IT ONLY TAKES A MOMENT.

This week has pretty much clarified what "the libertarian moment" really is: While that Times article  portrayed it as a historical moment, events show that it has become an actual moment -- something lasting only briefly, but calculated to have a long-term effect.

Take, for example,  "Why the ‘War on Journalists’ in Ferguson?" by Rick Moran. Readers of his impeccably rightwing venue, the PJ Tatler, may from the headline expect one of those columns featuring, in the words Timothy P. Carney, "wisdom shared by libertarians and conservatives" -- that is, conservatives of both kinds united to fight the power of Big Police.

However, Moran is actually with the cops:

It is unrealistic for reporters to think that police approach anyone not wearing blue during a riot with anything but suspicion. This is especially true when they are under gun fire, and Molotov Cocktails and rocks are being thrown at them. It appears that many of the detentions have occurred when reporters either got in the way or were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

And on and on like that. But! Then Moran drops this:

On the other hand, there have been some questionable actions by police directed at reporters, like the incident mentioned above at the McDonald’s last week where two reporters were roughed up and dragged off to jail.

That done, it's back to stuff like

Do reporters think they should have free rein to run around a riot ignorantly, putting themselves and the police who try to assist them in danger?... That ignorance is going to get one of them killed unless they’re more careful.

That "on the other hand" section may seem to normal readers like a weird hiccup -- only there because of a nervous editor, perhaps, or a debilitating stroke.

But that was the actually the column's "libertarian moment" -- that is, the short part of it where the conservative writer pays homage to this libertarian thing they're all supposed to get with.

You can see something similar in Jonah Goldberg's latest. Mostly it's a fist-shaking fart-cloud about stupid liberals and black people who are always rioting for reasons he can't understand. It might have been written after an Abner Louima demonstration, that's how old-school this joint is -- Goldberg even namechecks the Nation of Islam, and the column is illustrated with a photo of Al Sharpton! But you don't get to be a top Professor of Liberal Fasciology by ignoring what the new breed is up to, and in his summation Goldberg makes room for the trope du jour:

Nearly everything about this story is ugly: the gleeful ideological and bureaucratic point-scoring, the spectacle of a militarized police force and bunkered police leadership, the self-congratulatory advocacy journalism, the Molotov cocktails and despondent victims of looting, the feeding frenzy of Sharpton and Jesse Jackson and countless lesser activist remoras, and — perhaps most of all — the constant soul-corrupting rationalizations of lawlessness that come with seeing the right “context.” (Context! Is there nothing it can’t do?)

See? He got the militarized police in there, nestled among the usual bullshit, so you New Age types can enjoy your racism and authoritarianism with a clear conscience.

You'll be seeing many such libertarian moments sitting on many conservative columns, like cherries on shit sundaes, until this whole thing blows over.

UPDATE. In comments, Bizarro Mike: "Maybe they could sell Libertarian Moments™ collectible figurines. You know, like Precious Moments™, but standing on their own, facing off the tax man come to make them pay grazing fees."