“Toward Freedom” is an Everything-Voluntary.com series sharing personal stories about the journey toward freedom. Archived stories can be found here. Submit your story to the editor. Originally published in I Chose Liberty: Autobiographies of Contemporary Libertarians. Typically, when I say I’m a praxeological austro-paleolibertarian, Rothbardian anarchocapitalist extremist, Hoppean propertarian, and politically incorrect canonist, people say…
Tag: history
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…
Mark Crovelli
“Toward Freedom” is an Everything-Voluntary.com series sharing personal stories about the journey toward freedom. Archived stories can be found here. Submit your story to the editor. Originally published at Voluntaryist.com. While most of my friends would find it difficult to imagine today, I have not always been a loudmouthed, pain-in-the-ass, libertarian anarchist. In fact, if…
The Inflation of Rights
Guest post by Sir Alfred Sherman. Originally published in The Voluntaryist, April 1987. In this essay I wish to argue that the inflation of rights, in the sense of hypertrophy of claims on society that the state is responsible for levying, is inherently self-defeating. It is bound to generate conflicts of rights that will end…
Freedom: A Truly Unknown Ideal
What is truly new is economic freedom. As Molinari pointed out in the 19th century, this can really only be traced back two hundred years. Governments have always existed in one form or another. Let’s get rid of “the political means” once and for all if you want to achieve something new.
Non-Voting as an Act of Secession
Guest post by Hans Sherrer. Originally published in The Voluntaryist, 3rd Quarter, 2002. In 1776, the Declaration of Independence made it plain that in America, “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, – That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive…, it is the Right of the…
The Fundamentals of Nonvoting
Our rulers know they are illegitimate. Voluntaryists know they are illegitimate for a myriad of other reasons, but what I wanted to examine here is the voluntaryist’s position to abstain from electoral politics. The following arguments are the fundamentals of the nonvoting position.
Larken Rose
“Toward Freedom” is an Everything-Voluntary.com series sharing personal stories about the journey toward freedom. Archived stories can be found here. Submit your story to the editor. Originally published in The Voluntaryist, 1st Quarter 2012. I was raised in a conservative home, in a conservative town, with some libertarian leanings. I grew up thinking the good…
Ben Speers
“Toward Freedom” is an Everything-Voluntary.com series sharing personal stories about the journey toward freedom. Archived stories can be found here. Submit your story to the editor. A lot of people go through life without ever questioning things, but I’ve always identified with Socrates’ sentiment that the unexamined life isn’t worth living. In the realm of…
Open Systems vs. Closed Systems
Guest post by Joseph Dejan. Originally published in The Voluntaryist, February 1987. To the academic question of more or less government, we may find more useful to compare the political structure with the voluntary system. To sustain life and maximize his well-being, organized human efforts are mandatory. Individually, man may survive, but complete independence requires…