What am I talking about? It's quite simple. Libertarians believe that the initiation of force is wrong. So do the overwhelming majority of nonlibertarians. They, too, think it is wrong to commit offenses against person and property. I don't believe they abstain merely because they fear the personal consequences (retaliation, prosecution, fines, jail, lack of economic growth). They abstain because they sense deep down that it is wrong, unjust, improper. In other words, even if they never articulate it, they believe that other persons are ends in themselves and not merely means to other people's ends. They believe in the dignity of persons. As a result, they perceive and respect the moral space around others. (That doesn't mean they are consistent, but when they are not, at least they feel compelled to rationalize.)

That's the starting point of the libertarian philosophy, at least as I see it. I am not a calculating consequentialist, or utilitarian, but neither am I a rule-worshiping deontologist. Rather, I am most comfortable with the Greek approach to morality, eudaimonism, which, as Roderick Long writes, "means that virtues like prudence and benevolence play a role in determining the content of justice, but also — via a process of mutual adjustment — that justice plays a role in determining the content of virtues like prudence and benevolence." In this view, justice, or respect for rights, like the other virtues, is a constitutive, or internal, means (rather than an instrumental means) to the ultimate end of all action, flourishing, or the good life.