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It's hard for people to take the libertarian lesson from such events because lizard brain instinctively understands that the levers of power are like, right there.
If you think you've won forever and for all time, what possible reason would you have to build in checks and balances to the infinite expansion of state power? They were wrong about this, but there were a significant amount of people in America - some of them reasonably intelligent, just isolated in their own bubbles - that did in fact think they were going to win forever, for all time, and the only thing left to do was consolidate and grind down the boot.
I like libertarians. I lean libertarian. But they're losers. Their win state is to check out and to be left alone to do what they're doing. This is inherently a losing position, because those who show up to the game are those who get to play.
There are other games than using democracy to grab state power for yourself. Libertarians will never have more than 10% of the population as a genuine constituency. If you still care about liberty there are better things to do with your time than to try to wrestle away power from collectivists.
I'd say that serious libertarians have pursued a very successful political program that got them a lot of what they wanted in the recent past. But it's always going to come as a compromise and through the vessel of a larger coalition.
Call this losing if you must. That doesn't change the nature of the choice.
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