“What does it take to get liberals sounding like Ayn Rand in defense of property rights? Having their own property threatened.” So writes Brian Doherty in “My Own Private Malibu” — a piece that finds Doherty’s libertarianism defending some super rich activist Democrats on principle:

[…] Sure, there’s something unprincipled about people who in their public lives enthusiastically support environmental and political causes that frequently value state power over property rights suddenly screaming, ‘This land is my land.’ But Mr. Geffen and his neighbors have a good case. Property owners should hang together on principle. If not, we will all find the government ordering us to let people cut across our land — whether actually or metaphorically — to serve some sort of presumed public good.

[Related: Here’s the backstory — “Malibu’s rich and famous fight to keep beach private” (from USA Today) — and a hypothetical question I posed to libertarians in early May re: private property rights.

update: Sneaking Suspicions’ Fritz Schranck — a government attorney living along the coast of Delaware (I used to live just down the road, in Ocean City, MD) — had some interesting legal analysis relating to cases such as these back in March.]