Which Founding Fathers were libertarians?

Answer 1

The founding fathers all had a conception of the role of government that was vastly more limited than what we accept today. If they were to come back to us they would undoubtedly be in favor of eliminating 90% or more of the functions of all levels of modern government. In that way they were very libertarian. In other ways though their attitudes were not so similar to that of modern libertarians. Most of them would have felt that local communities had every right, and indeed responsibility, to enforce moral and virtuous behavior. Most of them also felt that people had the right to form communities that held similar or common religious beliefs. The federal government was bound by the First Amendment but several of the states had established churches. The founders would have had no trouble at all with obscenity laws and never would have though that freedom of speech applied to anything other than speech.