Friday Philosophy

The classical liberal economist Edmund Phelps wants government to aid poor people, but he clearly is not an egalitarian. His philosophy would be unacceptable to today's "woke" egalitarians.

David Edmonds has made Derek Parfit’s ideas accessible to a wide audience at last.

Aeon J. Skoble wrote that Nozick mistakenly believed that without at least a minimal state, we would have something out of Hobbes's nightmares. David Gordon takes another look.

Wendell Berry is hardly Rothbardian in his economic and social outlook. His new book, however, has its Murray Rothbard moments.

John McWhorter takes on the present infatuation with wokeness and shows the real harm it is doing to our social fabric.

Even if we accept the dubious claim that the supposed strength of the USSR justified nuclear brinkmanship, its absurd to make that same claim about modern Russia.

Another Marxist intellectual takes a shot at Mises. Like the other critics on the left, he understands little of what Mises wrote or believed.

Patents lack a basis in natural rights; to the contrary, they may be a patent absurdity.

Gregory Salmieri, defending a minimal state, asserts that a free market anarchy would be characterized by "war and realpolitik." That sounds more like what we have under state rule today.

Robert Kagan agrees that the World War II American interventionists were imperialistic but maintains that a form of imperialism based on American values was the proper policy aim then and remains so today.