“True liberty cannot exist apart from the full rights of property, for property is the only crystallized form of free faculties… ”
– Auberon Herbert
(1838-1906) English author
Without property rights, everything becomes a privilege, granted you by a generous collective. If you are not able to own your property, defend it, be private within it, maintain it […]

New articles are up at The New Libertarian. One of the better articles, by Anthony Woodlief, is Bringing Back The Lower Case: Re-examining Libertarianism. It is, in fact, an article that has much in common with the philosophies at the core of this blog.
The reason I will address this topic — and the reason […]

Just imagine if folks actually understood, for example, that if I own something I can set whatever price I want for it, and interfering with that ability on my part is violating my right to property.

A new article at QandO’s The New Libertarian by Anthony Woodlief that criticizes what he calls the “religious aspects” of Libertarianism. Go check it out, it’s pretty interesting

“A free people [claim] their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate.”
– Thomas Jefferson (Rights of British America, 1774)

Carnival of Liberty XXII is up at Below the Beltway. As always, lots of good stuff, so head on over and check it out.

Do a Google search for “anti Walmart” and you get your choice of about 6,880,000 links. The search term “walmart hurts america” returns 537,000 results. Clearly, there are plenty of folks out there who don’t like Wal-Mart. It hurts small business, they claim. It reduces wages, they assert. It contributes to suburban sprawl, claim others. […]

After reading an article by Doug Monroe, a senior editor at Creative Loafing (a lefty rag in Atlanta), I was reminded of the old Southern populism and classism that has recently been obscured by the “redness” that accompanied the election of G.W. Bush.
For well over a century, the South was dominated by the Democrat Party. […]

“Freedom is the recognition that no single person, no single authority or government has a monopoly on the truth, but that every individual life is infinitely precious, that every one of us put in this world has been put there for a reason and has something to offer. It’s so hard for government planners, no […]

I’ve added a table of contents and bookmarks to The U.S. Constitution page on this site. It is indexed fairly well now and should be usable as an online reference. Feel free to use it, whether you are a contributor, or on some other blog.

This story from the AP about a government school administration confiscating all copies of the official student newspaper. The reasons were because the paper had an article dealing with the success rate of certain kinds of birth control and it showed the picture of an unidentified student’s tattoo. Now clearly what the government school administrators […]

If you ask most people to compare democracy and tyranny, they will say that they are polar opposites, since no particular person can gain or abuse power without the consent of the majority. While even this is not true, as proven by Adolf Hitler’s rise to democratically-elected power, it is far from the end […]

An opinion piece in the Washington Post today provides some good fodder for thinking on Constitutional issues, especially the all important 9th and 10th amendments and the power of the Federal court system. Although, overall, I have some problems with the editorial, I definitely enjoyed the opening paragraph:
Conservatives want courts to be stingy in creating […]

It’s as true today as it was when de Tocqueville wrote it.
Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.
The left continues to try and obfuscate their goals, to create the myth that socialism can somehow […]

Remember that a government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take away everything you have.
Barry Goldwater

Let’s talk about a better way to understand politics than the current conservative/center/liberal spectrum, which really is simplistic, contradictory and disguises some things that are very important in Western political thought. The current spectrum that most people accept looks something like this (this is almost exactly what my high school American Govt teacher drew on […]

Doesn’t this seem a bit over the top? Even for the People’s Republic of Massachussetts?
Massachusetts’ attorney general is launching an investigation into several supermarkets that opened on Thanksgiving in defiance of the state’s Puritan-era Blue Laws.
Then again, maybe the author of the article is a bit over the top, considering the later quote from the […]

A couple of days ago I asked for some help with graphics for The Liberty Papers. I will freely admit that I’m not good with graphics and images. Fortunately, Mark Rayner and Stephen Macklin came to my rescue. And they did a great job, too! Check out the banners they provided: The Liberty Papers Banners. […]

Readers who have become familiar with my writings over the past few months may have noticed a very prevalent theme - that of the individual and their own personal response to the world around them.

When you combine this post with my earlier post on TANSTAAFL, you find the core principles that make up my political philosophy. Getting to know and understand me means understanding these things about me. Some of you will have seen this before on Eric’s Grumbles. I’m moving a few posts of this type over here, […]