Category: news Libertarianism

Robert Poole is one of the founders of the Reason Foundation (which publishes Reason Magazine), and served as its president and CEO from 1978 to 2000. He is currently director of transportation policy at the Reason Foundation and frequently writes about issues related to privatization. In this video from a Libertarian International conference in 1984, Poole speaks about the moral frameworks surrounding national defense and foreign policy. He also goes into the means of national defense, including a lengthy discussion on nuclear armaments and nuclear shield programs.

A significant amount of debate between libertarian and non-libertarian political thinkers has to do with the distinction between negative and positive liberty. These two technical terms within political philosophy play a large role in determining the limits of permissible state action, as well as establishing just what the state exists to do in the first place. Which means libertarians and non-libertarians interested in political ideas—and keen to having meaningful conversations about them—will benefit from understanding these two sorts of liberty. If we want to start very simple, keeping our definitions to just two words each, negative liberty means “freedom from,” while positive liberty means “capacity to.” Another way of thinking about the difference—though again, it’s a rough …

Joan Kennedy Taylor was a journalist, author, and political activist known for her advocacy of individualist feminism and her role in developing the modern American libertarian movement. She passed away in 2005. In this video from a Free Press Association conference in 1986, Taylor debates herself on pornography, obscenity, and censorship. She offers arguments for both sides and covers feminist interpretations of pornography, the protections afforded to free speech thanks to the First Amendment, and the history of the Supreme Court’s attempt to pin down the definition of “obscenity.”

George H. Smith was formerly Senior Research Fellow for the Institute for Humane Studies, a lecturer on American History for Cato Summer Seminars, and Executive Editor of Knowledge Products. Smith’s fourth book, Themes in the History of Classical Liberalism, is forthcoming from Cambridge University Press, and he is also a regular blogger and essayist at Libertarianism.org. In this video from a 1985 Libertarian Party of California conference Smith lectures on the success of the public school system. He claims that state schooling is successful insofar as it accomplishes it’s true goal: not to educate children per se but to turn them into civic-minded, obedient …

I have always thought of myself as a philosopher first, and a libertarian second. In my more self-congratulatory moments, I tell myself that this is because my highest commitment is to the truth, wherever it may lead, regardless of political program. To be honest, though, I think it largely comes down to personality. The fact is, being in a room full of people who all agree with each other—especially about politics—makes me profoundly uncomfortable. And that discomfort makes me start to question things. Put me in a room full of socialists, and I will start arguing for the virtues of a free market. But transport me to a room full of…

The advent of a new year is a good time—or at least as good a time as any—for libertarians to ponder their successes and failures. Given the dismal political developments over the past year, I thought this would be an appropriate time to offer some thoughts about strategies to achieve a free society.  The word “strategy,” which derives from the Greek word for “office of a general,” originally referred to the art of military command “as applied to the overall planning and conduct of large-scale combat operations.” It is now used in a broader sense to mean the “art or skill of using stratagems in politics…

Article by Libertarian Blog Place. Read entire story here.

Article by Libertarian Blog Place. Read entire story here.

Article by Libertarian Blog Place. Read entire story here.

Article by Libertarian Blog Place. Read entire story here.

Article by Libertarian Blog Place. Read entire story here.

Article by Libertarian Blog Place. Read entire story here.