Being libertarian because you want to smoke pot versus not trusting a authority that has the power to ban it at the state/federal level. My aggravation since being a high schooler is how the former became the household definition, because the mode averaged person has an allergy to cynicism for some gods' forsaken reason. These naive idealists, coinciding with single-issue fuckwads, are so invirtuously useless for society that the proggie NPC has a point when he paints a libertarian as a social loser living in fantasies. Then we have anarcho-capitalism, a designation stemming from humans irresistible urge to subdivide into counterproductive tribes, to be divided and conquered by the outside culture. Any hypothetical minarchist state and ancapistan would be indistinguishable in practice.
Paleoconservative/paleolibertarian would be great brands if they weren't syllablistic vomit doomed to irrelevancy to the average Westerner. Would someone notable start a movement that isn't complete anathema to social marketing, but not so vague as to be amorphously inclusionary? I propose the axiomatic party. Principled yet without delusion, unique, and only slightly more grating to pronounce than "Democratic" or "Republican". I suggest taking a lesson out of Heinlein's History and Moral Philosophy class, sticking to uncomfortable, unambiguous social truths as a serious science. Of course the conditions in Starship Troopers were different, where hard men emerged out of truly hard times, and not bread and circuses limbo we're stuck in.
If my axiomatic ideal were attempted in my lif, neurotypes and grifters would just pervert the meaning like they did to liberalism. Principled will be confused with being a dense zealot. But really, libertarianism needs to rebrand.
Because there were so many claiming to be "libertarian" that either were instead liberals or became authoritarian leftists as they got older. They weren't actually for small government and freedom, they desired some non-existent freedoms and also to tear down some things as they just didn't like what either major Party was doing. The term was fine over a decade ago, but the rise of SJW-ism during Obama and its metastasizing in reaction to Trump, caused the term to morph. It's tainted to the point that you can't really claim to be one without garnering a negative reaction, similar to how words like Nazi and racist were used to denigrate people until those words lost their power.
And really the West is so polarized now, you're not going to be able to go outside the dichotomy without one of the major factions accusing you of being the other, even when some sheep among both of them have similarities, in that they are anti-freedom and autonomy. A declining society/civilization will feature this behavior as humans regress to their tribal instincts. The current state of the mass populace is not really any different to WWII, when all the major belligerents were practicing some form of Socialism yet we're supposed to pretend one alliance wasn't evil. Historically, intelligent people always suffer from this cycle.
Libertarians have been a vocal minority shunned by many establishment types, for example the Moral Majority or left-leaning academics too dependent on government infrastructure. Certainly so by the mid 00's when I was discovering politics beyond the watered-down version taught by grade school. But it's certainly intensified from relatively fringe snarky mockery to the modern vitriol shared with Trump supporters, Brexiteers, and other right-wing populist undesirables.
I don't know how I would define it now, however back around the time I was beginning to understand politics and the world, I wanted closed borders, a balanced budget with no more grift and handouts (both welfare and world policing go away), the lower taxation to go with it, and the government to leave people alone if they were being responsible and exercising their rights as per the Ninth Amendment. People being allowed to prosper without unnecessary government interference and without appropriating their fruits to subsidize those who don't want to contribute. Currently I'm cynical about whether or not Americans are competent enough to accomplish that.
Again, it's because of the polarization. The specific vitriol is really stemming from the consolidation of "tribes" on either side. As things become more strained, there's less room for disagreement about the solutions.