In a long editorial entitled “Let the People See,” which appeared in the New York Tribune in 1852, Horace Greeley, the great editor and leader of the Whig party, gloomily evaluated his party’s chances at the polls that autumn. He believed that in any work place, a machine shop for example, fifteen out of twenty workmen supported Whig economic policies. However they would not vote for the patty. Why not?
Among the most popular and consequential beliefs of our age is the belief in collective security. Nothing less significant than the legitimacy of the modern state rests on this belief.
This article demonstrates that the idea of collective security is a myth that provides no justification for the modern state, and that all security is and must be private.
For generations, political historians used “the thought of the palace” to describe politics and party battles. They consciously borrowed the words of articulate political leaders and (perhaps) unconsciously adopted their mind sets to depict election contests as struggles over the specific contours of national policy. They pictured millions of citizens trooping to the polls to record their views on such subjects as the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Civil Service Reform, currency inflation, and the latest change in some arcane tariff schedule.
Central planning and state control are often cast aside as inferior replacements to far more efficient and humane voluntary market transactions. Still there is one area that most believe must be run collectively through the state. The realm of law is often the foundation of government, and the suggestion that central control be abandoned shocks most people as something impossible.
A significant amount of opposition surrounded the development of state supported public secondary and higher education in New York State throughout the eighth decade of the nineteenth century.
When government monopolization of the roadways is discussed by economists, the “externalities” argument is usually raised. The argument is said to be simple, clear, and irrefutable. In fact, none of these terms really apply. Let us consider the argument closely.
G. Stanley Hall had been to the mountaintop, he had seen the promised land, he had as it were “achieved another new birth superimposed on that of adolescence.”’ He had achieved a new vision, and thus a new birth, the birth of a “superman.” Hall believed that like Jesus and Buddha before him he was called to preach a new gospel, a new dispensation which would lift “Mansoul” to its next higher stage of evolutionary development. That new dispensation was, for Hall, the “New Psychology” which he helped structure and create.
In this article, Stephan Kinsella critiques George Smith’s recent article in Liberty magazine on capital punishment.
Given the temper of the times it was surprising that following the American Revolution there appeared proposals for national systems of education. The libertarian tradition which fed the flames of the Revolution was staunchly opposed to a union of government and schooling. The greatest fear was that such a union would lead to despotism over the mind and be the enemy of freedom of thought and speech.
Although ethical systems may be divided into those which claim to be objective and those which freely acknowledge their own subjectivity, a special place must be reserved for an ethical system such as that of Ayn Rand which takes its name from this central claim to objectivity—Objectivism.
In this essay, the claims of Objectivism to present an objective epistemology will not he considered, but only the claim of Rand’s ethical system to represent an objective value system.
