could you explain to me libertarian steve? i have so many steve & bucky stans on my dash i really need some alternate points of view
sure. i’ve been thinking over the last couple ofdays that steve seems to be strongly motivated by individualism inCACW. like evans said, steve’s primary motivation is his personalfeelings for bucky, rather than the political aspect of registration.after TWS, steve is extremely suspicious of the government - which isunderstandable - and distrustful of any kind of authority - which isless so. tony wants heroes to be held accountable; steve seems tothink of himself as rather above the law.
steve’s always been staunchly independent, andhe’s often broken the rules before. but the change in cacw towardslibertarianism seems to be that he’s promoting the rights of theindividual specifically in order to resist the structure of thestate. basically, he doesn’t want enhanced people to submit to oversight because he wants to protect bucky. he knows that bucky is a goodperson, he believes that he can be saved, and he thinks that is moreimportant than following rules which would protect the public. it’san admirable display of loyalty, but it’s also a fairly self-servingperspective. in his desire to protect bucky, steve is losing sight of the need to protect everyone else as well.
i think steve still thinks of himself as the little guy - so of course he doesn’t need to be overseen by anyone else, because he’s a good person, and so is bucky. he assumes that his good intentions are enough of a justification. his and bucky’s rights to autonomy and freedom are more salient in his mind than the political precedent which is set by a group of powerful individuals performing military operations without accountability.