Definitions vary, but libertarians believe that democracy is a necessary but insufficient condition for a just and prosperous society. A few additional rules are necessary, simple but important, based on two fundamental concepts: force and property. Contrary to popular belief, most libertarians are not against government or even against the use of force: they support government performing its limited legitimate role at an appropriate level.
As their name suggests, libertarians (a.k.a. classical liberals or market liberals) value freedom, and the greatest threat to freedom is force, especially collective force. Force is legitimate only in defense of property, against illegitimate force initiated to take property from its rightful owner. All legitimate exchanges of property are voluntary on both sides, and all voluntary exchanges of property are legitimate. This is easy enough to agree with in principle, but principles are sometimes hard to live up to. Everyone trusts himself to use freedom wisely, but most of us distrust others' motives and judgment. We are therefore only too ready to use force to control others' personal and economic freedom, e.g. their freedom to smoke what they want or to work how, when, for how much, and with whom they want.
If force is legitimate only in defense of property, many of today's applications of force are illegitimate. A "victimless crime" is a nonsensical oxymoron; however distasteful their activity might be, two adults freely engaging in the three major prohibited sins--drugs, sex, and gambling--are not committing a crime. Using force to stop or punish them is illegitimate, and truly a crime.
| Give a man the secure possession of bleak rock, and he will turn it into a garden; give him nine years lease of a garden, and he will turn it into a desert...The magic of property turns sand into gold... --Arthur Young, Travels, 1787 |
Your most fundamental possession is understandably your person, your body. From this comes the right to life and liberty. You could look at children as also being such property, extensions of you until they reach the age of adulthood and themselves become independent, self-owning individuals. 
Physical property is what is commonly understood by everyone to mean property. You have the right to acquire, control and use physical things. If you have land and the right to plant on it but not dig for oil or minerals, then you do not have full property rights in the land, at least not mineral rights.
Any adult may voluntarily enter into a binding agreement with any other, exchanging one good or service for another. Marriage is an example: any violation of the wedding vows is a breaking of the contract, entitling the spouse to recourse.
You own some things that are a little harder to touch, such as your good reputation. If someone falsely damages your reputation orally or in print, you have the right to compensation for slander or libel.
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The primary role of government is to protect property. Citizens have voluntarily delegated their individual right to use force to the government, a division of labor that most would agree leads to a more peaceful and civilized society. In many ways, a government is just like a company or other organization. It performs services (defined by a constitution for a government or a contract for a company) for which it receives payment (taxes for a government or sales revenue for a company). Same as a company cannot perform services outside the scope of its contract, a government cannot, or should not, act outside of the authority delegated to it by a constitution. However, a government differs from a business in a few important ways:
Despite the uniqueness of their organization, the workers who actually run the government remain frail human beings, so the danger of corruption is always lurking, requiring stringent safeguards. The most significant are:
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When all government, domestic and foreign, in little as well as great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated. --Thomas Jefferson
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The Constitution delegates only a limited number of powers to the federal government, and explicitly lists them. The tenth amendment of the Bill of Rights goes an extra step to emphasize, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." How could it be stated any more clearly? The tenth amendment should be tattooed on the back of every politician's hand.
Decisions should be made at the lowest possible level of government. The Federal government should decide on only national issues (e.g. money, defense, foreign policy), states should make the bulk of legislation, and cities should set rules (or not) for day-to-day life, such as whether alcohol, pornography, or fireworks will be allowed in the community. An important result of subsidiarity is this: you can always vote with your feet. If issues are decided at too high a level, there will be no diversity of living arrangements, and where can you escape to?
In theory, libertarians should not care about how free individuals within a community choose to live. Puritanical Protestants, Quakers, survivalists, communal hippies, Creationists, and flat-earthers should all be free to form their own communities. In practice, Libertarians often forget about subsidiarity and push their philosophy of individual freedom as a way of life as well. The Objectivists are infamous for this, making individualism almost a religion. That is fine, but freely choosing to live communally with lots of rules is also fine, as far as classical liberals are concerned.
The authority to make, execute, and interpret laws is divided among three bodies. At the national level these are Congress, the President, and the Supreme Court, with analagous entities at the state and local level. In theory the three bodies are competitive and check each other's power, but in practice everyone wants to call the shots, and the result is encroaching authoritarianism: pork-barrel politics and higher taxes, executive orders (rule by decree) and unregulated regulators, and judicial activism. These last two phenomena are particularly disturbing, since those involved are not accountable by election.
The entire government should be elected frequently and monitored continuously. Unelected regulatory agencies or other bureaucracies are insufficiently accountable, and will invariably deviate from the needs of the people.