Send him mail. “One Voluntaryist’s Perspective” is an original bi-weekly column appearing every other Monday at Everything-Voluntary.com, by the founder and editor Skyler J. Collins. Archived columns can be found here. OVP-only RSS feed available here. War is clearly destructive. Even war fought totally in self-defense is destructive; destructive to life, liberty, and property. Murray…
Tag: spiritual
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…
Love, Liberty, and the State
Written by Robert Higgs for The Beacon. Love takes many forms—in personal relations, in work and other creative endeavors, in charity toward the needy, in spiritual commitments that give deeper meaning to life amid its inevitable challenges and losses. Love gives us a reason to continue despite discouragements and difficulties, to keep trying to make…
Freedom Works Both Ways
Written by Dean Russell for The Voluntaryist, June 1989. Everybody says he’s in favor of freedom. Even the Soviet leaders claim to be fighting for freedom. So did Hitler. Our own leaders are also for freedom. So was my slave-owning grandfather. But my grandfather failed to understand the fact that freedom is a mutual relationship;…
Liberty, Freedom, and Power
Send him mail. “One Voluntaryist’s Perspective” is an original bi-weekly column appearing every other Monday at Everything-Voluntary.com, by the founder and editor Skyler J. Collins. Archived columns can be found here. OVP-only RSS feed available here. I thought I would take this week’s column to explore some thoughts and ideas that have been strewing around…
The Myth of Political Freedom
Written by Carl Watner for The Voluntaryist, December 1988. How is it that citizens of the Soviet Russia become imbued with the political ideas of the United States Constitution? Why are Americans knowledgeable about the political freedoms outlined in the Constitution of the U.S.S.R.? The answer to these two questions is relatively simple. In both…
Peace or Politics
Guest post by Frank Chodorov. Originally published in The Voluntaryist, October 1988. Peace is the business of Society. Society is a cooperative effort, springing spontaneously from man’s urge to improve on his circumstances. It is voluntary, completely free of force. It comes because man has learned that the task of life is easier of accomplishment…
One Improved Unit
Send him mail. “One Improved Unit” is an original bi-weekly column appearing every other Monday at Everything-Voluntary.com, by the founder and editor Skyler J. Collins. Archived columns can be found here. OIU-only RSS feed available here. Albert Jay Nock wrote that the only thing each of us really has the power to do is “to…
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…
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…