I was ashamed to the depths of my being that I'd been such a moron. Maybe this is partly a difference between UK and US politics. So while I could never in a million years associate myself with the Tories, maybe if I was an American I wouldn't find it bad in quite the same way to be associated with Republicans. Peter Stewart American conservatives are not Tories, they are free-market liberals. The Libertarian Party in the US is an electoral irrelevance.
Libertarians are too cerebral and their desire for theoretical consistency is detached from reality.