(By Eli Harman)
In truth, all *three* of the principal western political orientations are profoundly and fundamentally individualistic.
Leftism is individualism for those with instantaneous time horizons. Food and shelter and medicine and college and debt forgiveness and status and orgasms for ME, right now, regardless of the costs to others or to society or to my future self.
Libertarianism is individualism for those with intermediate time horizons, who recognize some of the incentives and conditions necessary for engaging in production and exchange: so all of that *through* and *because* of property rights and markets over so many years as may be necessary to organize their production, without regard to the costs to tradition, culture, extended family, (ethnicity) commons or future generations.
Rightism is individualism for people with very long time horizons, who recognize the full spectrum of conditions and incentives necessary to engage in production and exchange not just NOW, but for generations to come. So all of that for ME AND MINE, securely, now and for the future, by drawing on the hard won, evolutionary-gleaned wisdom of the past, and maintaining the various commons (things like public decency, good order, and common defense) that give us our competitive advantages over others who do not share our values or have our best interests at heart.
