Sheldon Richman

George H. Smith

by Sheldon Richman | May 13, 2022 | Blog, Libertarianism

The sad news has belatedly come to my attention that the philosopher and historian George H. Smith, 73, died on April 8. He had been in poor health. I was fortunate to have known George since the 1970s and to have had many conversations with him. He was self-educated, multidisciplinary, and nothing short of brilliant. Smith wrote several books and hundreds of articles on the philosophy, history, and intellectual history of individualism, classical liberalism, anarchism, and freethought. His output was remarkable and can be found in literary and video form at Libertarianism.org. His work is...

TGIF: Alito’s Challenge to Libertarians

by Sheldon Richman | May 13, 2022 | Featured Articles, Libertarianism, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF

In his recently leaked first draft of an opinion that would reverse the abortion-rights cases Roe v. Wade and Casey v. Planned Parenthood, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito gives Americans a choice between judges who read their personal preferences into the Constitution and judges who recognize only rights that they find "rooted in [our] history and tradition" and deem "essential to our Nation's 'scheme of ordered Liberty.'" Is that it? Neither choice seems an adequate safeguard for individual freedom. Whether one likes the result or not, Alito's draft in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health...

TGIF: Mask Mandate – Liberty Can Hang on One Word

by Sheldon Richman | May 6, 2022 | Featured Articles, Justice, Libertarianism, Sheldon Richman, TGIF

As I mentioned recently, whether the courts protect or violate liberty in any given case is something of a coin toss. The matter could hinge on a single word. We just had a good example of that fact. On April 18 U.S. District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle, a Trump appointee in Tampa, Fla., ruled that the Centers for Disease Control exceeded its statutory authority when it mandated that most people wear masks when using public transportation in order to stem the spread of COVID-19. (Health Freedom Defense Fund et al. v. Biden.) The judge's ruling hinged on a single word in §264(a) of the...

Privacy as a Property Right

by Sheldon Richman | May 5, 2022 | Blog, Justice, Libertarianism

In 1993 I wrote an article at the Cato Institute that may be relevant to the current controversy over abortion and the Supreme Court: "Dissolving the Inkblot: Privacy as a Property Right."

TGIF: What Really Protects Liberty?

by Sheldon Richman | Apr 29, 2022 | Featured Articles, Justice, Libertarianism, Sheldon Richman, TGIF

The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated, as if we needed another demonstration, that little stands between the government and our liberty. Champions of individual freedom have been properly disturbed by how much power governments at all levels have seized since the pandemic hit in 2020. To make matters worse, officeholders and public-health officials object when the judicial branch occasionally overturns their power grabs because judges are said to be unqualified to rule on "medical" matters. So, if judges furnish constitutional and other legal grounds against power grabs, we're supposed to...

TGIF: NATO and Collective Insecurity

by Sheldon Richman | Apr 22, 2022 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy, Libertarianism, Politics, Sheldon Richman

Collective security, the official goal of NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, seems plausible on its face. A group of nations ostensibly concerned about a common threat agree to defend one another in the event of an attack. "All for one and one for all," as the Three Musketeers said. But like many things, the principle, even if sincerely invoked, is more problematic than the first glance indicates. This is particularly true with governments, and in no area more so than foreign policy and armed forces. Schoolyard analogies involving bullies do not hold. NATO was established soon...

TGIF: Shades of Gray in the Russia-Ukraine War

by Sheldon Richman | Apr 15, 2022 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy, Sheldon Richman, TGIF

If you're looking for morality tales — clashes between the clearly good and the clearly bad — I suggest you look elsewhere than to the geopolitical theater. There we find only conflicts between shades of darker gray. This seems to have been the case throughout history. Empires and would-be empires vied with rival empires and would-be empires for territory, resources, taxpayers, and soldiers. No surprise: governments will be governments, and that's not good. This is not to say the shades of gray did not differ at all, perhaps even significantly on occasion, but the objective was always, first...

TGIF: In Defense of Ideology

by Sheldon Richman | Apr 8, 2022 | Economics, Featured Articles, Justice, Libertarianism, Politics, TGIF

The seemingly unprecedented mean-spiritedness of politics these days drives some people to think that ideology is the problem. To distinguish themselves from those whom they blame for the toxic atmosphere, some pundits declare themselves "above ideology," even anti-ideology. In effect they say, self-righteously: "In contrast to those 'extremists' (that is, the ideologues) I judge each issue case by case by its own merits. I'm a pragmatist." This is intended to display open-mindedness and a willingness to cooperate with those they disagree with. Cooperation is held to be a virtuous end in...