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Liberty Needs You!

by | Feb 18, 2021 | ,

In these bleak times, the cause of liberty needs you more than ever. A key way to help is to make a tax-deductible contribution to the Libertarian Institute, which for years has published important online articles about all aspects freedom and oppression on a daily basis and a series of not-to-be missed books, most recently Scott Horton's encyclopedic Enough Already: Time to End the War on Terrorism. If you want to understand U.S. foreign policy today and all its harmful implications for liberty, you need this book. And don't miss Scott's earlier book, Fool's Errand: Time to End the War in...

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TGIF: What Now, Libertarians?

TGIF: What Now, Libertarians?

by | Feb 12, 2021 | , ,

The prospects for individual liberty and the required rollback of the government seem as bleak as ever, but we can't let appearances, no matter how pervasive, be decisive. The spark within most people--the longing to chart one's course in life--never really dies. We've got to remember this as we search for new and innovative ways to make our case to an apparently uninterested public. But I admit that things don't look good. We might have expected the four-year circus presided over by Donald Trump to sour people on the very idea of government. I always thought that was an unrealistic...

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TGIF: Imperial America, Which Never Left, Is Back

TGIF: Imperial America, Which Never Left, Is Back

by | Feb 5, 2021 | , ,

In a cliche-ridden foreign-policy speech delivered at the State Department on Thursday, President Joe Biden declared that "America is back"--on the global stage, presumably, as policeman of the world, but certainly not a disinterested policeman. The problem is that it never left. Despite some uncouth rhetoric and regular New York Times headlines regarding "American isolationism," Donald Trump never withdrew the U.S. government from its meddling role in the world. He baited Russia, China, Iran, Cuba, and Venezuela, and ended no war or U.S. assistance to other wars. Far from leaving NATO or...

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A Defense of the Peaceful Transfer of War-Making Power

by | Jan 13, 2021 | , , ,

Prussian general and military theorist Carl von Clausevitz famously said that "war is a continuation of politics by other means." I think we can reverse this: politics is war by other means. The ultimate aim of politics (in the narrow sense of the word; there's a more elevated philosophical sense) is what Frederic Bastiat called "legal plunder." Other thinkers have elaborated this idea. Franz Oppenheimer's book The State comes to mind. Oppenheimer influenced Albert Jay Nock, Frank Chodorov, Murray Rothbard, and through them the modern libertarian movement. Oppenheimer distinguished work --...

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Why Politics Is So Acrimonious

by | Jan 12, 2021 | , ,

If we wish to understand what's wrong with today's politics, we ought to consider something F. A. Hayek pointed out long ago. It should have been obvious, but it escapes many people: namely, the more power government officials have over our lives, the more people will fear its falling into the "wrong" hands, that is, the hands of those who disagree with them. In response to a growing fear, they will be willing to undertake ever-more-extreme measures to wrest power from those hands or retain it for the "right" hands. Who can deny this? Government is force. It is imposition -- not merely on...

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No Sacred Ground

by | Jan 11, 2021 | , ,

The coverage of the riot at the U.S. Capitol last week was annoying to say the least -- what went on was no insurrection or attempted coup; it was just an end-in-itself temper tantrum committed by a bunch of idiots who never believed after Nov. 3 that they would actually prevent Joe Biden from being inaugurated at noon on Jan. 20. Perhaps most annoying of all about the coverage was the barely veiled premise that the Capitol is a temple on sacred ground. Let's not fall for that nationalist bunk. I find it ironic that those who speak in such tones say they oppose nationalism, which is nothing...

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Government’s Perverse Incentives

by | Dec 8, 2020 | ,

It might seem reasonable to think that in the early days of a pandemic involving an unfamiliar pathogen, the public ought to allow the government leeway in its imposition of extreme measures, such as the virtual shut down of economic activity. But the initial impression ought to dissolve when one reminds oneself that we're talking about government, a monopolistic organization shot through with perverse incentives because it gets its revenue through coercion (taxation) and faces no profit-and-lost test. (We also must understand that extreme measures were imposed on the basis of a widely...

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