I wouldn’t blame readers who think I’ve gone on too much about Nozick, but he is an important thinker, and his way of looking at problems differs so greatly from that of Mises and Rothbard that it’s useful to contrast the two different approaches.

F. A. Hayek on Liberty and Tradition
by John Gray

Harold J. Laski: The Liberal Manaqué or Lost Libertarian?
by Arthur A. Ekirch, Jr.

A Rationale for Punishment
by J. Charles King

King on Punishment: A Comment
by Murray N. Rothbard

After President Trump declared that he uses hydroxychloroquine, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) walked back its advice against the drug and seemingly all others as well. “The decision to take any drug,” the head of the agency said, is “between a patient and their doctor.”

The FDA has had two shining moments during the spread of the coronavirus. At neither time did the agency do something so much as it undid something.

We received a new donation from Mr. Carl Watner entitled The Voluntaryist Collection. The highlight of the donation includes the six-volume set: The Collected Works of Lysander Spooner. Within the collection is a series of personal inscriptions that Mr. Watner collected at libertarian conferences over the years, including by Murray Rothbard, George Smith, Leonard Liggio, Joe Peden, Mike Coughlin, Charles Shively (editor of the six volumes), Daniel Siegel (publisher), Wendy McElroy, Chuck Hamilton, John Mueller (cofounder of Laissez Faire Books), and Robert LeFevre.

For years, I have had a Mises coffee mug that endorses liberty, property, and peace. And it gets a fair amount of use, which keeps reminding me of those essential building blocks of a good society. But the last time I used it, I happened to be reading about Richard Cobden, whose June 3 birthday is coming up. What I was reading made me think, “He probably would have been a leading member of the Mises Institute, if he hadn’t been born too early.”