Rand originally expressed her philosophical ideas in her novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, and other works. She further elaborated on them in her magazines The Objectivist Newsletter, The Objectivist, and The Ayn Rand Letter, and in non-fiction books such as Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology and The Virtue of Selfishness. (CC Wikipedia 04/23/2010)

The phrase classical liberalism is also sometimes used to refer to all forms of liberalism before the 20th century. And, after 1970, the phrase began to be used by libertarians to describe their belief in the primacy of economic freedom and minimal government. It is sometimes difficult to tell which meaning is intended in a given source. (CC Wikipedia – 02/28/2010)

Common civil liberties include the rights of people, freedom of religion, and freedom of speech, and additionally, the right to due process, to a trial, to own property, and toprivacy.

The formal concept of civil liberties dates back to the English legal charter the Magna Carta 1215, which in turn was based on pre-existing documents namely the EnglishCharter of Liberties, a landmark document in English legal history.

Many contemporary states have a constitution, a bill of rights, or similar constitutional documents that enumerate and seek to guarantee civil liberties. Other states have enacted similar laws through a variety of legal means, including signing and ratifying or otherwise giving effect to key conventions such as the European Convention on Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

It might be said that the protection of civil liberties is a key responsibility of all citizens of free states, as distinct from authoritarian states.

The existence of some claimed civil liberties is a matter of dispute, as are the extent of most civil rights. Controversial examples include reproductive rights, civil marriage, and the right to keep and bear arms. Whether the existence of victimless crimes infringes upon civil liberties is a matter of dispute. Another matter of debate is the suspension or alteration of certain civil liberties in times of war or state of emergency, including whether and to what extent this should occur.

An individual who actively “supports or works for the protection or expansion of civil liberties” is called a civil libertarian. (CC Wikipedia – 02/19/2010)

Anarcho-capitalists argue for a society based in voluntary trade of private property (including money, consumer goods, land, and capital goods) and services in order to maximize individual liberty and prosperity, but also recognize charity and communal arrangements as part of the same voluntary ethic. Though anarcho-capitalists are known for asserting a right to private (individualized or joint non-public) property, some propose that non-state public/community property can also exist in an anarcho-capitalist society.For them, what is important is that it is acquired and transferred without help or hindrance from the compulsory state. Anarcho-capitalist libertarians believe that the only just, and/or most economically-beneficial, way to acquire property is through voluntary trade, gift, or labor-based original appropriation, rather than through aggression or fraud

Anarcho-capitalists see free-market capitalism as the basis for a free and prosperous society. Murray Rothbard said that the difference between free-market capitalism and “state capitalism” is the difference between “peaceful, voluntary exchange” and a collusive partnership between business and government that uses coercion to subvert the free market. “Capitalism,” as anarcho-capitalists employ the term, is not to be confused with state monopoly capitalism, crony capitalism, corporatism, or contemporary mixed economies, wherein natural market incentives and disincentives are skewed by state intervention. So they reject the state, based on the belief that states are aggressive entities which steal property (through taxation and expropriation), initiate aggression, are a compulsory monopoly on the use of defensive and/or punitive force, use their coercive powers to benefit some businesses and individuals at the expense of others, create monopolies, restrict trade, and restrict personal freedoms via drug laws, compulsory education, conscription, laws on food and morality, and the like. The embrace of unfettered capitalism leads to considerable tension between anarcho-capitalists and many social anarchists who tend to distrust the market, and believe that free-market capitalism is inherently authoritarian.

The term anarchism derives from the Greek ἀναρχος, anarchos, meaning “without rulers”, from the prefix ἀν- (an-, “without”) + ἄρχή (archê, “sovereignty, realm, magistracy”) + -ισμός (-ismos, from a stem -ιζειν, -izein). There are many types and traditions of anarchism, not all of which are mutually exclusive. Different versions of anarchism have been categorized as socialist anarchism and individualist anarchism or similar two-sides classifications. Anarchism is usually considered to be a radical left-wing ideology, and much of anarchist economics and anarchist legal philosophy reflect anti-statist interpretations of communism, collectivism, syndicalism or participatory economics; however, anarchism has always included an economic and legal individualist strain, with that strain supporting an anarchist free-market economy and private property (like old anarcho-individualism and voluntaryism, or today’s anarcho-capitalism, agorism and others). Others, such as panarchists and anarchists without adjectives, neither advocate nor object to any particular form of organization as long as it is not compulsory. Some anarchist schools of thought differ fundamentally, supporting anything from extreme individualism to complete collectivism. The central tendency of anarchism as a social movement have been represented by communist anarchism, with anarcho-individualism being primarily a philosophical/literary phenomenon. Some anarchists fundamentally oppose all forms of aggression, supporting self-defense or non-violence, while others have supported the use of some coercive measures, including violent revolution and terrorism, on the path to anarchy.

There is some ambiguity with the use of the terms “libertarianism” and “libertarian” in writings about anarchism. Since the 1890s from France, the term “libertarianism” has often been used as a synonym for anarchism and was used almost exclusively in this sense until the 1950s in the United States; its use as a synonym is still common outside the U.S. Accordingly, “libertarian socialism” is sometimes used as a synonym for socialist anarchism, to delineate it from “individualist libertarianism” (individualist anarchism). On the other hand, some use “libertarianism” to refer to individualistic free-market philosophy only, referring to free-market anarchism as “libertarian anarchism.” (CC Wikipedia – 09/06/2009)

In the 17th Century, liberal ideas began to influence governments in Europe, in nations such as The Netherlands, Switzerland, England and Poland, but they were strongly opposed, often by armed might, by those who favored absolute monarchy and established religion. In the 18th Century, in America, the first modern liberal state was founded, without a monarch or a hereditary aristocracy. The American Declaration of Independence, includes the words (which echo Locke) “all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to insure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” (Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776)

Today, most nations accept the ideals of freedom. But Liberalism comes in many forms. According to James L. Richardson, in Contending Liberalisms in World Politics: Ideology and Power, there are three main divisions within liberalism. The first is elitism versus democracy. The second is economic; whether freedom is best served by a free market or by a regulated market. The third is the question of extending liberal principles to the disadvantaged. (CC Wikipedia – 09/05/2009)

All forms of libertarianism support strong personal rights rights to life and liberty, but do not agree on the subject of property. The best known formulation of libertarianism supports free market capitalism by advocating a right to private property, including property in the means of production, minimal government regulation of that property, minimal taxation, and rejection of the welfare state, all within the context of the rule of law. A number of countries worldwide have libertarian parties which run candidates for political office.

Libertarian socialists—the first political activists to adopt the term libertarian in the mid-19th century—are generally opposed to some level of private property and various forms of authority. While these libertarians may not believe that market transactions or private property deserve protection, they also are skeptical of centralized government intervention as a solution, and therefore support a system of decentralized, popularly governed, voluntary, cooperative associations to check or to replace state power. Left-libertarianism is concerned with material equality and “appropriation of unappropriated natural resources”. (CC Wikipedia)

Catallaxy is influenced by Ludwig von Mises’s term Catallactics and was first used by the Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek. He was unhappy with the usage of the term Economy, feeling that the Greek root of the word, which could be translated as ‘household management’, implied that economic agents in a market economy possessed shared goals. Economy is used by Aristotle as ‘the art of household management’ and part of the virtue of wisdom. Keeping in mind that the ‘household’ at Aristotle is used in a broader sense either for a private household or for the household of a state and even if the household at the times of Aristotle could have been a large business unit containing family and thousands of slaves, it was lead towards shared goals which differs from what a market economy is about. Catallaxy as a ‘Science of Exchange’ describes according to Hayek: “the order brought about by the mutual adjustment of many individual economies in a market”. (CC Wikipedia)