Did Adam Smith—celebrated hero of free trade—make a big exception for reasons of national defense? Would he support the Jones ...

Libertarians believe that, in politics, liberty is the most important value. Almost everyone wants freedom for themselves, but a libertarian also seeks to protect and expand the freedom of others.

The non- aggression axiom is an ethical principle often appealed to as a basis for libertarian rights theory. The principle forbids “aggression,” which is understood to be any and all forcible ...

By moral obligation I mean rational obligation as applied to actions instead of to beliefs.Just as a rational person will feel obliged to base his beliefs on rational cognitive standards (coherence, ...

Libertarianism, and the classical liberalism from which it sprang, supports a strictly limited state, if indeed its adherents recognize the legitimacy of the state at all. The minimal state is a ...

In this excerpt from Letter IX of John Rankin’s Letters on American Slavery, Rankin argues that slavery is incompatible with ...

Economist Murray N. Rothbard mounted the most comprehensive intellectual challenge ever attempted against the legitimacy of government. During a career that spanned more than 40 years, he explained ...

Then the early 17 th century Dutch legal scholar and philosopher Hugo Grotius declared that war was wretched and that it harmed all participants. If war can’t always be avoided, Grotius pleaded that ...

Crypto- anarchism has a long and storied history. Even the secret societies that formed under tyrants in the days before mass communication were antecedents. For the sake of brevity, though, let’s ...

Many people believe that liberty is the core political value of modern civilization itself, the one that gives substance and form to all the other values of social life. They're called libertarians.

In addition to worries about incentives, Otanes also seems to find democracy inherently more equitable: “the rule of many has first a name attaching to it which is the fairest of all names, that is to ...