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But what does this "war between Socialists and those who value Liberty" actually mean if you strip it of all its rhetoric. I would think it means a conflict between the individual and the community; between libertarianism and collectivism.
How can this war have a "winner"? Hasn't this necessary tension between the group and the individual been part of the human experience since the first two cavemen teamed up and went hunting together? Socialists as we commonly define them see the state as being this apotheosis of collectivism, but not all collectivists are statists. Look at the Kibbutzim of Israel, they're a co-operative - not individual enterprise, yet they don't reflect statist authoritarianism. Religion can be authoritarian too yet it (especially in the case of Catholicism) was historically able to challenge the power of the nation state.
Capitalist entrepreneurs see the necessity for a state apparatus to uphold property rights. Right wing Libertarians see the necessity for a state military infrastructure but have ideas about the rubbery flexible definition of self defence and foreign military adventures that seem more suited to liberal Wilsonian idealism than their own professed ideology.
Why in the early years of the 21st century would we all pick up guns and kill each other over these ideological vagaries and this tension between the individual and their society that has always existed?
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