I would probably say that I reached my philosophical bent through a combination of, mostly, #2 with a dash of # 3 that you listed above. That I should not use of threat of physical violence against those who have not threatened me is a principle I take as a fundamental truth. Statists of all stripes, Left, Right and all others in between, simply don’t accept this principle. I have yet to find a method of persuading a single adult that this principle should form the fundamental basis of human interaction.

Leftists, in particular, hold as a fundamental principle that outcomes should be equalized regardless of abilities and effort. This necessitates a lack of respect for private property. You wrote in your next to last comment the following:

property rights deserve deference and respect, but they’re just an artificial construct useful for maximing happiness, and I don’t agree they should always take precedence over other values like preventing unnecessary deaths and suffering, even at the expense of marginal impingements on human liberty like taxes

And there is the problem- what you have outlined has no deference or respect whatsoever. It is based on the principle that says, “What is yours is yours until we decide we need to take it.” There will always be unnecessary suffering that allows a further impingement on human liberty. A Libertarian cannot resort to violence to take from one to give to himself or another, and a Statist cannot draw a line from principle that states, “This far and no farther.” The philosophies are fundamentally at odds with one another.

Even when I can demonstrate that completely free interaction gives the optimal outcomes for the maximal number, a Leftist always then points out some did not benefit, and then proposes that the outcomes be equalized to some extent.

I write that the divide is unbridgeable because, for all practical experience I have with the matter, it is.

Defining the “Left” as everyone who doesn’t currently accept the idea of inviolable, individual ownership of property, and that stating (without any backing reasoning) that the gap is unbridgeable doesn’t add much to subject.

It seems to me you can arrive at the conclusion that property rights are inviolable in three ways:

1) You come to “believe” it, like people come to believe in God - through upbringing, a book that really spoke to you, genetic predisposition, divine revelation, brain lesion, whatever.

2) You conclude logically that it must be a fundamental truth woven into the fabric of the universe, like physical laws

3) You analyze human behavior and conclude that the concept of property rights is a useful to propogate as a social norm because it maximizes some other value you’ve come to hold, via 1 or 2.

Why is the gap unbridgeable - b/c the Left is too ungodly for #1, too blind/dumb to understandand the proof of #2, or ignorant of analysis that supports #3?

#1 hasn’t happend to me (and I would hope to “god” I would distrust it if it did), I’ve haven’t seen convincing evidence/proofs for #2, and I see way too many examples of how _inviolable_ property rights work against my general goal of maximizing happineness and minimizing suffering to buy into them via 3.

And if I remember correctly, I think Todd became a Libertarian via path 3. To the extent he wants to encouarge the left to embrace Libertaran ideals, the more examples he provide to back up 3, the more likely he is to convince them that a free market based built on a foundation of strict property rights would better achieve their goals of reduced suffering or whatever than govt taxation/regulation. It’ll be easier to turn Leftists into Consequentalists than into Miniarchists or Anarchist Libertarians.

If that’s an unacceptable compromise, what’s your alternative for making the world safe for your brand of Libertarianism? Kill them all and let god sort em out? Circle the wagons and despair of the mass’s inability to open their hearts to the truth so plainly revealed in [Atlas Shrugged, Anarchy State & Utopia, whatever?]

Seriously, I remain open to the idea that the optimal world might be achieved through minimal/no government. But I do wonder whether some libertarians assert that the primacy of inviolable property rights should be self evident because trying to convince others that it leads to the “best world” is really hard.

But when you imply that I must agree that property rights are inviolable for us to find any common ground (or for me not to be on the side of “evil”), I lose interest b/c man, that just ain’t where I’m at. Sure property rights deserve deference and respect, but they’re just an artificial construct useful for maximing happiness, and I don’t agree they should always take precedence over other values like preventing unnecessary deaths and suffering, even at the expense of marginal impingements on human liberty like taxes.

1) Emphasize over and over again that “government is force and violence” (yeah, it’s redundant, but who cares if it gets your point across). That is, play to their pacifism. Leftists generally at least consider themselves pacifists. They don’t like violence. The cops are “pigs,” but they can’t seem to connect the power the cops wield to the laws the government legitimizes.
The awful American government has waged horribly wasteful (in terms of lives and treasure) wars throughout the 20th century. Honestly, I’ll say this as a libertarian: The only war that the U.S. waged in the 20th century that’s even remotely defensible is WWII. And even that has its rational detractors (but I’m not about to be dismissed as some paleo-kook).

2) Emphasize also a snippet of a blog you wrote several weeks ago:
“The beauty of the marketplace is the successful avoidance, a billion times a day, of the need for a consensus, one-size-fits-all way of doing things. If we’re dumb enough to render something governmental (whether conservative, moderate, or even progressive-social-democratic), we’re going to get one widely-agreed-upon version of that something. The National Music Album, if there were one, would almost certainly be something by Frank Sinatra, no matter how confident certain pockets of the population are that Doolittle by the Pixies (which I’m listening to right now) is better (or The Wall or Synchronicity or whatever) — and it wouldn’t be because the Frank fans are haters or would-be oppressors. Indeed, given the unfortunate constraints of the situation, Frank might be the correct answer.”

In other words, play also to their “individualism”. Hammer in the point that it’s free markets, not centralized bureaucracy , that create the atmosphere for out-of-the-mainstream people to thrive. Leftists like to identify with the little guy, until the majority of little guys decide that “Jerry Springer” is what they want to watch.

You want to see coalition politics with the left that can protect freedom? You want to see one that’s drawn from our nation’s history, not abstract theory?

I got your libertarian-leftist pro-freedom movement right here.

Right to Protest, Right to Freedom of Speech. Right to Privacy. Right not to be detained without charge, Innocent Until Proven Guilty. Prohibition from Torture. TAKING LIBERTIES will reveal how these six central pillars of liberty have been systematically destroyed by New Labour, and the freedoms of the British people stolen from under their noses amidst a climate of fear created by the media and government itself.”

We need a thoroughgoing skepticism about power. We don’t have to be stubborn but we must be reasonable and determined. Defending a sort of epistemic conservatism–science, rationalism, skepticism–is perfectly amenable to making friends with liberals. After all, we classical liberals share a name with the modern liberals for a reason (reason).

Stubbornly holding onto one question can work, and that one question is, “Where does the value come from?”