Earlier this month, Ukrainian forces crossed their northern border and entered Russian territory. The Ukrainians quickly took village after village as the Russian troops stationed in this Kursk region were sparse, often conscripted, and in some cases even unarmed.

During election years, incumbent presidents are routinely blamed for every societal ill during the previous four years. And almost nothing is riper for the picking than a significant rise in consumer prices. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), prices are currently increasing at a rate of 3 percent year over year and peaked at 8 percent during President Biden’s term in 2022.

This essay is adapted from a contribution to Property, Freedom, and Society.

Property, Rights, and Liberty

Libertarians tend to agree on a wide array of policies and principles. Nonetheless, it is not easy to find consensus on what libertarianism’s defining characteristic is, or on what distinguishes it from other political theories and systems.

Natural law is often regarded with suspicion by social scientists because they conceptualize human nature, and increasingly even the nature of animals, as a social construct. In their view there is no essential human nature by reference to which we can decide what is in the best interests of society. They argue that we must instead adopt an aspirational approach, by constructing a better and fairer world for the planet, and by discovering what is best for society through a process of scientific experimentation.

[Unpopular Sovereignty: Mormons and the Federal Management of Early Utah Territory, by Brent M. Rogers, Nebraska University Press, 2017, xiv + 383 pp.] 

You would think that the growing popularity of homeschooling in the United States would be in more news headlines. Estimates from the National Home Education Research Institute (NHERI) reveal a staggering increase in the number of homeschool students since the 1970s—by a factor of 238.