https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FcemWok4_s Last Wednesday, Haitian president Jovenel Moïse was assassinated in the middle of the night. The last time a Haitian president was assassinated, the United States invaded Haiti and occupied it for two decades. U.S. pundits...
Libertarianism
National Service and the State’s Condemnation of Youthful Independence
by Jim Bovard | Jul 9, 2021 | Featured Articles, Libertarianism
"Beatings will continue until morale improves” has morphed from an old joke to the latest prescription for national salvation. “Compulsory National Service Could Unite America,” whooped a New York Times Op-ed headline last week. Prominent media outlets, think tanks,...
Consent of the Governed?
by Robert Higgs | Jul 8, 2021 | Featured Articles, Libertarianism
What gives some people the right to rule others? At least since John Locke’s time, the most common and seemingly compelling answer has been “the consent of the governed.” When the North American revolutionaries set out to justify their secession from the British...
American Historians Misjudge American Presidents
by Hunter DeRensis | Jul 7, 2021 | Featured Articles, Libertarianism, Politics
"They adored him as no man in a democracy deserves to be adored,” Walter Lippmann wrote, describing progressive worshippers of Theodore Roosevelt in 1916. American historians suffer from the same malady, a predisposition to hero-worshipping chief executives (T.R....
F.A. Hayek, the Progressive’s Devil
by Richard Ebeling | Jul 7, 2021 | Economics, Featured Articles, Libertarianism
There is the ideologically captured mind that squeezes all the complexities, diversities, uncertainties, and serendipities of life into one limited dimension of cause and explanation. One such mind is that of Wellesley College historian, Quinn Slobodian, who sees...
TGIF: Defend the Enlightenment!
by Sheldon Richman | Jul 2, 2021 | Justice, Libertarianism, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
The libertarian philosophy is embedded in Enlightenment liberalism. This is clearly seen in its commitment to free inquiry (reason) and free speech, the full realization of which, I argue, requires complete respect for individual rights, including property rights....
TGIF: Liberty as a Problem-Solving Process
by Sheldon Richman | Jun 25, 2021 | Economics, Featured Articles, Justice, Libertarianism, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
Strictly speaking, liberty isn't the solution to problems. It's what creates the framework in which solutions can be discovered. That is an important distinction because it reminds us that advocates of full-blown liberty do not offer the world a problem-free society...
TGIF: Is “Free Election” an Oxymoron?
by Sheldon Richman | Jun 18, 2021 | Economics, Featured Articles, Foreign Policy, Libertarianism, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
American leaders and their loyal media pundits love to sit in judgment of other countries' election, declaring them fair or rigged according to their seemingly meticulous standards. In fact, the real standard is that the regimes "we" like hold free and fair (enough)...