I can't see any evidence that libertarians, by definition, care about anything but their own self-interests.
It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union. And we formed it, not to give the blessings of liberty, but to secure them; not to the half of ourselves and the half of our posterity, but to the whole people - women as well as men.
-Susan B. Anthony
There is a certain enthusiasm in liberty, that makes human nature rise above itself, in acts of bravery and heroism.
-Alexander Hamilton
It will be found an unjust and unwise jealousy to deprive a man of his natural liberty upon the supposition he may abuse it.
-George Washington
Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness.
-George Washington
It is easy to castigate those who abhor the unjust usurpation of power in the name of good things as being against good things, or proponents of selfish things, but it is a shallow and meaningless argument. You are better than that.
A fight does not have to be in service to things that do not benefit the self to have worth. That a libertarian argument is an argument for a situation which would benefit the libertarian does not disqualify it as an argument, or demean it in any way. An argument for lower taxes for me is selfish, an argument for lower taxes for everyone is not. An argument for government to leave me alone is selfish, an argument for government to leave everyone alone is not.
From the very beginning of the government of this country there has been a struggle between those that would use the power of government to secure liberty and those that would use the power of government to impose their own will on others. It is a very different thing to say "this is harmful, we're going to tax it, because taxes reduce consumption" and "we don't like this, we're going to blame you for it, and tax you."
What is disconcerting to the libertarian is the two party system, where one party is the oppressor of social liberty (Conservative stance on social issues) and the other is the oppressor of economic liberty (Democratic stance on economic issues). So it's a pick your poison kind of thing. Being unpopular and rich makes you a target of Democrats, regardless of whatever environmental arguments they are couching their sentiments in this week, if oil companies were poor they'd receive exactly as much attention as paint companies. The worst environmental record doesn't earn you a spot on the shit list, it has to be paired with success.
Likewise, it doesn't matter how successful and contributory you are, if you're not fucking the right kind of person you end up on the conservative shit list.
The libertarian argument is to strip away the ability of government to take actionable steps on these irrational grudges. Sometimes a thing needs to be done, true. But you can't argue that something like education can only be handled by government unless you attended a government school in the US where that's what you were taught. There are advantages to such a system, true. But a huge disadvantage is the lack of competition that allows an idea like "the private sector can't be trusted" to become a gospel truth. Nothing can be trusted, people can't be trusted, regardless of the nature of their employer. By all means have a public education system. But don't set up a system where it is virtually impossible for a private education system to compete with that. A good option doesn't need the defense of public policy, but most public school systems in the US survive only because of the mandatory participation imposed by the government. There's a history behind how we got where we are, but it should concern you that the defense of public education is not the failure to provide adequate public education in less settled areas historically, rather the utter ignorance of most of those who were subjected to public education that there's any other way to do it.
It's called indoctrination. It's called propaganda. And public policy should be supported by other means. What the libertarian sentimentality seeks to do, more than anything, in my opinion, is to point out that much of the current public policy debate centers not on the merits of an individual program or idea, but on the entrenched interests of those who rely on the existence of the public policy. It can sound selfish to want to get rid of the tax on nose hair because "what about all those poor nose hair tax collectors?" But it isn't selfish. We don't need a tax on nose hair.
All you can do is limit the scope of the damage any one person can do. Vast scope of massive agencies is antithetical to that. Opposing the desires of a community to set up their own school, and pay for it with money they are paying towards a school they no longer want to participate in, that's selfish. Opposing everyone keeping a little more of their hard-earned money to use for their own good causes so you can force them to spend it on things you think are better causes, that's selfish.