The War Between the States has been a source of controversy for some time among libertarians. Since the libertarian position acknowledges a right of secession, many libertarians have opposed Lincoln and sided with the South, at least on its right to withdraw peacefully from the Union. Others, however, appalled at the Southern slave system, have identified the Northern cause as the libertarian one.
This article will describe the series of events that launched John C. Calhoun down the path from apostle of nationalism to increasingly angry prophet (not to say advocate) of disunion.
During the sectional crisis, the overwhelming practical and theoretical inheritance that nourished the Southern worldview was built upon an appreciation of the necessary limitations of social and political life. Primary among the means of limitation was the need for societal and personal restraint when faced with the possibility of radical transformation. While change and social mobility were not the most commonly acknowledged aspects of Southern society, neither were they beyond the pale of possibility.
What it means to be an American, both for Americans and foreigners, is largely determined by one’s attitude toward the war to defeat Southern independence in 1861–65. More books have been written about this war than about any other event in secular history, and they continue to pour forth. It has been a war to conjure with. To Americans, at least, it has seemed pregnant with transcendent, mythical, and theological meanings. What meaning can libertarians find in that great struggle?
If, as Richard O. Curry writes, “the politics of the Civil War and Reconstruction ought to be considered as a unit,” then the politics of Reconstruction began the moment that Abraham Lincoln and other Northern leaders chose war over the Lower South’s secession.
All radical schemes to reconstruct the South entailed some more or less permanent expansion of central state activity and expenditures. — Richard Bensel, Yankee Leviathan
Frédéric Bastiat did not devote much attention to the problem of the firm, so taking an interest in his thoughts on the topic could seem strange. Yet, the foundations for a realistic theory of the firm (and, more generally, of the distribution of human activities) are found in chapter 14, “Wages,” of Bastiat’s classic book Economic Harmonies. Further, the way that Bastiat lays the foundations are both original and profound. In this article, I will review Bastiat’s approach, develop it more fully, and draw some practical and theoretical conclusions about the nature of the firm.
In this article, Leonard Brewster discusses how self-governance can be much more efficient than a formal governing class or state.
Given Dwight Lee’s stalwart free enterprise credentials, it is more than passingly curious that the title of his 1998 Presidential Address to the Southern Economic Association was “In Defense of Excessive Government.”
Frank van Dun, in his learned essay on the Hobbesian roots of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UD), passed by the UN General Assembly in December 1948, presents arguments that need to be assessed.
