Belle Knox, the enterprising Duke undergraduate who ascended to fame last year after her porn career was discovered by nosy classmates, has decided to direct her notoriety to politics. In an interview with Business Insider, Knox expressed her desire to become a libertarian political activist, having already begun work with libertarian campus groups. Knox evidently identifies failed screenwriter Ayn Rand as a personal hero, and supports the Paul dynasty, citing appreciation for both Ron and son Rand. And she attributed her libertarianism to her conservative religious upbringing.

“I grew up Catholic, so I grew up in a very, very, conservative background and that, I think, really was kind of the impetus for why I wanted to become a libertarian," she said. "I was always being told to cover up my body and I was always being told to wait until marriage to have sex… That really made me become a libertarian and become a feminist.”

Insofar as libertarianism is opposed to almost every feature of Catholic morality, Knox has certainly picked an appropriate politics of rebellion. But Knox, who considers herself “very socially liberal, but … very economically conservative,” may find less agreement among fellow libertarians than she expects. This isn’t because Knox doesn’t have a good sense of what libertarians actually believe; it’s because libertarians themselves do not appear to have a good sense of what libertarianism actually means.

Even Ayn Rand detested libertarians, whom she identified with hippies and considered irrational, ineffectual opponents of true freedom. When it comes to polling libertarians, it certainly appears that they aren’t quite as socially liberal as their nomenclature might suggest. In a Pew survey last year, for example, libertarians polled as plenty supportive of police intervention in citizens’ daily lives, showing slightly greater support for stop-and-frisk policies than the general population:

A baffling quarter of libertarians surveyed believe homosexuality should be discouraged, and 59 percent were opposed to same-sex marriage in a survey conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute in 2013. Meanwhile, the inexplicable libertarian appreciation for cops frisking people at will is mirrored by an equally bizarre fondness for U.S. military intervention in global affairs.