“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. Geneva is a small town in the Finger Lakes region of western New York State. I was born and raised…
Tag: ignorance
The Rationally Misinformed Voter
Written by Thomas J. DiLorenzo for LewRockwell.com. In the sub-discipline of economics known as public choice, an important concept is the theory of “rational ignorance.” First articulated by political scientist Anthony Downs in the 1950s, and expanded upon by economist Gordon Tullock and others, the theory of rational ignorance holds that it is perfectly rational…
This is Their God, Their Faith
Writes kawnijml: Judging by the friends and family that I have spoken with, I would say that much of the illogical and immoral deference to the “national security state,” is founded by one part ignorance in the crimes that the national security apparatus has committed, and another part belief that a few bad actions by…
Re: Free Your Mind
Writes T. K. Coleman: Frederick Douglass wrote: “Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.” An awakened mind makes an autonomous man. Our experience of freedom is directly proportional to our quality of perception and the world’s capacity to make us feel powerless is no greater than the ignorance we have of our own…
Chapter 27 – On Seeing Children as “Cute”
Table of ContentsPrevious – Section Five – Chapter 26 – “Why Do We Hurt Our Children?” by James Kimmell 27 On Seeing Children as “Cute” by John Holt We should try to get out of the habit of seeing little children as cute. By this I mean that we should try to be more aware…
Chapter 26 – Why Do We Hurt Our Children?
Table of ContentsPrevious – Section Five – Chapter 25 – “Childhood: The Unexplored Source of Knowledge” by Alice Miller 26 Why Do We Hurt Our Children? by James Kimmell As a psychologist who specialized in working with emotionally disturbed children, and as a person who has a special fondness for children, it is extremely troublesome…
Chapter 2 – Coercivists and Voluntarists
Table of ContentsPrevious – Section One – Chapter 1, “Persuasion versus Force” by Mark & Jo Ann Skousen 2 Coercivists and Voluntarists by Donald J. Boudreaux Categorizing a political position according to some simple left-right scale of values leaves something to be desired. Political views cover such a wide variety of issues that it is…