Did Adam Smith—celebrated hero of free trade—make a big exception for reasons of national defense? Would he support the Jones ...

In this excerpt from Letter IX of John Rankin’s Letters on American Slavery, Rankin argues that slavery is incompatible with ...

In this lively new history, Brian Doherty provides a concise, thorough account of the intellectual roots of the American libertarian movement, with helpful summaries of key figures, institutions, and ...

Crypto- anarchism is a philosophy whose advocates think technology can assist them in creating communities based on consent rather than coercion. Crypto- anarchists wish to be free from state ...

The socialist calculation debate revolves around the question of whether central planners can, at least in principle, make the economic calculations necessary to achieve the rational, efficient ...

The Sanskrit Arthashastra, a manual for establishing a prosperous state written in ancient India by Kautilya, articulates many principles that would later become the foundations of modern economics.

Born in England while Puritans were persecuted, Williams hopped aboard a ship to America in an attempt to find a place where freedom of religion was a guaranteed right. Unable to find a home free of ...

Today Cicero is often read only by classical scholars and reluctant students, which is a great shame because his life and philosophy reflect a sort of proto- liberalism that came to influence a wide ...

The classical liberals of the 18 th, 19 th, and much of the 20 th century positioned themselves as opponents of what they termed “privilege.” For these thinkers, privilege referred to the monopolies, ...

The right of revolution, according to classical liberal thinkers, is derived from the natural right of self- preservation. Because the purpose of government is to protect individuals against assaults ...

War is the quintessential undertaking of the state, especially the modern centralized nation- state of the past five or six centuries. Indeed, the relationship between the two is encapsulated in the ...

Retributive punishment refers to punishment for a crime that is carried out for retributive reasons and is justified if there really are good retributive reasons for punishing crime. To get a clear ...