Like college students across the country, the boy wizard had to deal with a crazed, crypto-Marxist teacher.

On page 357 of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, author J.K. Rowling reveals (spoiler alert!!!) that the newly deceased headmaster of the wizard school Hogwarts, Albus Dumbledore, was a brimming socialist-communist in his teenage years.

It's not an accident or a needless plot twist. It's a powerful climax that's been building for years. The damning letter by the young Dumbledore first appears on the only page of the final book numbered with three consecutive odd prime numbers. And the words themselves could just as easily have been written by Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin or any far-left liberal today: "Yes, we have been given power and yes, that power gives us the right to rule, but it also gives us responsibilities over the ruled. We must stress this point, it will be the foundation stone upon which we build. Where we are opposed, as we surely will be, this must be the basis of all our counter-arguments. We seize control FOR THE GREATER GOOD." (Capital letters in original.)

The young Dumbledore had no qualms about harming the few to benefit the many. He had no misgivings about initiating the use of force for whatever he considers the greater good. Today, socialized medicine, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and hundreds of other social programs are based on this exact same thinking. And we seem to vote for that thinking every time.

But Harry Potter doesn't. Potter is not like Dumbledore. For seven books and thousands of pages, Potter never used violence except in self-defense, and he always tried to save the lives; even those of his enemies. His tale is one of a constant and heartrending struggle to prevent sacrifice even by his dearest friends, rather than a cold-blooded calculation of who and how best to sacrifice for the greater good. Potter spends much of the seventh book convincing as many as people as possible not to get involved in the central conflicts at all.

Is Potter a libertarian? One of the shortest definitions of libertarianism is an opposition to the initiation of force. If you want to become a member of the Libertarian Party of Connecticut, you must sign this pledge: "I hereby certify that I do not believe in or advocate the initiation of force to achieve political, social, or economic goals." Self-defense, of course, is not an initiation of force. But think eminent domain abuse, asset forfeiture laws and prohibition. Think taxes. Think Iraq.

This question applies to us more than any other part of America. Just as Fairfield County is often the nation's yardstick on Iraq and taxes, it also was one of the final battlegrounds of witchcraft in the 17th century. According to the Connecticut Humanities Council, "If one excludes the events in Salem from consideration, Connecticut was the witchcraft center of New England."

Indeed, according to a report put out last December by the Office of Legislative Research by the Connecticut General Assembly, our Puritanical state had been indicting, trying, and executing early Harry Potters by means of Blue Laws, written more than 30 years before the infamous Salem witch trials of 1692 executed 21 people in the space of two seasons. Unlike the one-year Massachusetts frenzy, Connecticut fed a long and steady diet of witches, approximately one trial per year until 1662 when our law was changed to require at least two simultaneous witnesses to the alleged bewitching. Then for thirty years, only a handful made it to court.

But in 1692, likely as a reaction to the Salem brouhaha, Connecticut awakened from its relatively slow trickle to accuse eight citizens of witchcraft. Of those eight, five were from Fairfield and one from Stamford.

Once again and as usual, Fairfield County was in a unique place, at a unique time, to determine the destiny of the free world. We were essentially the last testing ground of witch hunts. And we acted as honorably as we could, given the law we were supposed to enforce. As far as I can tell, all six Fairfield County defendants were acquitted or freed.

350 years later, the arrival of the seventh book by J.K. Rowling brings witchcraft and libertarianism back to Fairfield County. To me, a lifelong libertarian who ran for Congress on the Libertarian ticket last year, the phrase "greater good" screams out socialism. And I am not surprised that it is a young Dumbledore that is presented in this light. Most far-left liberals, like many of the readers of this paper, are young, well-educated, and fiery, just like the young Dumbledore, just like the young Lenin. Once the initiation of force is morally permissible, young, educated, powerful people tend to think they are the best to determine how to use that power...for the greater good.

But the initiation of force is not morally permissible. And Harry Potter understood that from birth. Eventually, so does Dumbledore. It happens on page 716.

Is it a coincidence that July 16, 1979 was the day Saddam Hussein came to power in Iraq? Or that a year later to the day, Ronald Reagan won the Republican nomination for president and went on to strike, arguably, the greatest blows against communism and socialism of all time?

On page 716, Dumbledore explains the feelings that I suspect most liberals have. "Oh, I have a few scruples," he laments in what is either a return from death or a vision in Potter's mind. "I assuaged my conscience with empty words. It would all be for the greater good, and any harm done would be repaid a hundredfold in benefits for wizards."

I thought I was the first to notice this libertarian bent on the part of probably the most widely read non-Biblical hero of all time. But it turns out others have written on this subject before. University of Tennessee law professor Benjamin Barton wrote an article last year for the Michigan Law Review called "Harry Potter and the Half-Crazed Bureaucracy" in which he analyzed the hidden libertarian messages from the first six books.

This message has roots, and roots that trace back earlier than the 1997 publication of the first Potter book, earlier than the war of good and evil fought in the 1980s, earlier even than the 17th century witchcraft woes and the 15th century discovery of the new, free world. Libertarianism is the oldest, strongest message on earth. You feel it in your bones, your stomach, and your heart.

Perhaps Potter's final message is that it is time to let the message of self-reliance and freedom bubble to your mind, your arms and your mouth.