The middle of next month will mark the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta. My knowledge of the “great charter” is modest, to be sure, but lately I have been reading about it and its legacy. (See the “Liberty Matters” discussion, in which I have a small editorial role, going on this month at Liberty Fund’s…

Republican presidential aspirant and U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio gave a major foreign-policy speech recently, and the best that can be said is that he did not claim to favor small government and free markets. What he wants in a foreign policy couldn’t possibly be reconciled with any desire to limit government power. Rubio is for…

As an advocate of a stateless society, I don’t want anyone to be president. Nevertheless, someone will be chosen to live in the White House next year. Will it be a woman? Hillary Clinton and Carly Fiorina hope so. But these two women are essentially indistinguishable from each other and from their male rivals. Style…

Hard to believe that 40 years ago the U.S. war in Vietnam ended. Actually, the war was against Indochina: remember Cambodia and Laos. (With previously unexploded ordnance from American cluster bombs killing people in those countries to this day, did the U.S. war really end?) It’s hard to believe because I can remember when I…

How can you tell an American progressive from an American radical? A progressive laments the condition of working people and proposes to further empower the government. A radical laments the condition of working people and proposes to empower individuals by diminishing the power of government. Of course government power and individual power differ in kind:…

In 1970 country singer Lynn Anderson had a hit recording of a Joe South song that opened with the line: I beg your pardon. I never promised you a rose garden. I often think of that song in connection with the libertarian philosophy. You may be asking: for heaven’s sake, why? Because it’s what I…

“The U.S. Navy … has dispatched the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt toward the waters off Yemen to join other American ships prepared to intercept any Iranian vessels carrying weapons to the rebels, U.S. officials said,” the Chicago Tribune reported on Monday. Thus does the Obama administration risk war with Iran while embracing the mischievous…

The U.S. government has charged into another civil war in the Middle East. When you find yourself repeatedly asking, “Will they ever learn?” the answer may be that the decision-makers have no incentive to do things differently. What looks like failure may be the intended outcome. Quagmires have their benefits — to the ruling elite…

Understanding history as best we can is important for obvious reasons. It’s particularly important for libertarians who want to persuade people to the freedom philosophy. In making their case for individual freedom, mutual aid, social cooperation, foreign nonintervention, and peace, libertarians commonly place great weight on historical examples most often drawn from the early United…

To get a sense of how badly the regime in Iran wants sanctions relief for the Iranian people, you have to do more than contemplate the major concessions it has made in negotiations with the United States and the rest of the P5+1. Not only is Iran willing to dismantle a major part of its…

Last week I set out Auburn University philosopher Roderick Long’s argument that libertarianism can’t be reasonably dismissed as strange. (A modest objective, to be sure.) After all, Long writes, mainstream libertarianism holds that each individual has a right not to be aggressed against, aggression being defined descriptively (not normatively) as the initiation of physical force….

American politicians frequently declare that the government’s first duty is to protect us from foreign threats. If that’s so, why have they embroiled us in the Middle East? Instead of keeping us safe, they seem to strive to put us in harm’s way by provoking one side or the other in sectarian, ethnic, tribal, and…

So, libertarians, how many rights do people have? One (say, the right to life, albeit with countless applications)? Three (life, liberty, and property)? Or an unlimited number (the right to do this, that, and the other, ad infinitum)? Because part of any strategy to achieve a fully free society presumably includes persuading nonlibertarians to be…

President Obama thinks that forcing us to vote might be a good idea. That he could favor punishing people for not voting — which means taking their money by force and imprisoning or even shooting them if they resist — is unsurprising. The essence of government is violence — aggressive, not defensive, force. Government is…

The Benjamin Netanyahu on display in the days before and after Tuesday’s Israeli election is the same one who has been in power all these years. Right along, he was there for all to see, so no one should have been surprised by his performance. I seriously doubt that anyone really is surprised. Americans who…

We must face the fact that criticism of the libertarian philosophy in the mass media will most likely misrepresent its target, making the commentary essentially worthless. That’s painfully clear from what critics publish almost weekly on self-styled left-wing and progressive websites. How refreshing it would be for someone to set forth the strongest case for…

“Forward, the Light Brigade!” Was there a man dismay’d? Not tho’ the soldier knew Someone had blunder’d: Theirs not to make reply, Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do and die: Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” Alfred, Lord Tennyson The reason for the…

Today, American politicians of both major parties — conservatives, “moderates,” and so-called liberals alike — insist that the United States is an “exceptional,” even “indispensable” nation. In practice, this means that for the United States alone the rules are different. Particularly in international affairs, it — the government and its personnel — can do whatever…

Consistent free-market advocates — and not just professional economists — are not only enthusiastic about their preferred system of political economy; they are very enthusiastic. At least part of that enthusiasm is fueled by a well-grounded conviction that thegeneral level of prosperity would be unprecedentedly high if people were free to engage in peaceful production…

Despite what some people think, hero is not a synonym for competent government-hired killer. If Clint Eastwood’s record-breaking movie, American Sniper, launches a frank public conversation about war and heroism, the great director will have performed a badly needed service for the country and the world. This is neither a movie review nor a review of the late…