Our Tradition

The History of Liberty
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  • B.K. Marcus

Our Nestor Taken From Us May 28, 2015

Eulogy for Lysander Spooner by Benjamin R. Tucker From Liberty, issue of May 28, 1887 On almost any day except Sunday, for as many years back as the present writer can remember, a visitor at the Boston Athenaeum Library between the hours of nine and three might have noticed, as nearly all did notice, in one of the alcoves overlooking Tremont Street across the Old Granary burying ground, the stooping figure of an aged man, bending over a desk piled high with dusty volumes of history, jurisprudence, political science, and constitutional law, and busily absorbed in studying and writing. Had...

By B.K. Marcus Vote9 1

Defending the Dishonest Cop Jan 28, 2015

Walter Block defends the undefendable: dishonest cops.

By B.K. Marcus Vote8 1

“Vices Are Not Crimes” by Lysander Spooner Aug 19, 2014

Vices Are Not Crimes A Vindication Of Moral Liberty I. Vices are those acts by which a man harms himself or his property. Crimes are those acts by which one man harms the person or property of another. Vices are simply the errors which a man makes in his search after his own happiness. Unlike crimes, they imply no malice toward others, and no interference with their persons or property. In vices, the very essence of crime — that is, the design to injure the person or property of another — is wanting. It is a maxim of the law...

By B.K. Marcus Vote18 1

Robin Hood Revisionism by Karl Hess Jun 4, 2014

Politicians make their money by using their office; by, in an ethical sense, stealing advantages which lead to gains. I would say that such gains also are stolen. So, apparently, did Robin Hood.

By B.K. Marcus Vote4 1

The Lost Tools of Learning by Dorothy Sayers Jun 3, 2014

Dorothy Sayers was a renowned English crime writer, poet, playwright, essayist, and medievalist. In this famous 1947 lecture at Oxford, Sayers explains what was lost in the move to "progressive education": how to learn how to learn.

By B.K. Marcus Vote1 0

The Economic Organization of a POW Camp May 22, 2014

Just 6 months after being liberated by the US Army, former prisoner of war R.A. Radford published this famous article in the journal Economica, describing how he and his compatriots had used cigarettes as a medium of exchange.

By B.K. Marcus Vote3 2

Puzzling Questions of Vital Concern to 2,155,000,000 Individuals May 13, 2014

[Chapter 1 of The Mainspring of Human Progress (1953) by Henry Grady Weaver] For 60 known centuries, this planet that we call Earth has been inhabited by human beings not much different from ourselves. Their desire to live has been just as strong as ours. They have had at least as much physical strength as the average person of today, and among them have been men and women of great intelligence. But down through the ages, most human beings have gone hungry, and many have always starved. The ancient Assyrians, Persians, Egyptians, and Greeks were intelligent people; but in spite...

By B.K. Marcus Vote0 0

Clarence Darrow on the Nature of the State May 10, 2014

Clarence Darrow, in his 1902 book Resist Not Evil, seems to imagine a different origin for the state than we learn from the tradition of Oppenheimer, Nock, Chodorov, and Rothbard. For Darrow, the state begins when a local thug takes over his tribe...

By B.K. Marcus Vote8 1

Against Godwin’s Law: In Defense of Referencing Hitler Apr 30, 2014

The moment the words Hitler, Holocaust, or Nazi come up, the assumption is that the speaker has left the bounds of good taste and rationality and slipped into the realm of hyperbole and name-calling.

By B.K. Marcus Vote2 0

Was Joan of Arc a nationalist? Apr 29, 2014

Are the right-wing French nationalists wrong to claim Saint Joan as one of their own?

By B.K. Marcus Vote3 0

“Frank Chodorov, RIP” by Murray N. Rothbard Apr 25, 2014

[Written by Murray N. Rothbard. First published in Left & Right: A Journal of Libertarian Thought, 1967.] It was almost twenty years ago that I first met Frank Chodorov. It was at one of those luxurious but terribly dreary cocktail parties that have long served as rallying ground for the intelligentsia of the American right wing. There the more articulate of the rightists are wont to gather to declaim at each other for the umpteenth time on the perils of inflation, the immorality of welfare recipients, and the clear and present menace of Walter Reuther to the vitals of the...

By B.K. Marcus Vote3 8

Henry David Thoreau: Is There a Duty to Disobey Unjust Laws? Apr 20, 2014

[Excerpted from The Art of Being Free: Politics Versus the Everyman and Woman by Wendy McElroy] La Boétie presented the dynamics of voluntary servitude and the solution to it: withdraw your consent. But at what point, if any, does the denial of consent require not merely withdrawal but also active disobedience? Through his remarkable life and writings, Henry David Thoreau offers an answer. In his essay “On Civil Disobedience,” Thoreau also offers an insight that all opponents of state power should heed. After being released from jail for what may be the world’s most famous act of civil disobedience, Thoreau...

By B.K. Marcus Vote1 0

Roofs or Ceilings: the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 Apr 18, 2014

On this day in 1906, a great earthquake struck San Francisco and the coast of Northern California at 5:12 a.m. One of the worst natural disasters in US history — and the single greatest loss of life in California's history — the quake and the resulting fires killed at least 3,000 people and destroyed over 80 percent of San Francisco. More than half the city's survivors were left homeless. Why is this natural disaster part of our tradition, the tradition of liberty? Because 40 years later, in 1946, the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) published 500,000 copies of a pamphlet...

By B.K. Marcus Vote3 0

The Cider Rebellion Apr 11, 2014

Today is the anniversary of Lord Bute's 1763 ouster from office in England. In hindsight, we can see that the error that ended this stage of his career could have served as a warning to the British government of their impending loss of the American colonies. In Conceived in Liberty, volume 3, chapter 4 ("The British Army and the Grand Design"), Murray Rothbard tells the history of tax revolts on both sides of the pond before Americans declared independence from Britain. For four decades, the English Whigs (liberals, in the libertarian sense) had maintained a policy of "salutary neglect" of...

By B.K. Marcus Vote3 0

Happy Birthday, Hugo Grotius Apr 10, 2014

If 17th-century Dutch jurist and natural-law theorist Hugo Grotius were alive, he'd be 431 years young today. Murray Rothbard described him as "deeply influenced by the late Spanish Scholastics." Grotius asserted that natural laws and natural rights were "truly independent of the question of whether God had created them." This position was implicit in earlier thought, but never as boldly stated. (See Rothbard's introduction to natural law.)

By B.K. Marcus Vote0 0

Why the Language of Our Tradition Matters Apr 8, 2014

I’ve been blogging recently (An Idiot Abroad, the Economist, Sp!ked) about "Little Englander," a term that I would argue is a contranym, something that means both one thing and its opposite. So what are we to make of these opposed connotations of nationalist bigotry on the one hand and peaceful internationalism on the other, both wrapped up in a single term? For one thing, the contrast is no accident — no more than it is an accident that the term liberal can mean left- or right-wing, pro-or anti-market, an advocate of hard capitalism or soft socialism, depending on the context...

By B.K. Marcus Vote0 1

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