By the way, the "right wing anarchism" you are suggesting would be better termed "anarcho-capitalism", which is heavily influenced by classical liberalism and modern libertarian thought. It is not, however, the equivilent of libertarianism. But, good luck with your thread.:-)
Yours,
Issodhos
As someone who has been active here and there within the Libertarian Party, I believe that they squandered their chance to become a proper political force, when they bought into the elevation of property rights to primacy propounded by the Austrian School. Before then, they could still state that Natural Liberty was the axiom, and all else was simply corollary. That argument was able to attract some strongly anarchistic leftists into the party. It was an appeal to logic: economic liberty was the flip-side of social liberty on the coin of freedom.
The Austrians have now distorted reality, and far too many libertarians believe complex property rights are preexistent to the state. This is not an attempt to devalue the place of private ownership in a free society; that is an imperative, but as I believe you know full well; habeas corpus and due process of law are even stronger predicates for a free society.
T. Jefferson reasoned this out logically:
It has been pretended by some, (and in England especially) that inventors have a natural and exclusive right to their inventions, and not merely for their own lives, but inheritable to their heirs. But while it is a moot question whether the origin of any kind of property is derived from nature at all, it would be singular to admit a natural and even an hereditary right to inventors. It is agreed by those who have seriously considered the subject, that no individual has, of natural right, a separate property in an acre of land, for instance. By an universal law, indeed, whatever, whether fixed or movable, belongs to all men equally and in common, is the property for the moment of him who occupies it, but when he relinquishes the occupation, the property goes with it. Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society.
Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Isaac Mcpherson, August 13, 1813
The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Definitive Edition,
Albert Ellery Bergh; Editor, 1907
Volume XIII; pp 326-338
By not standing up and vocally repudiating the Bush Administration's assault upon personal liberty, while they instead worked tirelessly to secure eminent domain legislation, which if enacted, because of its delineated remedies, would invariably find in favor of collectivist landholders (trusts, REITS, etc) over the individuals when society is forced to choose between two competing claims of abridged property ownership rights, they are now rightfully pointed out as being naught but greedheads, looking only to fatten their own pockets.
They fretted about property while our leviathan tortured humans who had never even been convicted in a tribunal that adhered to due process of law. Their priorities speak loud and clear about the rectitude of their intent. This is abomination, and as I aided, ever so slightly in its creation, so I am also responsible for seeing that it behaves, or that it is not granted a legacy of future political viability.
