Hi Mr. Cella -- good post. Indeed, I'm left absolutely puzzled especially by today's libertarians who speak up for property rights -- only to learn that their theory isn't at all based in any first principles, at least anything that has recourse to "nature" as a standard. The philosophically astute libertarians completely reject anything having to do with _natural rights_ (Nozick, et. al.), such as I've come to learn in my recent little online debates with Andrew Sullivan and Julian Sanchez. Of course entire dissertations could be written about this phenomenon, but at the end of the day, one has to recognize that modern libertarianism is, root and branch, a nihilistic movement.
Robert Light | 03.31.03 - 11:54 pm | #