The opposite of libertarian political ideology is not left or liberal, it's authoritarian.

[RainDog]

174. And American soldiers (the Lincoln Brigade) supported the anarchists

This was the 1930s, and the political battle, at the time, was between fascism and socialism. Those Americans who came down on the side of the Spanish Republic (the anarchists) were considered the left in the U.S. at the time. Later J. Edgar Hoover listed these soldiers as subversives. But they had some notable supporters, all from the left.

Paul Robeson -Honorary member
Dashiell Hammett
Lillian Hellman
Gypsy Rose Lee
Dorothy Parker
Pablo Picasso
Sam Yorty
Helen Keller
Ernest Hemingway
Woody Guthrie
J. Robert Oppenheimer
George Orwell

People often don't have a sense of what certain political philosophies mean, outside of how they are framed by big media. The use of a word, outside of its context, becomes a "scare word."

The reason to support state power is to protect minorities and other vulnerable members of a society from the tyranny of the majority or the tyranny of power itself in the form of money or access or influence. The way this protection is achieved is through legal channels and through re-distribution of wealth to offset and balance power with the needs of the greater public.

The thing about the use of the state in this way is that such uses result in more equality, better democracies, and a healthier, happier population.

Beyond that, the state is there to protect the people within it from attacks on their liberty. The military serves this function, as does the law and the re-distribution of (some) wealth to offset attacks from powers that undermine democracy.

The problem, in this nation, has been the frequent use of the military by financial powers that exploit patriotism for corporate/private gain, rather than protecting the people of this nation.

I can think of three wars that were just and worth fighting in this nation - The Revolutionary War, The Civil War, and WWII. Everything else (tho I could be wrong on this) seems to have been action taken either for imperial/corporate gain or because of ideological overreach.

We now exist as the world's police officer. Does this prevent greater conflict or generate it by our interference in other nations' self-governing... that, to me, is one of the biggest questions about our national budget, fwiw. Not that I think this question can be honestly addressed....