Written by John W. Deming, as published in The Voluntaryist, August 1992. The cause of the political disease is politics itself. Political means never achieve the ends sought. The goals of a sensible political state would be to reduce its presence in the lives of its citizenry to the greatest extent possible. And that’s the…
Category: Voluntaryism
Designing a Vision of Peace
A video of Ronny Edry by TEDxJaffa.
Trying To Reform Government Is Largely a Waste of Time
Written by Steven Greenhut for LewRockwell.com. Whenever I speak or write about California’s pension and public debt problems, I always hear from well-intentioned, conservative- and libertarian-minded people who want me to consider their solutions. Most of their ideas – caps on this kind of spending or that, changed pension formulas, public votes, etc. – are…
Why I Don’t Hate the State
Written by Sandy Ikeda for The Freeman. When people say, “I hate X!” or “X is evil,” it bothers me. When they say it during a discussion about ideas and about people with whom they strongly disagree, it bothers me a lot. I’m not talking about simply saying, “I hate X,” as a way of…
Beyond Patriarchy: A Libertarian Model of the Family
Written by Roderick Long, as published at the Center for a Stateless Society. The family is one of the issues that divide liberals from conservatives. In general, conservatives tend to see private associations — the family, the church, the corporation — as bulwarks of freedom against the state. Few conservatives question the need for a…
Notes on War and Freedom
Written by Ramsey Clark, as published in The Voluntaryist, August 1992. War is more destructive of freedom than any other human activity. Any violation of civil liberties is easily justified in times of war and the threat of war, however unnecessary for security, harmful to its victims, irrational, unfair, or even detrimental to the war…
Natural Law and Authority
Written by Michael Bakunin, circa 1871, as published in The Voluntaryist, June 1992. What is authority? Is it the inevitable power of the natural laws which manifest themselves in the necessary concatenation and succession of phenomena in the physical and social worlds? Indeed, against these laws revolt is not only forbidden, it is impossible. We…
For Reasons of State
Written by Michael Bakunin, circa 1867, as published in The Voluntaryist, April 1992. We shall now examine what the State, thus constituted, should be in relation to other states, its peers, as well as in relation to its own subject populations. This examination appears to us all the more interesting and useful because the State,…
The Open Society
Written by F. A. Harper, as published in The Voluntaryist, April 1992. The advantages of an open society on a world basis have been explored to only a slight degree and would seem to deserve much more thought as a solution for solving major international problems. To see its potential, one might think of how…
Legitimacy
Written by Robert Higgs for The Independent Institute. What is the difference between a government and a criminal gang or protection racket such as the mafia? In a word, it is legitimacy. In practice, this vague notion suggests that people view the government—its institutional composition, its personnel, and its conduct—as morally acceptable or proper, whereas…