What is a Libertarian? It's what Paul Ryan and Rand Paul are pushing.

We have a new description of "libertarian."

Courier Journal: Bill Maher, host of the HBO show “Real Time,” took off on a riff about the new brand of libertarianism and essentially accusing U.S. Sen. Rand Paul and U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan of being selfish adolescents who have based their political viewpoints of a pseudo-intellectual  author.

Here’s a transcript of the “new rule:”

New rule. Libertarians have to stop ruining libertarianism. Or at least do a better job explaining the difference between today’s libertarian and just being a selfish prick.

Now many years ago on a television network far, far, away, I expressed support for libertarianism because back then it meant that I didn't want big government in my bedroom or the medicine chest or especially in the second drawer of the bed stand on the left side of my bed, and I still believe that but somewhere along the way, libertarianism morphed into this creepy obsession with free market capitalism based on an Ayn Rand novel called “Atlas Shrugged,” a book that’s never been read all the way through by anyone with a girlfriend.

Paul  Ryan once said Ayn Rand taught him what my value systems are and I believe him because her book has a strange appeal to people who are kind of smart, but not  really. She wrote things like “Money is the barometer of a Society’s virtue.” And, “The question isn't who is going to let me, it’s who is going to stop me.”

Ooh, it sounds like something a batman villain says.

Yeah, it’s all something that sounds very deep when you’re 19 years old. … About how government is a dirty trick played by  the weak  on the strong and I can see if you’re a privileged college kid, you can read that and think, “Yeah, that’s right, I don’t need anything so shut up, dad, and pay my tuition. “

And then one day, you graduate and pack up your things and realize that your copy of atlas shrugged belongs in the same milk crate as your beer helmet and the t-shirt that looks like a tuxedo and you move on, unless your Paul Ryan or Rand Paul.

Now, I know conservatives are saying, “C’mon Bill, you’re not really implying that the most influential minds in the Republican Party are intellectually stuck in their teen years?” No, of course not.  I don’t know where I would get that idea. (Paul Ryan workout photo appears beside him.) Which is not to say there aren't libertarian notions that I applaud.  Like reinstating the 4th amendment and shutting down the American empire. But to everyone who keeps trying to shame me about abandoning my libertarian moorings, my message is this, “I didn't go nuts, this movement did.”

 Like when you see a stop light, your reaction should be great, an easy way to ensure we don’t crash into each other, not how dare the government tell me when I can and cannot go. Seatbelts, I refuse to live in a nanny state, I’m an individual and I’m going to soar free as an eagle right through the windshield.

Same with meat inspectors. Who needs them? People can sniff their own meat. And if a few die, the word will get around town,  don’t order the t-bone at the Ponderosa. And then the Ponderosa closes, problem solved, thanks to the free market. 

Today’s libertarians don’t believe the government should be regulating banks, or guns or schools or civil rights, or even helping out after natural disasters and their aggressively hostile to environmental protection but I like air, and water, I’m practically addicted. Libertarians also hate medicare and social and there are problems with those programs. “But here’s the thing, it beats stepping over lepers and seeing human skeletons shit in the river and I also like not seeing those things. I’m selfish that way.