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Libertarian Theory
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We were on the verge of obtaining a reasonable degree of liberty. We were going to get our taxes slashed and simplified but not abolished, the military budget reduced and the troops brought home, drugs decriminalized and managed via harm reduction, a significant liberalization of immigration controls without totally open borders, new restrictions on the Fed’s central planning powers adopted in 2008 and 2009, some more flexibility on pharmaceutical testing and health insurance, moderate patent reform, a diminution of pages in the Federal Register, prison reform, genuine oversight and remedies for police misconduct, strengthened due process and warrant requirements in national security cases, a plan to phase out massive entitlements, some fair-minded school reform, and a scaling back of federal gun laws. We were on the cusp of this moderate but significant step toward liberty, where we would not get all we wanted, but we would get much of what we wanted. But I ruined it all. I cited Murray Rothbard and Lysander Spooner. I made the perfect the enemy of the good, and now the liberty that was in our grasp is lost forever. Sorry, everyone. My selfish desire to adhere to ideological purity has spoiled our chances at increased freedom once again.

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Libertarians and War: A Bibliographical Essay

Featured Posts, History, Libertarian Theory, War
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The relationship between war and libertarianism has interested me since 9/11. In the aftermath of those terrorist attacks, I witnessed in grim fascination many libertarians make excuses for government in the realm of national security. The proper libertarian position on war has become a matter of controversy, although I believe it shouldn’t be. “War is the health of the state,” as Randolph Bourne said, as well as being “mass murder,” in the words of Murray Rothbard.

The following essay presents some of the most relevant materials and readings on this controversy. It is unapologetically tilted toward the antiwar position, although it includes some references to pro-interventionist writings. It is idiosyncratic and not comprehensive, and its omissions are not always deliberate. I am always interested in reading suggestions. As for the citations, I include publishing information for books but generally leave it out for articles written for or available on the web, so as to avoid extraneous clutter. Please follow the links to learn more.

Among the founders of modern libertarianism, Rothbard most consistently urged an antiwar position. In “War, Peace and the State,” he identified opposition to all state wars as well as to nuclear weapons as the libertarian’s core commitments. For more on Rothbard’s views on these questions, I recommend “Murray N. Rothbard: Against War and the State” by Stephen W. Carson and “Murray N. Rothbard on States, War and Peace, Part I” and “Part II” by Joseph Stromberg.

In terms of comprehensiveness and clarity, the best modern treatment is “Why Libertarians Oppose War,” chapter nine in Jacob Huebert’s fantastic Libertarianism Today (Praeger: 2010), which is probably my favorite introduction to libertarianism. Huebert covers all the bases, touching on the relevant economics, U.S. history, and moral principles, and delivers radical conclusions. The chapter is perfectly balanced in terms of scope and emphasis. In November 2012 he eloquently summed up his thesis at a Students for Liberty conference in a talk titled “Why Libertarians Must Oppose War.”

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Conservatives and the Path Toward Freedom

Anti-Statism
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So back in the 1930s and 40s, New Deal liberals were so hostile to liberty that a coalition of disaffected progressives, socialists, anarchists, classical liberals, radicals and pacifists emerged: what was later misnamed “the Old Right.” For decades, the Democrats with their center-left fascism forced various versions of this coalition to persist in opposition. A lot of individualists feared communism so much they hung around the conservatives, and pretty much everyone of a pro-freedom bent saw a massive threat in the domestic ambitions of the FDR-Truman-LBJ types.

From Nixon the Bush I, libertarians saw time and again why conservatism would be hostile to liberty, but the end of the Cold War and what seemed at the time to be a superlative tyranny in Clintonianism kept the conservative-libertarian fusionism going. Then came George W. Bush, and I figured we all learned our lesson about the right once and for all.

I cheered on Ron Paul, whom I saw as the last gasp of Old Right fusionism, the swan song of classical liberal minarchism, the requiem for the republican myth. But apparently rightwing libertarianism is still alive, and I’m frankly a bit scared it will keep going on forever.

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