Myth #1: Libertarians believe that each individual is an isolated, hermetically sealed atom, acting in a vacuum without influencing each other. This is a common charge, but a highly puzzling one. In a lifetime of reading libertarian and classical-liberal...
philosophy
Andreas Strassmeir Responds to TV Miniseries Depicting Him as OKC Terrorist
by Ken Silva | May 22, 2023 | Featured Articles, OKC
Andreas Carl Strassmeir is a Hebrew-speaking, ex-military German who lived in a Nazi-infested religious compound during the 1990s, had dealings with Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and is rumored to have been involved in that attack—with some researchers going as...
Government Controls You by Controlling Your Trading Partners
by Bryan Caplan | May 21, 2023 | Featured Articles
Here’s an odd thought for a libertarian: The government very rarely tells me to do anything. Once per year, the IRS orders me to pay federal income taxes. Once per year, the state of Virginia forces me to pay state income taxes and get my car inspected. Once per...
Only a Society That Values Life Can Protect Against Mass Shootings
by Ron Paul | May 16, 2023 | Featured Articles
Gun control advocates continue to claim that only restrictions on gun ownership will keep people safe from mass shooters and other criminals. However, good people with guns can stop bad people with guns. And bad people will still have guns despite gun control laws....
Libertarianism Should Not Be Hostile to Women’s Liberation
by Kym Robinson | May 4, 2023 | Featured Articles, Libertarianism
A young college woman is raped by a man. No justice is found because the rapist is an otherwise “promising young man” with a future ahead of him. His victim is merely a blip on his sterling professional conduct. Those who witnessed or were aware of the rape pretend as...
Five Faulty Arguments Against Secession
by Rudolph Kohn | Apr 18, 2023 | Featured Articles, Libertarianism
As a state grows, it always tries to find more ways to limit the freedom of its people. In the best case, this might take the form of pervasive surveillance and perpetual nudges. Yet it rarely stops there. The state might decide to support ill-advised adventurism...
Can a Libertarian Support ‘Law and Order’?
by Laurence Vance | Apr 17, 2023 | Criminal Justice, Featured Articles
The election year of 1968 was a tumultuous one marked by the assassinations of Sen. Robert Kennedy and civil rights leader Martin Luther King, urban race riots, college antiwar demonstrations, and a Democratic National Convention that saw the Chicago police and the...
3/24/23 Ted Snider on the Rapidly Changing World Order
by Scott Horton | Mar 28, 2023 | The Scott Horton Show
Download Episode. Scott is joined by Ted Snider to talk about the real-time shift we are living through from a unipolar order dominated by Washington to a multipolar world where different blocs engage on more equal footing. They start with the war in Ukraine where...
Which Aspect of Government Do Anarcho-Capitalists Favor?
by Walter E. Block | Mar 21, 2023 | Featured Articles, Libertarianism
The short answer to that question, and an accurate one, is none of the above. That is the very definition of this philosophical perspective: the state is merely a gang of robbers and murderers, and the ideal is to banish it entirely. States Mr. Libertarian on this...
What Democrats Need to Know About War
by Keith Knight | Feb 14, 2023 | Don't Tread on Anyone
https://youtu.be/FllJ0lKnEdg My case for pacifism, to recap, comes down to three simple premises. The first two are empirical: Premise #1: The short-run costs of war are clearly awful. [Empirical claim about immediate effects of war]. Premise #2: The long-run benefits...
Triangulating a Definition of Libertarianism
by Danny Duchamp | Feb 13, 2023 | Featured Articles, Libertarianism
There was a time when the word “liberal” meant something closer to what we currently mean when we say “libertarian.” This should not be surprising, since the root word of both is “liberty.” Unfortunately, the definition of “liberal” has drifted—and various liberal...
The Synthetic Killers of Tomorrow’s Tyranny
by Kym Robinson | Feb 8, 2023 | Featured Articles
When Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu was deposed in 1989, it is claimed that he pleaded for Jack Ramsay, a character Tom Selleck played in the 1984 Michael Crichton film, Runaway. The dictator was a fan of the film and in his desperation during the show trial may...
1/27/23 Ted Snider on the Missed Opportunities to Avoid War in Ukraine
by Scott Horton | Feb 7, 2023 | The Scott Horton Show
Download Episode. Ted Snider is back to discuss his recent article for the Libertarian Institute. In it, Snider documents the many chances that were missed to avoid the war in Ukraine and a handful of opportunities to stop the war after Russia invaded. In this...
AntiWar Alliance: The Dissident Left & Libertarians
by Keith Knight | Feb 7, 2023 | Don't Tread on Anyone
https://youtu.be/PuyVsR8rRBI To kill one man is to be guilty of a capital crime, to kill ten men is to increase the guilt tenfold, to kill a hundred men is to increase it a hundredfold. This the rulers of the earth all recognize, and yet when it comes to the greatest...
Blog
The Non-Existent Difference Between National Socialism and Democratic Socialism
Summary: National Socialism and Democratic Socialism both advocate institutionalized violence by the state against peaceful people only differing in rhetoric. The most popular self described Democratic Socialists in America today are Senator Bernie Sanders and...
A Response to My Memorial Day Critics
My article against Memorial Day drew a lot of ire and attention. This should not have been surprising; I was making a controversial statement. What did surprise me, however, was that many critics were self-described libertarians or former libertarians. There were many...
Ignoring Political Gossip & Sticking to Principle
https://youtu.be/ZwWHjYVY4tg In the private sector, firms must attract voluntary customers or they fail; and if they fail, investors lose their money, and managers and employees lose their jobs. The possibility of failure, therefore, is a powerful incentive to find...
The Myth of “Hyper-Rugged-Isolationist-Individualism”
Myth #1: Libertarians believe that each individual is an isolated, hermetically sealed atom, acting in a vacuum without influencing each other. This is a common charge, but a highly puzzling one. In a lifetime of reading libertarian and classical-liberal...
The Lesson From Germany and Korea
Institutions are, of course, in some sense the products of culture. But, because they formalize a set of norms, institutions are often the things that keep a culture honest, determining how far it is conducive to good behaviour rather than bad. To illustrate the...
Occupational Licensing Increases Prices and Deprives People of Options
When you shop online, vendors usually give you a bunch of different ways to sort your options. Take Amazon: One popular sorting option – especially for customers with low income – is “Price: Low to High.” You’ve probably used it yourself many times. This...
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