Presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders recently raised the ire of both progressives and libertarians with his remarks concerning immigration:
“Open borders? No, that’s a Koch brothers proposal,” Sanders said. “That’s a right-wing proposal, which says essentially there is no United States.”
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has been pressing for more military spending in Japan, in what critics claim is a violation of Japan’s so-called pacifist constitution. Foreign Policy reports:
UPDATE: Bizarrely, some readers have tried to argue, in the comments here and at Facebook, that people are only upset because the lion hunt noted here was illegal. That was obviously always untrue, and has now been confirmed by the fact that the outrage is nearly intense in response to photos posted by a hunter named Sabrina Corgatelli.
Those possessing the anti-capitalist mentality — so ascendant in our culture today — often critique market actors as being solely motivated by “greed.” Surely economic systems based on nobler motivations, they say, would better promote the long-run interests of the planet.
16. Freedom, Inequality, Primitivism, and the Division of Labor
If men were like ants, there would be no interest in human freedom. If individual men, like ants, were uniform, interchangeable, devoid of specific personality traits of their own, then who would care whether they were free or not? Who, indeed, would care if they lived or died? The glory of the human race is the uniqueness of each individual, the fact that every person, though similar in many ways to others, possesses a completely individuated personality of his own.
15. Why Be Libertarian?
Why be libertarian, anyway? By this we mean: what’s the point of the whole thing? Why engage in a deep and lifelong commitment to the principle and the goal of individual liberty? For such a commitment, in our largely unfree world, means inevitably a radical disagreement with, and alienation from, the status quo, an alienation which equally inevitably imposes many sacrifices in money and prestige. When life is short and the moment of victory far in the future, why go through all this?
Hosting the Olympic Games isn’t as popular as it used to be. This week, Boston cancelled its bid to host the 2024 summer Olympics. The city was forced to cancel the effort in response to opposition to what The Nation called the “debt, displacement, and militarization of public space” that the Olympics brings to every host city.
Eric Peters reminds us of why customers don’t have a choice when it comes to safety features on cars and other mandatory “amenities.” It’s all mandated. And, much like the airlines — who do nothing to oppose the TSA — and banks — who do nothing to oppose mandates to spy on all their customers, auto companies are happy to help the government dream up new ways to make cars more expensive and become obsolete more quickly.
Chris Christie, who unbeknownst to virtually everyone is running for President, has announced that, if he becomes president, he will make sure that Colorado’s nullification of federal marijuana law will not be allowed to stand. Says Christie:
13. The Spooner-Tucker Doctrine: An Economist’s View
First, I must begin by affirming my conviction that Lysander Spooner and Benjamin R. Tucker were unsurpassed as political philosophers and that nothing is more needed today than a revival and development of the largely forgotten legacy that they left to political philosophy. By the mid-nineteenth century, the libertarian individualist doctrine had reached the point where its most advanced thinkers in their varying ways (Thoreau, Hodgskin, the early Fichte, the early Spencer) had begun to realize that the State was incompatible with liberty or morality.
