As Kinsella points out, a major feature of Jacob Huebert’s book Libertarianism Today is that he deals with the reality that issues of “intellectual property” constitute a major area of state expansion today and also present a serious challenge to libertarians.

If meaning is use, then President Obama is a socialist, and there can’t be any argument about it — if the American people are allowed a vote in the matter.

But leftist in the media and academia believe the language is theirs to manipulate and control, as it has been since the 1930s. Well, it isn’t 1936 any longer.

While 2,300+ pages worth of financial regulation just passed Congress that will provide the tools to, in the words of Henry Paulson, “help mitigate and manage the next financial crisis, which is inevitable, probably within the next six to 10 years,” Businessweek.com reports, “Washington is the only metropolitan area in which the number of advertised job vacancies in May (201,000) was greater than the number of unemployed (184,600), according to the Conference Board.”

I can’t even bring myself to comment on this:

[Liberty Magazine, January 1991]

There is no need to emphasize for this audience the world-historical significance of the changes that are taking place today in east-central Europe and, especially, in the Soviet Union. This great transformation has led many people to reconsider the merits of an ideology once thought to be obsolete — liberalism.

The Deepwater Horizon crisis has sparked the next battle in the never-ending war of ideas between the proponents of government intervention and the defenders of laissez-faire. The tactics in this battle are familiar, the trenches well-established, and the troops well-drilled. The whole scene invokes a sense of déjà vu. The last major battle is still continuing, though it started years ago with the realization that the grand financial edifice built upon years of cheap credit was falling to pieces.

I’m often asked by people who are interested in the criticisms of intellectual property how authors, for example, would be compensated in a copyright-free society. My answer is sometimes: “I’m not sure. They’d have to figure it out.” I say this not because I have no opinions but because I’m not a consequentialist and do not want to acknowledge that the criticism of IP law is contingent on some kind of view of what would happen in its absence.