Dan Sanchez | The Libertarian Institute

Liberty: Natural, Practical, and Divine

by Dan Sanchez | Oct 10, 2025 | Featured Articles, Libertarianism

What is the best ethical framework upon which to hang the case for liberty? The libertarian debate over this question has long been cast as a contest between natural rights and utilitarianism. Murray N. Rothbard championed the natural rights position, most thoroughly in his 1982 book The Ethics of Liberty. And, in his 1978 preface to Ludwig von Mises’s The Clash of Group Interests and Other Essays, Rothbard criticized his mentor’s utilitarianism. Mises, for his part, wrote in his 1944 book Human Action that: "…the teachings of utilitarian philosophy and classical economics have nothing at...

Violence Did Not Silence the Voice of Charlie Kirk

by Dan Sanchez | Sep 12, 2025 | Blog

Charlie Kirk’s last word was “violence,” but his last act, before an act of violence took his life, was an act of non-violence: the act of speaking that word. He died doing what he did all his brief adult life: working to persuade others through peaceful, yet powerful, speech. His efforts were not in vain. In fact, he was phenomenally successful. His words persuaded multitudes of young people. And his bitter critics could not defeat him in debate. The more they tried, the more he won, and the more audience members he won over. So, as a last resort, one of his opponents used violence to...

President, Party, or Principle: What Should MAGA Stand For?

by Dan Sanchez | Jul 7, 2025 | Featured Articles, Libertarianism

The MAGA movement has fractured recently over the contentious issues of foreign military intervention and government spending, with each faction accusing their opponents of betraying MAGA. This raises a question: What does it mean to be MAGA? Considering “MAGA” as a brand name for a political movement (which is how it is commonly used), there is no way to definitively answer that question. But if we take the acronym literally and examine what it would mean to truly “Make America Great Again,” the matter is much clearer and more significant. To know what would make America great again, we...

The Philosophy that Framed the Constitution

by Dan Sanchez | Sep 18, 2024 | Featured Articles

Today [September 17] is Constitution Day in America. The federal holiday (technically Constitution Day and Citizenship Day) commemorates the signing of the US Constitution on September 17, 1787. The 2004 law that established it requires all taxpayer-funded educational institutions to provide lessons on the Constitution on that day. However, learning cannot be legislated into existence. Two decades later, the Constitution is as misunderstood by the American public as ever. The education establishment bears a big part of the blame for this plight. But another culprit is mainstream media....

Black Magic, Mad Science, and Super-Nazis

by Dan Sanchez | Jul 25, 2024 | Featured Articles

On a London soundstage in 1987, a British pop star is filming a music video when he is interrupted by a visitor who has what he considers an insane request: You’re asking me to help you because Nazis from another dimension are trying to take over the world and only you can stop them? I’ll tell you the kind of help you need… That is how pioneering comic book writer Grant Morrison began episode 4 (publication date: September 12, 1987) of his breakthrough series Zenith, published in the British comics anthology magazine 2000 AD. This story can be found in the Zenith: Phase One collected...

A Note About My Health

by Dan Sanchez | Aug 27, 2023 | Blog

I have some hard news to share. I recently had a seizure. After undergoing tests, I was diagnosed with stage-4 lung cancer (although I have never smoked) that has spread to my brain. The average life expectancy of those with my condition is very short. I am grateful that I found my way back to Jesus Christ before I knew I was ill. And I am choosing to regard this affliction, not as cause for despair, but as a challenge and opportunity to serve and glorify God, whatever may come. If I am to suffer, decline, and die soon from this disease after a relatively short life (I’m 45 years old) filled...

If Joker Met Jordan Peterson: What separates a monster from a hero?

by Dan Sanchez | Oct 20, 2019 | Featured Articles

What does it take to turn an ordinary person into a monster? To create a mass shooter, a terrorist, a Joker? According to Joker himself, “One bad day.” That’s how he tells his own story in Batman: The Killing Joke, a 1988 graphic novel by Alan Moore and Brian Bolland. This classic origin story heavily influenced the controversial new Joker film. Once, Joker was an ordinary man. He was trying to be a good husband, preparing to be a father, and striving to make it as a stand-up comic. But his jokes were bombing and his family was trapped in poverty. He felt like a failure. He was overwhelmed...

The Federal Reserve’s Shell Game

by Dan Sanchez | Jun 8, 2018 | Economics, Featured Articles

The Federal Reserve is a key component of the US government's wealth redistribution apparatus. Under the guise of “macroeconomic management,” it redistributes vast amounts of wealth on an ongoing basis through inflation. The victims of these transfers are ordinary Americans. The beneficiaries are the government and its elite cronies. The Fed masks the nature of this surreptitious taxation and corporate welfare by performing a simple shell game that is just complicated enough to confound the general public. First, let’s imagine the government performing this kind of inflationary transfer...