Libertarianism in the United States is a movement promoting limited government and individual liberties. Although libertarianism exists in two major forms worldwide, right-libertarianism and left-libertarianism, right-leaning libertarianism tends to be the dominant form in the United States. The right-leaning Libertarian Party, the third largest political party in the United States as of 2008 with 235,500 registered voters,^{[citation needed]} asserts the following to be core beliefs of Libertarianism:

In the 1950s many with classical liberal beliefs in the United States began to describe themselves as "libertarian." Academics as well as proponents of the free market perspectives note that free-market libertarianism has been successfully propagated beyond the US since the 1970s via think tanks and political parties and that libertarianism is increasingly viewed worldwide as a free market position. However, Libertarian socialists Noam Chomsky, Colin Ward and others argue that the term "libertarianism" is globally considered a synonym for anarchism and that the United States is unique in widely associating it with free market ideology.

Milton Friedman (July 31, 1912 – November 16, 2006) was an American economist, statistician, and author who taught at the University of Chicago for more than three decades. He was a recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, and is known for his research on consumption analysis, monetary history and theory, and the complexity of stabilization policy. As a leader of the Chicago school of economics, he influenced the research agenda of the economics profession. A survey of economists ranked Friedman as the second most popular economist of the twentieth century behind John Maynard Keynes, and The Economist described him as "the most influential economist of the second half of the 20th century…possibly of all of it."

Friedman's challenges to what he later called "naive Keynesian" (as opposed to New Keynesian) theory began with his 1950s reinterpretation of the consumption function, and he became the main advocate opposing activist Keynesian government policies. In the late 1960s he described his own approach (along with all of mainstream economics) as using "Keynesian language and apparatus" yet rejecting its "initial" conclusions. During the 1960s he promoted an alternative macroeconomic policy known as "monetarism". He theorized there existed a "natural" rate of unemployment, and argued that governments could increase employment above this rate (e.g., by increasing aggregate demand) only at the risk of causing inflation to accelerate. He argued that the Phillips curve was not stable and predicted what would come to be known as stagflation. Friedman argued that, given the existence of the Federal Reserve, a constant small expansion of the money supply was the only wise policy.

Ronald Ernest "Ron" Paul (born August 20, 1935) is an American politician who has been the U.S. Representative for Texas's 14th congressional district, which includes Galveston, since 1997, and a three-time candidate for President of the United States, as a Libertarian in 1988 and as a Republican in 2008 and currently 2012. He is an outspoken critic of American foreign and monetary policies, including the Military–industrial complex and the Federal Reserve, and is known for his libertarian-leaning views, often differing from his own party on certain issues.

A native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Paul is a graduate of Gettysburg College and Duke University School of Medicine, where he earned his medical degree. He served as a medical officer in the United States Air Force from 1963 until 1968. He worked as an obstetrician-gynecologist from the 1960s to the 1980s, delivering more than 4,000 babies. He became the first Representative in history to serve concurrently with a child in the Senate when his son Rand Paul was elected to the United States Senate for Kentucky in 2010.

Murray Newton Rothbard (March 2, 1926 – January 7, 1995) was an American economist, historian, and political theorist. He was a prominent exponent of the Austrian School of economics who helped to define libertarianism by theorising a form of free-market anarchism which he termed "anarcho-capitalism." Rothbard wrote over twenty books and is considered a centrally important figure in the American libertarian movement.

Building on the Austrian School's concept of spontaneous order, support for a free market in money production and condemnation of central planning, Rothbard advocated abolition of coercive government control of society and the economy. He considered the monopoly force of government the greatest danger to liberty and the long-term well-being of the populace, labeling the state as nothing but a "gang of thieves writ large"—the locus of the most immoral, grasping and unscrupulous individuals in any society.

Rothbard concluded that all services provided by monopoly governments could be provided more efficiently by the private sector. He viewed many regulations and laws ostensibly promulgated for the "public interest" as self-interested power grabs by scheming government bureaucrats engaging in dangerously unfettered self-aggrandizement, as they were not subject to market disciplines. Rothbard held that there were inefficiencies involved with government services and asserted that market disciplines would eliminate them, if the services could be provided by competition in the private sector.

Jeffrey Albert Tucker is the executive editor of Laissez Faire Books. He is past editorial vice president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute and past editor for the institute's website, Mises.org. Tucker is also an adjunct scholar with the Mackinac Center for Public Policy and an Acton University faculty member.

Tucker compiled an annotated bibliography of the works of Henry Hazlitt, entitled Henry Hazlitt: Giant For Liberty, which is now in print. A Foundation for Economic Education review described the book, which "includes citations of a novel, works on literary criticism, treatises on economics and moral philosophy, several edited volumes, some 16 other books and many chapters in books, plus articles, commentaries, and reviews," as "an apt eulogy of Henry Hazlitt."

As a writer, Tucker has contributed scholarly efforts and humorous essays to LewRockwell.com, Mises.org and elsewhere. Examples of the latter essays include his defense of morning drinking, his advice on "How to Dress Like a Man", his attack on shaving cream, and his admiration for the speedy-service haircut. He is a critic of the Grameen Bank which, along with its founder Muhammad Yunus, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006.