Neopaganism and the Left

I grew up in a left-leaning household. My parents had voted for Reagan the first time but regretted it, and I voted down the line for Democrats until 2008. If any phrase could describe my political views now, however, it would be "libertarian-leaning Democrat." I am sympathetic to the libertarian critique of big government, but feel that completely dismantling the social safety net would make things even worse than they are now. I am concerned about civil liberties more than anything else.

As far as I can tell, however, Neopagans tend to be way to the left on the majority of issues, even when I'm unsure why being a Neopagan would make you favor the particular way in which leftist parties want to control people's lives. Why Democratic collectivism rather than Republican collectivism? I suspect the answer is purely historical, at least on many issues: many of the first Neopagans were children of the '60s, and Christianity has been hijacked by the GOP since the 1970s.

Take, for example, the welfare state. For all the good it does, it's hard to find a less natural, less compassionate, more technocratic approach to human problems than the modern state. Yet Neopagans as a whole seem to think that even well-regulated market solutions to any of these problems are tantamount to wanting poor people to freeze to death, assuming they don't die of untreated illnesses first.

The modern state is in many ways a social engineering nightmare. Why would Neopagans support that as anything other than the lesser of two evils?

So there is one example how I feel uncomfortable with Neopaganism as found in its adherents. Temperamentally, I am a libertarian. Rationally, I lean left on many issues. Can the average Neopagan handle that?