email is rahkan@stanford.edu.