Conservatism is a defense of the existing order or past existing orders as "natural". Any potential alternative to the existing order or to the romantisized past order is immediately brushed aside as "unnatural" and "utopian" or "idealistic". In the conservative...
I'd like to explain why I think that traditional judeo-christian morality does not synch up very well with the principles of liberty and does not provide a beneficial cultural framework for a free society. In many ways, I'm not going to be saying anything particularly new here, as this criticism...
Walter Block recently wrote an article at LewRockwell.com on the topic of religion and state. He critisizes what he considers to be an irrational hatred of religion that many libertarians have apparently inherented from Ayn Rand. While he is an atheist himself, he defends the premise that religion is...
I was having a bit of a debate with an Objectivist and we got into some questions about morality and rationality. It related to the question of suicide, and I maintained that suicide is irrational but not immoral and that the individual has the liberty to commit such an irrational act. The Objectivist...
Theism is not the only kind of mysticism. Collectivist and political ideologies are also forms of mysticism. The nature of politics involves blind faith in a "highest essence". The abstractions of these "highest essences" function as arbitrary authorities to appeal to. The most common...
Conflict between the socialist oriented and market oriented camps within anarchism can get very tedious. Many anarcho-communists and anarcho-syndicalists appear to emphatically claim that market anarchism isn't truly anarchism, that opposition to private property and capitalism is a requirement for...
It is common for many libertarians, especially those in America, to assume that they have a natural alliance with "the right". This is based on certain assumptions, such as the notion that contemporary libertarianism grew out of the old American conservative movement and that "the right"...
So I put together some relatively witty definitions of my terms. If you're not offended by at least one of these, then you are awesome! Constitutionalism - The belief that a piece of paper drafted and signed by a tiny aristocracy of men is a legitimate perpetual contract that makes the government...
Political philosophies often involve views of history. There seems to be two fundamental views of history, as I have touched on in " Traditionalism as Stagnation " and " Radicalism and Moderation ". These two views are what I would call the "conservative" and "progressive"...