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We have to be careful how we use the term libertarian, though. What we saw in the Boston Tea Party, filtered through today's terms, isn't strictly libertarian because modern American libertarians' stance on monopolies is that the free market should correct them and that destruction of someone else's property is a fundamental violation of the unofficial rules of property rights. Yes, they'd happy bitch and moan about how the IEC's monopoly wouldn't be possible without the government, but that misses the point. EIC, being a profit-driven organization, would seek out any methods available to them in order to beat the competition, become the monopoly, and then control the entire market. It's not like without UK laws the EIC would have faces stiff competition from privateers because the EIC would have found other ways to screw them and to un-level the playing field in their favor.
I suppose the Boston Tea Partiers could be considered similar to modern left libertarians, in that they not only were distrustful of government power, but they were also distrustful of private power because they could see that both of them were corrupt, together and independently. It's more Noam Chomsky than Ludwig von Mises, to put it in more simple terms.
What you're not seeing from the modern Tea Party, however, is scrutiny of corporate power. Sure, the tiny, tiny minority of right-libertarians in the movement are shouting about corporate welfare or earmarks, but the vast majority (according to polling) simply want lower income and property taxes and smaller government, which seems to mean less social programs. The simple reason behind this is the movement is being funded and largely run by 'corporatists', people interested in shifting power away from government regulators and into the market so they can, basically, get away with more shit. It's not the organization that Ron Paul and his supporters started in 2007, but rather the movement Fox News and conservative talk radio created in April of 2008.
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