By most reports, Israeli bombings of Lebanon are strengthening Hezbollah’s support among Lebanese civilians, while Hezbollah bombings of Israel are strengthening the Israeli government’s support among Israeli civilians. So here we have (what are by libertarian standards) two criminal gangs, both blasting away at innocent civilians, and the result
When the Civil War came, many abolitionists, including William Lloyd Garrison, abandoned their traditional anti-war, anti-state stance to support the Northern cause, in the hope that a Union victory would bring a quicker end to slavery. One abolitionist who stuck to his anti-war position and defended Southern secession was Ezra Heywood; his
Issue 20.4 of the Journal of Libertarian Studies brings an especially interdisciplinary range of offerings, including contributions in history, philosophy, economic theory, and film criticism. While Murray Rothbard wore many hats – economist, historian, cultural critic – Marcus Verhaegh focuses on “ Rothbard as a Political Philosopher .” He
[cross-posted at Austro-Athenian Empire and Liberty & Power ] My copy of Ed Stringham’s anthology Anarchy and the Law just arrived in the mail. (Amazon insists that the paperback isn’t available yet, but they’re wrong .) This nearly 700-page book is quite simply the definitive collection on free-market anarchism. Its forty chapters include
The inaugural issue of the Journal of Libertarian Studies , in 1977, was devoted to a symposium on Robert Nozick ’s attempt, in his landmark work Anarchy, State, and Utopia , to justify the minimal state against the case, by Murray Rothbard and others, for free-market anarchy. In the years since, the debate among libertarians as to the necessity
Issue 21.2 of the Journal of Libertarian Studies offers a variety of perspectives on constitutional interpretation, American democracy, and alternatives to state provision of law, prisons, and welfare. Defenders of the welfare state often assume that without tax-funded aid to the needy, private charity would be inadequate to fill the gap. In “
Benjamin Tucker’s journal Liberty was the foremost organ of 19th-century American individualist anarchism, and a major influence on Murray Rothbard and modern libertarianism; contributors to Liberty included such prominent free-market luminaries as Lysander Spooner, Auberon Herbert, and Vilfredo Pareto. (For background, see articles by Wendy
Lysander Spooner was the foremost legal theorist of the 19th-century American individualist anarchist movement. His 1882 open letter to Senator Bayard is fairly well-known among Spooner fans; but an 1886 sequel, A Second Letter to Thomas F. Bayard , which originally appeared in Benjamin Tucker’s anarchist journal Liberty , is much more obscure; it
Edmund Burke always claimed that his 1756 defense of anarchism, A Vindication of Natural Society , was intended satirically, and most Burke scholars have agreed. In a 1958 article , Murray Rothbard argued that Burke’s youthful anarchism was sincere, and that his later repudiation was politically motivated. But few Burke specialists were swayed.
The text of my contribution to the Mises Institute’s 25th anniversary conference is now online .
What is the Mises Institute?
The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.
Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.