Guest post by Laird Wilcox. Originally published in The Voluntaryist, August 1987. Roger Scruton, in the Dictionary Of Political Thought (1982) defines “extremism” as: “A vague term, which can mean: 1. Taking a political idea to its limits, regardless of ‘unfortunate’ repercussions, impracticalities, arguments and feelings to the contrary, and with the intention not only to…
Tag: authoritarian
The Power of Non-Violent Resistance
Guest post by Jerry M. Tinker. Originally published in The Voluntaryist, August 1987. As many writers have noted, the basic thesis, or strategy, upon which Gandhi’s satyagraha and all non-violent resistance rests is that all structures of power – government and social organizations – always depend upon the voluntary cooperation of great numbers of people…
Constitutions: No Authority
Guest post by Butler Shaffer. Originally published in The Voluntaryist, June 1987. I recently returned from a conference at which a participant took frenzied issue with me over the question of whether the Constitution is capable of protecting human liberty. I took the position that no Constitution can guarantee our freedoms, because it is impossible…
The Evils of Power Over Others
Guest post by Auberon Herbert. Excerpted from his 1908 essay “A Plea for Voluntaryism” found in The Voluntaryist Creed. Endless are the evils that power brings with it, both to those who rule and are ruled. If you hold power, your first aim and end are necessarily to preserve that power. With power, as you fondly imagine, you possess all…
Analyzing Authority Through Anarchy
Guest post by Connor Boyack. Objecting to the near-limitless expansion of government authority, people of all political persuasions question, at times, the specific program or policy with which they take issue. Whether the criteria for judgment is the Constitution, statutory code, precedent, or other sources of affirmed legal authority, a comprehensive discussion regarding what government…
The Threat of Authority
Guest post by Will Grigg. Skepticism, Santayana observed, is “the chastity of the intellect.” In similar fashion, resistance – not compliance – is the default response of a free person to a directive issued by someone acting in the name of “authority.” Louise Ogborn, a teenage employee at a McDonald’s in Mount Washington, Kentucky, was…
Regulation Red Herring
Most people believe that government must regulate the marketplace. The only alternative to a regulated market, the thinking goes, is an unregulated market. On first glance that makes sense. It’s the law of excluded middle. A market is either regulated or it’s not.
Applying Liberty Personally
Guest post by Spencer Morgan. After several years of involvement with freedom-oriented political efforts in Utah, there are some strategic lessons that have become evident to me, and the application of which I believe will help spread and build a much more viable culture of liberty here.Taking a look at the typical approach to liberty,…
The Mystification of State Power
Guest post by Roderick Long. When invisible-hand or spontaneous-order mechanisms are invoked in libertarian social theory, it is customarily as a benign alternative to state power. Yet there are reasons for thinking that state power itself likewise depends for its maintenance on spontaneous-order mechanisms.Read the full thing »
Parents as the State
Written by Skyler J. Collins. Parents have a unique responsibility. They have the power to create life, and then the duty to protect it and raise it into a functioning adult. But can we say that this life that they create is theirs in the sense of materialistic ownership? I don’t think we can. If…