You say that a tort is an interference with liberty, so interference with liberty is a tort.
That’s not circular reasoning, that’s what it is. That’s what ‘tort’ means, an interference with liberty. If someone was not, in fact, at liberty to do something then interfering with them would not be a tort.
“the right to [own] property” was a mistake that led to confusion. What I’m referring to is not the necessity to provide property but rather the ability of a person to dispose of his own. Basically, we’re using different words to say the same thing.
What I am saying is that ‘right’ makes no sense in this context, people do not have a ‘right to own property’, people are at liberty to do as they will and property is what most liberties involve; i.e. using stuff.
However, you’re still making the assumption that your definition of “tort” is the correct one.
I am presuming my definition is the one that makes sense in the logical context of dispute resolution, the one you cite - involving ‘civil duties’ - comes out of the confused tradition of modern legal theory; which is half positivist and half Rightsism. People do not have any non-contractual duties for the same reason they don’t have non-contractual rights, neither rights nor duties has any positive meaning outside of these contexts. Anyone who goes about talking about ‘rights’ or ‘duties’ without these two being paralells in a contract is just using words with no cognitive content; we might as well say a man has a ‘fnord’ to property.
Yet my earlier argument was precisely against the use of such a definition, seeing as how it leads to the kind of conflation of rights and duties that you’re arguing.
Which is basically the ‘negative rights’ approach, but I think this is still mistaken because ‘right’ doesn’t make any sense outside of the rights-duty paralell; further rights are specific and dilimited whereas liberty is unlimited and non-specific.
I am basically saying that the use of the term ‘rights’ by yourself and, for example, Rothbard and Locke, comes out of a confused liberal tradition that conflates liberties and Anglo-Germanic rights/duties as part of a covenant between the ruler and ruled. A subject of a king might have a ‘right to property’ as guaranteed by some concession of the King, but his liberty is something altogether different and no one has any ‘floating’ rights or duties; such as ‘civil rights’ or ‘civil duties’. I’ve never seen any definition of ‘rights’ in this sense that made any sense, whereas the contractual sense is perfectly coherent and is not soon to be abandoned. Where libertarians try to use a ‘natural rights’ sort of theory they are wrong and speaking nonsense, and where what they mean by it is something like ‘liberties’ it is just pointless and confusing.
If everyone else started using the word “tort” to refer to breaches of civil duties, which you argue don’t exist, would you stop using it?
No, because their use would make no sense; but neither does the use of ‘rights’ in the sense most libertarians use it, either. ‘Right’ and ‘duty’ both have perfectly coherent meanings in contract law, as do ‘torts’; and the attempt to use them to explain liberties is just nonsensical.
It will be impossible to gain any ground in the argument against the forces of statism by simply retreating without a fight whenever they try to redefine terms to suit themselves and muddy the waters.
The point is that all this ‘rights’ talk doesn’t make any sense to begin with, no one has ever defined ‘rights’ in a coherent way that isn’t contract-based, whereas a perfectly good term - often used interchangeably and mistakenly - is liberties or liberty. The word ‘rights’ in the libertarian world is just as nonsensical as its use by left-liberals, even if you have slightly different ideas about what you want out of it; it’s just useless linguistic baggage that makes no philosophical or legal sense.
Read these articles by de Jasay:
Freedom, Rights and “Rights”
Property or “Property Rights”
Also, if you can get a copy of Anthony de Jasay’s Political Philosophy, Clearly read the essay from part three Freedom from a Mainly Logical Perspective. That is exactly the tact I take, as I think the moralization of jurisprudence is useless.