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Love for Sale: Birth Control from Marx to Mises
From Marx… In On the Jewish Question, Marx famously critiques liberal theorists of religious freedom on the grounds that they merely wish to emancipate the state from religion. Assuming—wrongly, it...
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Freedom Is, Freedom Ain’t*
A propos our discussion of libertarianism, birth control, and women’s autonomy, this, from Benjamin Franklin (A Conversation About Slavery), seems relevant: You Americans make a great Clamour upon...
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Julie London, Political Theorist
Megan McArdle‘s not what you would call a bleeding heart libertarian. When she’s not trying to put obstacles in the way of women getting an abortion, she tends not to shed too many tears for the poor,...
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Is That All There Is?
I was a little underwhelmed by Julian Sanchez’s response to my post about his thoughts on the Cato-Koch affair.
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When Hayek Met Pinochet
In case you missed my five-part series on Hayek in Chile, here are the links: Hayek von Pinochet: In which we learn what our protagonist had to say about one of history’s tyrants. But wait, there’s...
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I’m a libertarian. Which is why I’m voting for Mitt Romney.
Randy Barnett is one of the most brilliant legal theorists on the right today. He’s also a libertarian. Ever since I came across his work in the course of my research on Justice Scalia, I’ve been...
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There are no libertarians on flagpoles.
True story: A few years back, the libertarian magazine Liberty posed a thought experiment. I don’t remember all the details, but it went something like this. A man is on the top or near the top of a...
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The Libertarian Map of Freedom
The libertarian Mercatus Center, which is located at George Mason University, has issued its third edition of “Freedom in the 50 States.” It’s a color-coded map of how much freedom there is, state by...
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The Leopold and Loeb of Modern Libertarianism
“Nathan Leopold is not the only boy who has read Nietzsche.” So said Clarence Darrow at the trial of Leopold and Loeb, the two University of Chicago law students who had murdered young Bobby Franks for...
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Libertarianism, the Confederacy, and Historical Memory
In the last few days libertarians have been debating the neo-Confederate sympathies of some in their movement. I don’t to wade into the discussion. Several voices in that tribe—including Jacob Levy,...
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The Limits of Libertarianism
If you ever needed a better example of Fear, American Style—or a demonstration of the limits of libertarianism—here’s an illustrative story out of Washington State. For years, activists—including, to...
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When I draw comparisons between libertarians and slaveholders…
When I put libertarians and slaveholders in the same orbit, libertarians go ape-shit. But when they do it— We treat John C. Calhoun as a precursor of modern public choice theory. Calhoun anticipates...
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