An introduction by Roderick T. Long to the 21st volume of the Journal of Libertarian Studies. As mentioned above, this issue focuses on the anarchy/minarchy debate.

Volume 21, Number 1 (2007)

In this paper, I argue that Nozick fails to adequately defend the claim that a just state would arise from a Lockean state of nature by a process which need not violate libertarian rights. In particular, I argue that the state-creating processes cited by Nozick are antithetical to the enforcement rights (those rights such as self-defense and the exacting of just restitution) of persons.

Volume 21, Number 1 (2007)

In response to my article, “Government: Unnecessary but Inevitable” (2004), Walter Block (2005) offers a detailed refutation of my argument on the inevitability of government. I want to respond to some of what Block said because I think that in his zest to show where he thinks I have erred, he has overlooked the larger issue of how one might determine whether government really is inevitable.

Volume 21, Number 1 (2007)

Holcombe (2004) argued that government was inevitable. In Block (2005) I maintained that this institution was not unavoidable. Holcombe (2007) takes issue with that response of mine to his earlier paper, and the present essay is, in turn, a response to his latest missive in this conversation.

Volume 21, Number 1 (2007)

Walter Block has penned a response to my paper in which I argue that there isn’t much more than a verbal difference between limited government (minarchist) and defense-insurance agency (anarchist) libertarians.

Block disputes my thesis for one reason: He defines government as necessarily coercive.

Volume 21, Number 1 (2007)

Mixing economics and government is a dangerous idea, nearly as dangerous as mixing church and government. With the latter, you get a theocracy, and with the former, the unwieldy behemoth of the American political-economic system—both very undesirable. After the trauma of the Great Depression and the wide-scale introduction of paternalistic government by Franklin Roosevelt, Americans have acquired an unhealthy mistrust of capitalism.

Volume 21, Number 1 (2007)

Jordan Schneider’s article is directed in part against a talk I gave in 2004 titled “Libertarian Anarchism: Responses to Ten Objections,” in which I defended the moral and practical superiority of stateless over state-based legal systems. Schneider is unconvinced, maintaining that market anarchism will be unworkable because of the absence of legal objectivity. Unfortunately, it’s not entirely clear to me what Schneider takes a legal system’s objectivity to consist in, or why this feature is supposed to be available to states but not to anarchies.

Volume 21, Number 1 (2007)

2007 marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, a novel that has had an enormous impact on the libertarian movement. Atlas Shrugged offered a powerful and inspiring case, both intellectual and emotional, for libertarian ideas at a time when such resources were thin on the ground.

It was October 1957, several days before the official publication date. That evening, I went with Ayn, Frank, and my husband, Nathaniel, to see if the book was displayed in the Random House window. It was the first time we had seen the book outside of our own small, private world of Ayn’s apartment, the first time it had been out in the wider world where it belonged. I grinned from ear to ear, and quite involuntarily pointed at the book and blurted excitedly, “That’s us!”

Volume 21, Number 4 (2007)

Letters from Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard to Ayn Rand.

Volume 21, Number 4 (2007)