Freedom to... surf?

An Icelandic Leftist recently wrote a bad article about libertarianism, stating many weird things about the fundamental logic behind the ideology (sorry, its in Icelandic!). The article was typical in the way that it described the fundamental difference between those who doubt the power of the State, and those who doubt the power of the free market and individual liberty. One of the claims the author made was the following:

According to the ideology [of libertarians], a certain reduction of the individual's liberty is involved with the State giving everyone access to basic rights without regards to income.

(Yes, he wrote "access to basic rights"). The reversed version could be something like this:

The State should have the right to give everyone access to basic rights without anyone feeling like his individual liberty is being reduced.

The basic difference between the mindset of the libertarian mind and the socialist mind comes clear to light: The former defines liberty as being free from violence and fraud. The second defines liberty as some kind of certain "basic" materialistic standard of living.

Of course no-one has to doubt which one of those two ways of thinking has worked better (one being a utilitarian only interested in such things). The negative definition of liberty, like the one the libertarian uses, is by far superior to the positive definition of the socialist, and huge amounts of historical experience and research data verifies that every time (mail me if you aren't convinced - geirag $at$ gmail.com). But what about the justification? Can it be justified that liberty shouldn't include some kind of "safety" for the poor and the weak? Isn't it cruel and inhumane to exclude materialistic needs from the definition of liberty? Is anyone free when he's poor and hungry?

To answer this question one needs to answer another question first: Do we accept the self-ownership right of the individual? If we do then liberty can only be defined as the right to be left alone. If we don't, the first question is up for discussion. By defining liberty as the right to some materialistic values, such as access to schools, hospitals, food, housing, clothes, internet-connections and mobile telephones (like an Icelandic student-union once suggested), transportation and more, we reject the self-ownership of the individual. The liberty purely becomes a definition of what the members of the society should have in order to be "free". Factors such as the will to work, the individual's ambitions and goals in life and the individual's drive (be it money, a view to the ocean or an interest in collector's stamps) becomes irrelevant because he has been defined as a member of a society where he must first and foremost have access to certain services and products before he can seek other things in life.

So the basic issue involves the individual's self-ownership. The socialist rejects it, and so do the descendant ideologies of socialism. The libertarian accepts the individual's self-ownership, and so do the descendant ideologies of libertarianism/classic liberalism. By hiding this basic difference between Left and Right the socialist has been able to keep his popularity with the public. If it's fundamentals were realized by more, we would have had socialism and its Leftist-offspring away a long time ago.