Why don't libertarians want to convince anyone of anything ever?

Regular readers of this blog (all five of you) have probably picked up on my annoyance with the predilection of many of my ideological allies for telling fables and just-so stories. Danny Sanchez, over at the Mises blog, has a particularly fine example of this tendency up today, in which he advocates turning more power in Britain over to the House of Lords and even the Crown. I swear I am not making this up:

All this makes me wonder, why not use this nostalgia and popular acclaim as momentum to transfer some real power back to the House of Windsor, and maybe even the House of Lords too?
Anyone who thinks such an idea is self-evident folly should read Hans-Hermann Hoppe.

He then goes on to quote what could be the exemplar of the libertarian fairy tale genre, in which our intrepid philosopher Hoppe, late of UNLV, purports to prove the superiority of monarchy to democracy. The argument runs like this: monarchs own their states, while democratic leaders simply manage them. Therefore, monarchs have a longer time horizon than democrats, and will thus manage affairs more prudently, with an eye to a more distant future.

Right now you are supposed to be saying, "Are you fucking joking?," and not, "hmmm, good point," just in case there is any confusion. I have no interest in debating the theoretical merits of Dr. Hoppe's point; I will merely submit all of human history as evidence that Hoppe lives on Mars. It doesn't matter how terribly clever your little fable is, my libertarian friends, if it flies in the face of reality.

I think that since we are such a small minority in politics, we libertarians sometimes become more and more contrarian simply out of habit. Everyone already disagrees with us, so why not egg them on? So much the better if we can come up with some quasi-intellectual 'argument' as to why black is white and up is down, that just reinforces our conviction that everyone is dumb except for us.

Another stellar example of this phenomenon is Walter Block's book Defending the Undefendable, in which the fearless professor justifies blackmail, among other things. Friends, whatever clever arguments you can muster about lacking a right to reputation, or silence being a commodity with market value, the truth of the matter is that if you get some dirt on someone and then demand money to keep silent, you're a fucking asshole. Defending assholes is no way to convert anyone to anything; if you readers know anyone who is on the fence about libertarianism and you want to prevent them from ever coming over to the dark side, give them Dr. Block's book. It's practically a vaccine against liberty. It's not even that Dr. Block's arguments are all wrong; it's more as if he were recruiting for a job and he started off by pointing out the abysmal pay, awful conditions and grueling labor. Does he want to convince anyone of anything? Too much libertarian 'scholarship' has devolved into a collective nerd circle-jerk in which we all stroke our throbbing intellects and celebrate how clever we are.

When will libertarians stop doing deliberately alienating others and purposefully advocating for ludicrous positions? Until we do, we'll remain a nutty fringe, good for the occasional headline but completely ineffectual and totally irrelevant. Again I'll say it, and I'll even say that if you stay tuned you'll find it here- libertarians need to advance cogent, historically informed arguments both for specific policies (something the Cato Institute and the kids at Reason already do a great job of) and for our philosophy as a whole. Fables, parables, theoretical fantasies and just-so stories are never going to do anything but convince us of how terribly clever we already knew we were.