Of late I have been trying to balance my staunch support of the non-aggression principle (NAP) and self-ownership with my increasingly leftist values. For some anarchists the NAP and property rights are totally and wildly incompatible with anarchism, with the argument going so far to claim that stereotypical anarchism is rooted in a rejection of…

C4SS Senior Fellow and Molinari Institute Director and President, Roderick T. Long, presenting before the 2013 Students for Liberty Dallas Regional Conference at the University of North Texas. Roderick T. Long particpated in a brief interview regarding his talk, Objections to Libertarianism, Transitioning to Free(d) Markets, and More.

In The Wealth of Nations Adam Smith famously wrote, “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the publick, or in some contrivance to raise prices.” It may seem strange that history’s best-known advocate of the free market would cast such aspersions on business…

Thomas Nestel, the Philadelphia Transit Authority police chief, is aghast over the refusal of bystanders to help a transit cop — Sam Wellington — being beaten up by one of their fellow citizens that he’d been trying to arrest. “I was horrified. I was frightened for my cops.” Well, it’s hard not to sympathize with…

“Need I comment that these capitalists, both in Islam and in Christendom, were friends of the prince and helpers or exploiters of the state? […]” “Thus, the modern state, which did not create capitalism but only inherited it, sometimes acts in its favor and at other times acts against it; it sometimes allows capitalism to…

Libertarianism has nothing to do with national interests. Libertarianism is about individual liberty. The liberty to live your own life, to pursue your own livelihood, and to come and go as you please to anywhere that’s open to you or anywhere you’re invited to go. The implications for immigration policy are obvious: Everyone – not…

Back in the ’90s, the Financial Times referred to the G8 countries and the Washington Consensus they enforced as a “de facto world government.” As if we needed any reminder that such a global corporate regime exists in practice, consider the Trans-Pacific Partnership currently under negotiation. Although in theory the authority of all treaties signed…

C4SS Senior Fellow and Trustee Chair, Sheldon Richman, speaks at the University of Oklahoma on Constitution Day. He posits that perhaps the Articles of Confederation were the altogether superior document. http://youtu.be/k9dM0l1ZxO8 Q and A with $5 worth of prognostication: http://youtu.be/XHruM7Vnsao  

El libertario Harry Browne una vez escribió que el gobierno «sabe cómo romperte las piernas, darte unas muletas y decir “¿Ves? si no fuera por el gobierno, no podrías caminar”». Pero con déficits y recesiones al acecho, los gobiernos han estado volviéndose más tacaños en cuanto a la entrega de muletas. La Cámara de Representantes…

The shooting on Capitol Hill of Miriam Carey, an unarmed woman who refused police commands to stop her car, was a familiar situation for any veteran of the Iraq War, with one significant difference — rather than moving through a progressive escalation of force while attempting to defuse the situation, Capitol Hill police officers went…

I’m hearing a lot of negativity — constructive negativity, but negativity nonetheless —  from my comrades on the libertarian left, concerning the US federal government’s “shutdown.” As the Center for a Stateless Society’s Kevin Carson notes with reference to “furloughed” government employees, “[S]ome of what government workers do — for example cops who enforce drug…

I should know better than to take seriously the insipid words of presidential speechwriters, especially those who composed an inaugural address. Still, I can’t let some of the words President Obama read at Monday’s inauguration pass without comment. For example, Obama said this: Preserving our individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action. For the American people can…

Em 399 antes da Era Cristã, pelo crime de “corromper os jovens” e debilitar a crença nos deuses tradicionais de Atenas, Sócrates foi sentenciado a beber taça de cicuta. Se o objetivo era silenciar a voz de Sócrates, é seguro dizer que o tiro saiu totalmente pela culatra. A história de Sócrates só fica em…

The seemingly unbridgeable ideological gap in America between economic libertarians, on the one hand, and on the other, those who advocate various manners and degrees of redistribution of wealth can be rationally resolved through an understanding of the significance of the concepts of property rights and redistributive justice to those who advocated them in 1640’s…

In 399 BCE, for the crime of “corrupting the youth” and undermining belief in the customary gods of Athens, Socrates was sentenced to drink a cup of hemlock. If the goal was to silence Socrates’ voice, it’s safe to say that plan backfired in a big way. The story of Socrates stands second in the…

How many times have you heard a politician, addressing some issue of regulatory policy, speak of “all the stakeholders” being at “the table?” That phrase has become popular recently, in particular among sponsors of maximalist copyright law proposals like SOPA and ACTA. “All the stakeholders had seats at the table — the RIAA, MPAA, Microsoft…

In a recent Esquire column (“Dianne Feinstein Defines ‘Journalist,’” September 19), Charles Pierce recalled presidential historian George Reedy’s prediction years ago that so-called “shield laws,” which protect reporters against criminal prosecution for not revealing their sources, would involve de facto government licensing of the press. After all, the law would have to define who qualified…

Libertarian Harry Browne famously wrote that government “knows how to break your legs, hand you a crutch, and say, ‘See, if it weren’t for the government, you wouldn’t be able to walk.’” But with deficits and recessions looming, governments have been getting stingier when it comes to handing out crutches. The U.S. House of Representatives recently…

C4SS Trustee and Senior Fellow, Gary Chartier, participates in a discussion of the terminology of “capitalism,” the desirability and practicability of a free society and the centrality of peace with the crew of The Annoying Peasants Radio Show. New Politics Internet Radio with The Annoying Peasants on BlogTalkRadio

I suppose it takes a true radical these days to question the progressive’s sacred cow: Ronald Reagan. You read that right. This paradigm of modern conservatism was one of the most important American champions of gun control in recent decades, and so he has become a convenient talking point for liberals who want to argue…