Yeah, Ron Paul always confused me with his stance on abortion and whatnot, since it doesn't really mesh with libertarian ideology. Then I found out he used to be an obstetrician and personally delivered an absurd number of babies in his career, so I figure he is really just personally biased.
I used to like him more then I do now, libertarianism is a nice ideal, but such a system of governance would be disasterous. People would struggle, wealth would concentrate in an elite minority, and without compulsory education and a basic safety net, you'd literally have a new underclass of illiterate peasants and fuckin' brigands or whatever roaming the countryside. I think George Carlin sums up the reality, think of how stupid the average person person, and 50% of people are stupider then that. A free society would be a cut-throat society, a libertarian government would have a disasterous impact in this modern age and we have to have a system that works for everyone, or you'll have a society you won't actually want to live in.
I think the best compromise would be to lessen the power of the federal government, keep it's focus on courts and national defense and generally let the states be responsible for everything else. That way people have a greater choice in what policies they want to live under. If they don't like paying taxes to provide food stamps they can go move to Alabama or whatever. If you want to smoke pot legally, move to California. It's basically what we already have, but the trends of late have been increased federal authority stepping on state's rights. I think the federal government should lean toward a hands-off libertarian policy while the individual states should lean more progressive, or theocratic policies, whatever floats your boat, that'd be the state you move to.