> I'm also struck (yet again) by how slender a line exists between right
> and left libertarians.
Methinks your collapsing of the distinction between right and left libertarians is a bit hasty. Right-libertarians criticize the federative and regulative nature of the state but sneak it back in when they insist on national sovereignty; that is, they displace the state to have it become operative at national borders (or they think they do).
> I don't know how I feel about this
> philosophically (in principle I would rather not have the oppressive
> elements of the state), but I'm increasingly unimpressed with grand
> anti-state arguments.
Another difference between left and right, as I see it, is that where rightists posit the state as something that is omniscient, that taints and tries to form everything, leftists see it as something that is often inoperative, impartial, and ineffective; rather than everywhere and all-powerful, the state is fragile and continually constructed. Instead of trying to fight it and banish it everywhere like right libs, left libs see it as something that can be strategically disrupted and evaded. So it's not about grand arguments or narratives but about positioning and tactics.
> Living in a city (Chicago) where the
> government, while transparently corrupt and often repressive,
> generally takes care of a bunch of things,
Capital generally takes care of a bunch of things and provides billions of people with a basically not-intolerable living. Wonder if you're increasingly unimpressed with grand anticapitalist arguments.