Bleeding Heart Libertarians exsanguinated

The End | Bleeding Heart Libertarians - Matt Zwolinski:

June 1, 2020 - "Back in 2011, a group of academic philosophers started a blog called 'Bleeding Heart Libertarians.' The idea behind that blog was ... that you could be a libertarian who favored free markets and limited governments, and still care about the kind of things people on the left refer to as 'social justice' – relieving poverty, racial and sexual equality, immigrant rights, LBGTQ rights, and so on. Hence, the slogan of the blog, 'free markets and social justice'....

"Reconciling free markets and social justice seemed like an especially worthwhile project to undertake in 2011. Academic political philosophy was largely dominated by followers of John Rawls, for whom a commitment to social justice (of a particular sort) was paramount. And libertarianism remained a fringe and unfamiliar view within the academy – for most academic philosophers, it was a view that was born and died in 1974 with the publication of Robert Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia. But a critical mass of scholars were working out new ways of thinking about libertarian ideas; and many of us who were excited by the work of scholars like David Schmidtz, Gerald Gaus, and John Tomasi thought that there was a different style of libertarian thought beginning to crystallize. And we didn’t only want to publicize that; we wanted to encourage it, to help build and develop the research program associated with it.

"Moreover, if we sought to open mainstream Rawlsian political philosophy and theory to the influence of market-friendly classical liberalism, we also wanted to wanted to steer classical liberal scholarship toward taking egalitarian liberal ideas much more seriously than it often had.

"In a more minor way, there was a political background, too. The Cold War 'fusionism' of conservative and libertarian politics was put under considerable strain during the George W. Bush administration; the 2008 presidential candidacy of Ron Paul had reenergized a strain of libertarian politics that rejected neoconservatism but embraced a kind of nationalist, anti-immigrant paleoconservatism instead. Libertarians who didn’t feel comfortable entangled with either neoconservatives or paleoconservatives, those who took the 'liberalism' in 'classical liberalism' seriously, hadn’t quite found a public voice....

"Things have changed quite a bit in the last nine years, both in the realm of academic philosophy and that of real-world politics. Rawlsianism and its particular interpretation of social justice have receded in prominence. The variety of libertarian and classical liberal views within the academy has become better known, even by those who reject those views. And that variety is now a more firmly established fact among libertarian scholars and students themselves

"I like to think that this blog, or at least the people who write for it, have played some role in at least the second of those two developments. We set out with the aim of articulating a new and distinct vision of libertarianism. And – while there are certainly a great number of important details of that vision that have yet to be worked out – I think we have succeeded.  The project of establishing the intellectual space for bleeding-heart libertarian ideas has also more or less succeeded, giving way to the various different intellectual projects people are going to pursue in that space. In other words, we’ve said what we needed to say.

"For that reason, it’s time to bring Bleeding Heart Libertarians to a close. We’ll be keeping the archives open. But we won’t be posting anything new. At least not here. All of us are still actively writing, and many of us are writing on themes that are very much relevant to the Bleeding Heart Libertarian project. But we’ve said what we wanted to say here, and we think it’s best to put a period at the end of that sentence rather than an ellipsis."

Read more: https://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/2020/06/the-end/

The dawn of English 'classical liberalism'

from A History of Libertarianism | Libertarianism.org - David Boaz:

"English opposition to royal absolutism created a great deal of intellectual ferment, and the first stirrings of clearly proto-liberal ideas can be seen in 17th-century England. Again, liberal ideas developed out of the defense of religious toleration. The great poet John Milton published Areopagitica in 1644, a powerful argument for freedom of religion and against official licensing of the press. Dealing with the relationship between freedom and virtue, an issue that vexes American politics to this day, Milton wrote, 'Liberty is the best school of virtue.' Virtue, he said, is only virtuous if chosen freely. On freedom of speech, he wrote, 'Who ever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter?'

"During the Interregnum, ... when England was between kings and under the rule of Oliver Cromwell, ... the Levellers began enunciating the full set of ideas that would come to be known as liberalism. They placed the defense of religious liberty and the ancient rights of Englishmen in a context of self-ownership and natural rights.... Leveller leader Richard Overton argued that every individual has a 'self-propriety'; that is, everyone owns himself and thus has rights to life, liberty, and property. 'No man hath power over my rights and liberties, and I over no man’s.'

"Despite the efforts of the Levellers and other radicals, the Stuart dynasty returned to the throne in 1660, in the person of Charles II. Charles ... and his brother James II again tried to extend royal power. In the Glorious Revolution of 1688 Parliament offered the crown to William and Mary of Holland (both grandchildren of Charles I) ... [who] agreed to respect the 'true, ancient, and indubitable rights' of Englishmen, as put down in the Bill of Rights in 1689. We can date the birth of liberalism to the Glorious Revolution.

'John Locke is rightly seen as the first real liberal and as the father of modern political philosophy. If you don’t know the ideas of Locke, you really can’t understand the world we live in. Locke’s great work The Second Treatise of Government was published in 1690.... Locke asked, what is the point of government? Why do we have it? He answered, people have rights prior to the existence of government — thus we call them natural rights, because they exist in nature. People form a government to protect their rights. They could do that without government, but a government is an efficient system for protecting rights. And if government exceeds that role, people are justified in revolting. Representative government is the best way to ensure that government sticks to its proper purpose....

"Locke also articulated clearly the idea of property rights.... People have an inalienable right to life and liberty, and they acquire a right to previously unowned property that they 'mix their labor with,' such as by farming. It is the role of government to protect the 'Lives, Liberties, and Estates' of the people.

"These ideas were enthusiastically received. Europe was still in the grip of royal absolutism, but thanks to their experience with the Stuarts the English were suspicious of all forms of government. They warmly embraced this powerful philosophical defense of natural rights, the rule of law, and the right of revolution. They also, of course, began carrying the ideas of Locke and the Levellers on ships bound for the New World."

Read more: https://www.libertarianism.org/publications/essays/history-libertarianism
'via Blog this'

'Post-liberal' conservatives reject libertarianism

Conservative Divide: Libertarians, Moralists, and the Danger of Schism | National Review - Jonah Goldberg:

June 12, 2019 - "The idea holding together the conservative movement since the 1960s was called 'fusionism.' The concept ... was that freedom and virtue were inextricably linked..... Frank Meyer, the foremost architect of fusionism, put it: 'Truth withers when freedom dies, however righteous the authority that kills it; and free individualism uninformed by moral value rots at its core and soon brings about conditions that pave the way for surrender to tyranny.' This idea may have passed its sell-by date.

"The intellectual Right ... has always had ... internal fault lines.... These cracks were mostly paved over by opposition to Communism throughout the Cold War, but they started to reemerge once the Berlin Wall fell. Pat Buchanan’s 1992 call to revive the 'Old Right' vision of economic protectionism and socially conservative statism was more of a harbinger of the unfusing of fusionism than was widely appreciated at the time.

"Today, conservative forces concerned with freedom and virtue are pulling apart. The catalyst is a sprawling coalition of self-described nationalists, Catholic integralists, protectionists, economic planners, and others who are increasingly rallying around something called 'post-liberal' conservativism. By 'liberal,' ... they mean classical liberalism, the Enlightenment worldview held by the Founding Fathers.... They seek a federal government that cares more about pursuing the 'highest good' than protecting the 'libertarian' (their word) system of individual rights and free markets.

"On the other side are more familiar conservatives who, like George Will in his brilliant new book, The Conservative Sensibility, still rally to the banner of classical liberalism and its philosophy of natural rights and equality under the law. 'American conservatism has a clear mission: It is to conserve, by articulating and demonstrating the continuing pertinence of, the Founders’ thinking,' Will writes....

"The post-liberals think that Enlightenment-based liberalism is the disease afflicting society because it has no answer for how people should live. They have a point: It is not a religion or moral philosophy. But it wasn’t meant to be. Instead, as National Review’s Charles Cooke rightly put it, classical liberalism was a system designed to keep people of different religions from killing each other.

"This framing, however, obscures the path to reconciliation not just among the battling conservatives but in America generally. The liberalism of the Founders focused on freedom for individuals — but also encompassed institutions and communities. In the early days of the republic, for instance, some states had established churches and others didn’t. What the Founders opposed was a one-size-fits-all approach from the top.

"As far as I can tell, the so-called post-liberals now want Washington to dictate how we should all pursue happiness, just so long as it’s from the right. In a country of nearly 330 million people, however, it is impossible to define the “highest good” for everybody....

"What America needs is less talk of national unity — from the left or the right — and more freedom to let people live the way they want to live, not just as individuals, but as members of local communities. We don’t need to move past liberalism, we need to return to it."

Read more: https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/06/conservative-divide-libertarians-moralists/
'via Blog this'

Conservatism vs. classical liberalism

Conservatism and Classical Liberalism Don’t Share the Same Values - James Peron, The Radical Centre:

November 3, 2018 - "Too many sympathizers to libertarian ideas think the core of liberalism is free markets and thus they fall for the delusion that conservatives are some variant of 'classical liberal,' because they claim to support markets.

"But, a classical liberal holds to individual rights as his core value, not markets. Markets are derivatives of rights theory ... intertwined with the liberal theory of rights. Conservatives tend to oppose individual rights for collectivist concepts. The 'common good' comes before individual rights to them.... It is no different with the illiberal Left, who make similar arguments.

"Individual rights means individualism  —  something for which conservatives don’t care. They are advocates of the herd, they preach social conformity in the name of tradition. They are happy for you to be free regarding which toothpaste to buy, just not thrilled if you assert the right to pick which person to marry....

"Economics, while individualistic at its core, is also very herd oriented.... Human economic needs are global, pervasive, and common to all ... what Abraham Maslow called lower order needs....

"Economic needs are not particularly individualistic. Thus conservatives don’t immediately oppose this freedom in the short term. I do think they oppose it in the long term, and there were plenty of times in history when conservatives opposed it in the short term as well.... Conservatives have not been friends of free markets overall. Economic rights just aren’t seen as automatically threatening to the conservative herd identity.

"What really gets the conservative’s back up is social freedom [or] freedom in the ... non-market realm. It is linked to markets but it is heavily about individualistic wants and needs, or what Maslow called self-actualization needs. Lower order needs tend to be relatively similar for all. Higher order needs are strongly individualized.

"The conservative is happy with freedom for the herd  —  that is in those areas where everyone has roughly similar needs — just not freedom for the individual  —  where needs and wants are unique, individualistic, perhaps even idiosyncratic or eccentric....

"The smaller the minority the more likely, I suggest, the conservative is to attack it. The closer it gets to the unique individual, the further it drifts from the herd, and conservative values are ultimately herd values. Theirs were values fit for a world where food was scarce and life was primitive....

"For the conservative mind it is easy to be 'liberal' when it comes to property rights, difficult when it comes to gender identity, same-sex marriage, religious skepticism, etc.... Given the consensus in favor of markets — impure ones perhaps, but still markets — it is much more telling to discover how much social freedom one is willing to grant. Where they stand on rights for LGBT people, or 'illegal' drugs, or censorship of erotica, is more indicative as to whether they are a classical liberal than their position on price controls or lower taxes."

Read more: https://medium.com/the-radical-center/conservatism-and-classical-liberalism-dont-share-the-same-values-25d80dd8b902
'via Blog this'

John Bright, 19th-century voice for liberty

John Bright Was the Voice of Victorian Liberalism | Foundation for Economic Education | Nicholas Elliott:

April 5, 2018 - "John Bright did more than anyone else to bring about the great advances for liberty in 19th-century Britain. A leading orator and agitator, he was considered by many to be the best political speaker of the century. His voice contained a quiet passion which captivated fellow members of Parliament and roused the many thousands he addressed at public meetings."

"Bright is most famous for his part in the successful campaign for the repeal of the corn laws. During the Napoleonic War, English landowners had enjoyed a monopoly in the production of food. At the end of the war, they instituted the corn laws — a form of import control — to protect their domestic monopoly from competition. The laws kept the price of grain high, and since bread was the primary sustenance for most families, the laws created particular hardship for the poor. The issue had been brewing for some time. Charles Villiers had proposed corn law repeal in Parliament every year, and the Anti-Corn Law League was formed in Manchester in 1839. Richard Cobden and John Bright were instrumental in its founding....

"The League developed into a highly efficient political machine with mass support. They distributed millions of leaflets, held gatherings up and down the country, and published their own newspaper.... Leading Whigs and Tories were convinced of the need for repeal, and on June 25, 1846, a bill for repeal was carried. The elimination of other import duties followed, and a 70-year era of British free trade began; in the popular mind, free trade now signified cheap bread....

"In his activity in support of free trade, Bright was motivated above all by a concern for the plight of ordinary people. From the same motive, he opposed all the legislation which regulated working conditions in factories. The Factory Act of 1847 was in part a retaliation by the landowners for the corn law repeal: regulation of factories was a means of penalizing manufacturers. Bright was certain that it would make people worse off by reducing the number of hours in which they could earn money....

"For Bright, Cobden, and other leaders of the 'Manchester School,' free trade was inseparable from a pacific foreign policy.... They rejected the argument that foreign alliances were needed to enforce a “balance of power” in Europe, and warned that such alliances would drag Britain into future conflicts. The only people who would benefit from war were the 'tax-eating' class — government bureaucrats. Common people would suffer from the burden of taxes to fund foreign adventures....

"In the 1860s, Bright led a vigorous campaign for full manhood suffrage, secret ballots, and equal representation for industrial cities like Birmingham and Manchester.... He was somewhat naive in supposing that a mass franchise would lead to low taxes, free trade, and a non-interventionist foreign policy....

"Bright lived from 1811 to 1889, and when looking at the political events during those years, the advance of liberal principles is quite momentous. In 1819, when demonstrators protested against the corn laws and the lack of parliamentary representation, they were cut down by a cavalry charge. As late as 1859, Queen Victoria expressed her concern to Lord Palmerston that John Bright was attempting to undermine British institutions. Yet by 1868, when Bright became the first Nonconformist to hold a cabinet post, he was respected, as were the principles he enunciated.

"In the campaign against the corn laws, he helped to establish free trade as a popular principle which no politician would dare to interfere with for years to come. His stand with Cobden against the Crimean War inspired a later generation of liberals to follow the idea of non-intervention. Opening up Parliament to the scrutiny of ordinary people marked an end to the high-handed government of earlier times. In these, as in many other issues, John Bright, as a consistent and principled defender of individual liberty, imparted a widespread and lasting acceptance of liberal politics."

Read more: https://fee.org/articles/john-bright-was-the-voice-of-victorian-liberalism/
'via Blog this'

Autistic classical liberal responds to MacLean

No, Libertarians Don’t All Have Autism - WSJ - Matthew Vaillancourt, letters, Wall Street Journal:

February 28, 2018 - "Nancy MacLean is a historian at Duke University and an opponent of libertarian and classical-liberal political philosophy. Critics have called her 2017 book on the subject, Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America, biased and inaccurate. I don’t know enough about her work to judge its quality. But I’m angry about something she said recently.

"'It’s striking to me how many of the architects of this cause seem to be on the autism spectrum,' Ms. MacLean said during a February talk at New York City’s Unitarian Church of All Souls. 'You know, people who don’t feel solidarity or empathy with others and who have difficult human relationships sometimes.'

"I consider myself a classical liberal. I believe in the power of free markets and sound money to generate prosperity. Trade and technological progress allow us to live longer, healthier, easier lives. I believe in a social policy that leaves people alone to make personal decisions as long as they don’t hurt others. I see my political ideology as a consistent defense of freedom, and I regard both prosperity and tolerance as noble values.

"I also have autism, and I would like to set the record straight about what that means. Specialists in the field long ago debunked the simplistic stereotype that people with autism have no feelings or compassion. We can be empathic and express feelings, but we tend to do it in a different way.

"I have trouble making eye contact, for example. But that doesn’t mean I am not listening to you when you talk. In fact, I tend to listen better when I’m not trying to make eye contact, because my brain is more focused on processing the words I hear....

"MacLean is equally wrong in stereotyping people with autism as libertarians. Like everyone else, we believe in different political ideologies and vote for different political parties. We’re humans, not robots.

"Nor are classical liberals and libertarians emotionless, compassionless people. The vast majority of us believe in helping the needy; we simply think aid is better given in a bottom-up, voluntary way than dispensed by a centralized government. We disagree among ourselves on how to achieve social goals. But it’s outrageous to suggest that we don’t care.

I don’t think Ms. MacLean is necessarily a bad person. I admire her for writing a book, which takes courage and willpower. I hope that she will take some time to educate herself about autism, because ignorance is not a good look for a scholar. Sometimes it’s better — and more compassionate — to say nothing."

Read more: https://www.wsj.com/articles/no-libertarians-dont-all-have-autism-1519862750
'via Blog this'

Bastiat on The Law and its limits

Bastiat Knew the Proper Limits of Government Force - Foundation for Economic Education - Working for a free and prosperous world - Frank Hollenbeck:

February 18, 2018 - "High school students in the United States are usually required to take a course in government. They learn about the structure of government but rarely discover the appropriate role of government.... If they did, one of their required readings would be Frédéric Bastiat’s treatise The Law, a seminal mid-nineteenth-century work....

"Bastiat states that individuals are born with the natural rights of life, liberty, and property. From this notion, the only proper function of the use of force or the law is the collective organization of the natural right to self-defense of these rights....

"He then defines any illegitimate use of force or of the law as legal plunder. This is an all-encompassing term which includes any unjustified violation of the life, liberty, or property of others. Many examples abound today with regulations on labor (e.g. minimum wage laws), products (e.g. subsidies and tariffs), health care, education, or even the use of marijuana or any other drugs....

"The problem with legal plunder is that it creates hatred and discord and eats at the very fabric of society. The US Civil War was fought primarily for two reasons: slavery and tariffs. The first was a violation of liberty, the second was a violation of property....

"The law should be a viewed as a negation; if you don’t violate the life, liberty, or property of someone else, you should not see the arm of the law or care much about the role of government.... If the law were properly defined, you would not blame the government for your misfortunes nor would you credit it with your successes.... Bastiat wrote:

[I]f you attempt to make the law religious, fraternal, equalizing, philanthropic, industrial, literary, or artistic — you will then be lost in an uncharted territory, in vagueness and uncertainty, in a forced utopia or, even worse, in a multitude of utopias, each striving to seize the law and impose it upon you. This is true because fraternity and philanthropy, unlike justice, do not have precise limits. Once started, where will you stop? And where will the law stop itself?

"More important than left or right is the concept of liberty. The solution to the problem of human relationships is freedom, and it thrives most when the role of government is limited, the use of force is constrained, and the law is confined to the administration of universal justice, or, more precisely, the law is exclusively used as a roadblock to injustice."

Read more: https://fee.org/articles/bastiat-knew-the-proper-limits-of-government-force/
'via Blog this'

The journalist called the 'Czech Bastiat'

This Thinker Was the "Czech Bastiat" - Foundation for Economic Education - Working for a free and prosperous world - Tomáš and Lukáš Nikodym:

January 11, 2018 - "On the occasion of Karel Havlíček’s 180th birthday in 2001, one economist called him “The Czech Bastiat”.... We find many similarities between these two men ... most importantly, both possessed a great ability to explain economic phenomena in a very simple, compelling way.... Both men were also economists, journalists, and statesmen. Havlíček was a poet as well....

"Havlíček’s increasingly liberal views (in the classical sense) made him quite unpopular among representatives and supporters of the absolutist monarchy. He fought its authoritarian principles, its censorship, and its repression.... A newspaper he started, National News, was forced to close in January 1850.... Havlíček did not give up. He started a new journal, The Slav, which officially satisfied all the regulations but put forth his views as boldly as he felt safe to print. He focused much of his writing on educating the people on the economics of free markets....

"Havlíček was a devotee of František Palacký, the 'founding father' of Czech democratic politics and its liberal orientation. Both Havlíček and Palacký understood history as a clash between external authority and free, inner reason.... Havlíček’s concepts of individualism and freedom were close to those of John Locke, a pioneer of the foundational view shared by most libertarians today.... As he saw it, the purpose of government was the protection of life, liberty, and property....

"A free-market environment was needed, Havlíček maintained, to benefit fully from the existence of the factory. That included the reduction or abolition of prohibitions and tariffs on foreign goods. Those in business who demanded protectionist policies were, to him, a kind of aristocracy because aristocracy has always been connected with the misuse of the political and legal power of the State....

"Freedom, argued Havlíček, is a necessary precondition of economic prosperity, as well as peace in society. 'It may sound strange, but peace and the certainty of protection of each individual’s property are features of the free countries.' There, he said, instead of the strife that regularly afflicted the unfree countries, economies are spared the turmoil of disruptive uncertainty and violent uprisings....

"He even claimed that every absolutist government, whatever its ideology, was, in fact, a communist government because of the lack of guarantees of individual property. 'The absolutist government is taking under the name of taxes, confiscation, expropriation, etc., the property of others and no one can even protest it. The government is taking the property of some and giving it to its supporters, together with other privileges. Isn’t that communism?'...

"In November 1851, Havlíček was accused again of violating the press law.... Luckily, he was freed by the local court but ... was arrested by police — without any charge or trial — and deported to the small city of Brixen in South Tyrol, ... to spend the rest of his life in exile.

Read more: https://fee.org/articles/this-thinker-was-the-czech-bastiat/?utm_medium=push&utm_source=push_notification
'via Blog this'

Capitalism was built on ideas, not capital

The Great Enrichment Was Built on Ideas, Not Capital - Foundation for Economic Education - Working for a free and prosperous world - Deirdre N. McCloskey:

November 22, 2017 - "The ... modern world was made not by material causes, such as coal or thrift or capital or exports or exploitation or imperialism or good property rights or even good science, all of which have been widespread in other cultures and other times. It was made by ideas from and about the bourgeoisie — by an explosion after 1800 in technical ideas and a few institutional concepts, backed by a massive ideological shift toward market-tested betterment, on a large scale at first peculiar to northwestern Europe.

"What made us rich are the ideas backing the system — usually but misleadingly called modern 'capitalism' — in place since the year of European political revolutions, 1848. We should call the system  'trade-tested progress.' Or maybe 'innovationism'?...

"The upshot of the new ideas has been a gigantic improvement since 1848 for the poor.... The greatly enriched world cannot be explained in any deep way by the accumulation of capital, despite what economists from the blessed Adam Smith through Karl Marx to Thomas Piketty have believed, and as the very word 'capitalism' seems to imply. The word embodies a scientific mistake.

"Our riches did not come from piling brick on brick, or bachelor’s degree on bachelor’s degree, or bank balance on bank balance, but from piling idea on idea. The bricks, B.A.s, and bank balances — the 'capital' accumulations — were of course necessary. But ... [s]uch materialist ways and means are too common in world history and, as explanation, too feeble....

"The bettering ideas arose in northwestern Europe from a novel liberty and dignity that was slowly extended to all commoners (though admittedly we are still working on the project), among them the bourgeoisie. The new liberty and dignity resulted in a startling revaluation by the society as a whole of the trading and betterment in which the bourgeoisie specialized. 

"The revaluation was derived not from some ancient superiority of the Europeans but from egalitarian accidents in their politics between Luther’s Reformation in 1517 and the American Constitution and the French Revolution in 1789. The Leveller Richard Rumbold, facing his execution in 1685, declared, 'I am sure there was no man born marked of God above another; for none comes into the world with a saddle on his back, neither any booted and spurred to ride him.' Few in the crowd gathered to mock him would have agreed. A century later, many would have. By now, almost everyone.

"Along with the new equality came another leveling idea, countering the rule of aristocrat or central planner: a 'Bourgeois Deal.' In the first act, let a bourgeoise try out in the marketplace her proposed betterment, such as window screens or alternating-current electricity or the little black dress.... [C]ompetitors will imitate her success, driving down the price of screens, electricity, and dresses. But if the society lets her in the first act have a go, enriching her for a while, then, by the third act, the payoff from the deal is that she will make you all rich....

 "In other words, what mattered were two levels of ideas: the ideas for the betterments themselves (the electric motor, the airplane, the stock market), dreamed up in the heads of the new entrepreneurs drawn from the ranks of ordinary people; and the ideas in the society at large about such people and their betterments — in a word, liberalism, in all but the modern American sense."

Read more: https://fee.org/articles/the-great-enrichment-was-built-on-ideas-not-capital/
'via Blog this'

Paleolibertarianism's appeal to the alt.right

The Rhetoric of Libertarians and the Unfortunate Appeal to the Alt-Right - Bleeding Heart Libertarians - Steve Horwitz:

August 4, 2017 - "The paleo-libertarian seed that Ron Paul, Murray Rothbard, and Lew Rockwell planted in the 1990s has come to bear some really ugly fruit in the last couple of years as elements of the alt-right have made appearances in various libertarian organizations and venues. Back in February, alt-right hero Richard Spencer stirred up a fuss at the International Students for Liberty Conference in DC after being invited to hang out by a group of students calling themselves the “Hoppe Caucus.” Hans-Hermann Hoppe, long associated with the Ludwig von Mises Institute as well as a panoply of racists and anti-Semites, is perhaps the most popular gateway drug for the alt-right incursion into libertarianism.

"And within the last couple of weeks, Jeff Deist, president of the Mises Institute delivered a talk to students at Mises University entitled “For a New Libertarian.” In that talk, he knocks down an extended strawman of what he thinks constitutes the libertarianism he wants them to reject – what many might call “left-libertarianism'.... Most controversially, Deist, after continuing to argue that family, faith, and the like are the cultural glue that humans need and that libertarians should focus on, decided to end with:

In other words, blood and soil and God and nation still matter to people. Libertarians ignore this at the risk of irrelevance.

"For those who know something about the history of the 20th century, the invocation of 'blood and soil' as something that libertarians should recognize as a valid concern and should appeal to should be chilling. That phrase, which has a history going back at least to the 19th century, was central to the Nazi movement and was at the core of their justification for eliminating those people who did not have connections to the German homeland. It remains a watchword of the nastiest elements on the right, as a quick visit to bloodandsoil.org will demonstrate....

"Perhaps Deist didn’t know all of that. If so, one would expect a decent person to immediately apologize for using that phrase that way in that context. To my knowledge, no such apology has appeared. On the assumption that he is not, in fact, a Nazi, the explanation left standing is that he and his defenders have no problem using rhetoric that will attract those sympathetic to Nazi-like views about nativism and Jews. It’s that lack of concern about engaging in that sort of rhetoric, if not a positive willingness to do so, that is so troubling here, and it is eating away at the liberal roots of libertarianism.....

As I pointed out with the Paul newsletters, all of this appeal to nativism, racism, and anti-Semitism and the like is in deep conflict with libertarianism’s liberalism. It’s particularly in conflict with the liberal cosmopolitanism of someone like Mises. And the use of Nazi language is especially galling as it was the very 'blood and soil' crowd who drove the Jewish Mises out of Vienna....

"Our history is one of liberal tolerance, universalism, and cosmopolitanism, putting the freedom and harmony of all people ahead of the supposed interests of any parochial sub-group, and especially ones defined by the artificial boundaries of nation-states and their subsets. Libertarians ignore this at the risk of irrelevance."

Read more: http://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/2017/08/rhetoric-libertarians-unfortunate-appeal-alt-right/
'via Blog this'

One great idea and two bad ones

Nationalism and Socialism Are Very Bad Ideas - Reason.com - Deirdre Nansen McCloskey, Reason:

February 2017 - "Between the Great Lisbon Earthquake [1755] and the revolutionary year of 1848 the European chattering classes had three big ideas. One was very, very good. The other two were very, very bad. We're still paying.

"The good one, flowing from the pens of such members of the clerisy as Voltaire, Thomas Paine, Mary Wollstonecraft, and above all the Blessed Adam Smith, is what Smith described in 1776 as the shocking idea of 'allowing every man [or woman, dear] to pursue his own interest in his own way, upon the liberal plan of equality, liberty, and justice'....

"The boldness of commoners pursuing their own interests resulted in a Great Enrichment — a rise in Europe and the Anglosphere of real, inflation-corrected incomes per head, from 1800 to the present, by a factor, conservatively measured, of about 30. That is, class, about 3,000 percent.... And now, despite the best efforts of governments and international agencies to bungle the job, liberalism is spreading to the world, from Hong Kong to Botswana....

"The two bad ideas of 1755–1848 were nationalism and socialism.... Nationalism, when first theorized in the early 19th century, was entwined with the Romantic movement, though of course in England it was already hundreds of years old.

"What is bad about nationalism, aside from its intrinsic collective coercion, is that it inspires conflict. The 800 U.S. military bases around the world keep the peace by waging endless war, bombing civilians to protect Americans from non-threats on the other side of the world. In July 2016, we of the Anglosphere 'celebrated,' if that is quite the word, the centenary of the Battle of the Somme, a fruit of nationalism, which by its conclusion three and a half months later had cost the Allies and the Central Powers combined over a million casualties, most of them dismembered by artillery....

"The other bad idea of the era was socialism, which can also be linked to Romanticism, and to a secularized Christianity.... What's bad about socialism, aside from its own intrinsic collective coercion, is that it leads to poverty. Even in its purest forms — within the confines of a sweet family, say — it kills initiative and encourages free riding.... The not-so-sweet forms of socialism, especially those paired with nationalism, are a lot worse. Thus North Korea, Cuba, and other workers' paradises. As the joke goes, 'Under capitalism man exploits man; under socialism it's the other way around.'

"What to do? Revive liberalism, as the astonishing successes of China and India have. Take back the word from our friends on the American left. They can keep progressive, if they don't mind being associated with the Progressive movement of the early 20th century, and its eugenic enthusiasms for forced sterilization and for using the minimum wage to drive immigrants, blacks, and women out of the labor force.....

"Read Adam Smith, slowly — not just the prudential Wealth of Nations, but its temperate sister The Theory of Moral Sentiments. And return in spirit to the dawn of 1776, when the radical idea was not nationalism or socialism or national socialism, but 'the obvious and simple system of natural liberty' that allows all men and women to pursue their interests in their own ways."

Read more: http://reason.com/archives/2017/01/26/three-big-ideas
'via Blog this'

Who was Frederic Bastiat's successor?

Remembering Bastiat's Successor | Foundation for Economic Education- Gary M. Galles:

March 3, 2017 - "I have met very few people committed to liberty who are not fans of Frederic Bastiat.... How much do those desirous of freedom to the fullest extent possible know about the person that Bastiat described as his successor from his deathbed in 1850? They know far too little of Belgian economist and philosopher, Gustave de Molinari, who David Hart termed 'the leading representative of the laissez-faire school of classical liberalism in France' in the ensuing period. As we pass Molinari’s March 3 birthday, his work, which Wikipedia accurately summarized as 'defend[ing] peace, free trade, freedom of speech, freedom of association, and liberty in all its forms,' merits far closer attention.

"Joseph Stromberg noted the thoroughness of his belief in the power of liberty, in that 'He appears to have been the first writer to draw the conclusion that government could, in effect, be replaced by competing companies or agencies offering to provide security and protection.' He saw that government as it has always existed — as an abuser of people’s natural rights — could be supplanted by an agency that had no mandate other than providing security for life, liberty and property.

"Molinari focused on sovereignty. He recognized the problems of government sovereignty, and argued for individual sovereignty as a far superior replacement from the perspective of justice and respect for natural rights, as well as that of effective social cooperation. It is worth revisiting his inspiring vision of the appealing consequences of self-ownership, applied far more broadly than it has been....

• Government has abused its unlimited power over individual life and property....
• The progressive rise in taxation and expenditure which has occurred in every State …must continue indefinitely for just so long as governments, charged with guaranteeing national security, maintain their right of unlimited requisition upon the life, liberty, and property of the individual....
• What is the interest of the individual? It is to remain the absolute proprietor of his person and property and to retain the power to dispose of them at will... It is, in a word, to possess “individual sovereignty” in the fullest. Nevertheless … His property and liberty are limited by the property and liberty of others. Each individual sovereignty has its natural frontiers within which it may operate and outside of which it may not pass without violating other sovereignties. These natural limits must be recognized and guaranteed … such is the purpose of 'government'.
• The sovereignty of the individual will … be the basis of the political system of the future community.… It will belong to the individual himself, no more a subject but proper master and sovereign of his person…. He will dispose, as he pleases, of the forces and materials which minister to his physical, intellectual, and moral needs.

"Molinari learned of 'the destructive apparatus of the civilized State' from the French Revolution.... He saw the far better alternative of vastly expanded liberty, enabling an explosion of human potential and human spirit. Our age needs to be inspired toward that recognition, as well."

Read more: https://fee.org/articles/remembering-bastiats-successor/
'via Blog this'

New British PM assails "libertarian right"

Je suis right-wing libertarian | Coffee House - Paul Nizinskyj, The Spectator:

October 7, 2016 - "On Tuesday night, Conservatives for Liberty, which I co-founded in 2013, hosted our annual Freedom Fizz reception.  Jacob Rees-Mogg and Toby Young joined us, along with 400 party delegates, most of whom identify as right-wing libertarians....

"Twelve hours after we packed up, the Prime Minister effectively declared the lot of us enemies of the party – and the people. The Prime Minister used her keynote speech to attack the ‘ideological templates of the socialist left and the libertarian right’ as enemies of a government which would ‘act on behalf of the people’. Mrs May seemed to be suggesting that people should be just as concerned about entryism from the libertarian right as from the far left.

"It’s not a particularly nice feeling to be told you are unwelcome in a party which you’ve called your home for ten years, but we ought to have seen this coming. My colleagues and I have spent the last three years attacking in the strongest terms Mrs May’s appalling record on civil liberties as Home Secretary, as well as her enthusiasm for state intervention on the economy, but we were willing to give her the benefit of the doubt.... How naive we were.

"What the Prime Minister was attempting to do was cast libertarianism as an ideology alien to traditional ‘pragmatic’ Conservatism. But unlike far-left groups ... what we now call ‘libertarianism’ is woven into the fabric of this nation and of the Conservative party. It is a philosophy whose core principles revolve around the liberties enshrined in the Magna Carta of 1215. It was men who believed those liberties to be sacrosanct who took up arms against the King in 1642, and who bound his successors by the Bill of Rights in 1689.

"It was the free-market Liberals of the nineteenth century whose prudent stewardship of the economy made Britain the richest and most powerful country on Earth. It was right-wing libertarians who provided the intellectual foundations for Margaret Thatcher’s transformation of Britain from ‘the sick man of Europe’ to the fifth largest economy in the world (even if the great lady herself would never be known as anything other than a Conservative). And it was in large part right-wing libertarians like our President, Daniel Hannan, who were behind the Brexit Mrs May so wants to make a success of.

"But more importantly for the PM, research shows most young people are right-wing libertarians without even knowing it. Decades of polling by Ipsos MORI has shown ‘Generation Y’ – those born between 1980 and 2000 – are far more likely than their parents or grandparents to be critical of high taxation and the welfare state, as well as to be more liberal on social issues such as gay marriage and gender equality. A growing number of young people within the Conservative Party do know it, however, and will be a key part of any election campaign."

Read more: http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2016/10/je-suis-right-wing-libertarian/
'via Blog this'

The Bourgeois Revaluation: Ideas that changed the world

Bourgeois Equality: How Ideas, Not Capital, Enriched the World - Deirdre McCloskey, Legatum Institute:

September 16, 2015 - "Why are we so rich? Who are 'we'? Have our riches corrupted us?

"There is a long answer to this question that can be found in my trilogy, The Bourgeois Era. In this trilogy, I explain three things.

"Firstly, how the commercial bourgeoisie — the middle class of traders, dealers, inventors, and managers — is good, not bad.

"Secondly, that the modern world was not made by the usual material causes, all of which have been widespread in other cultures and at other times. It was caused by both technical and institutional ideas among a uniquely revalued bourgeoisie, at first peculiar to northwestern Europe.

"Thirdly, that a new way of looking at the virtues and bettering ideas in this area sprang from a novel liberty and dignity enjoyed by all commoners, and from a startling revaluation by society as a whole of the trading and betterment in which the bourgeoisie specialized.

"The revaluation, called ‘liberalism’, in turn derived, not from some ancient superiority of the Europeans, but from egalitarian accidents in their politics. What mattered were two levels of ideas: the ideas in the heads of entrepreneurs for the betterments themselves (the electric motor, the airplane, the stock market); and the ideas in society at large about the business people and their betterments (this liberalism). What were not causal were the conventional factors of accumulated capital and institutional change. They happened, but they were largely dependent on betterment and liberalism.

"The upshot since 1800 has been a gigantic improvement for the poor, yielding equality of real comfort in health and housing, such as for many of your ancestors and mine; a promise now being fulfilled with the same result worldwide — a Great Enrichment for even the poorest among us.

"These are controversial claims. They are, you see, optimistic....

"For reasons I do not entirely understand, the clerisy after 1848 turned towards nationalism and socialism, and against liberalism. It came also to delight in an ever-expanding list of pessimisms about the way we live now in our approximately liberal societies: from the lack of temperance among the poor to an excess of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Anti-liberal utopias believed to offset these pessimisms have been popular among the clerisy. Its pessimistic and utopian books have sold millions.

"But the twentieth-century experiments of nationalism and socialism; of syndicalism in factories and central planning for investment, of proliferating regulation for imagined but not factually documented imperfections in the market, did not work. Most of the pessimisms about how we live now have proven to be mistaken. It is a puzzle. Perhaps you yourself still believe in nationalism or socialism or proliferating regulation. Perhaps you are in the grip of pessimism about growth or consumerism or the environment or inequality.

"Please, for the good of the wretched of the earth, reconsider."

Read more: https://lif.blob.core.windows.net/lif/docs/default-source/publications/bourgeois-equality-how-ideas-not-capital-enriched-the-world-with-deirdre-mccloskey-lecture-transcript-16-september-2015-pdf.pdf?sfvrsn=2
'via Blog this'

George Jonas a lifelong believer in freedom

Robert Fulford: George Jonas was an enemy of every oppression, great or small | National Post:

January 11, 2016 - "For many years after the Second World War, Canadians had trouble understanding the immigrants who flowed in from eastern Europe. Their stories of oppression weren’t always taken seriously. Ukrainians, Hungarians, Poles and many others were embittered after losing their national homes to the Russian empire but Canadians found that hard to grasp. Newspaper editorials often instructed immigrants — Displaced Persons, or DPs, they were often called — that they must not bring old enmities into Canadian life.

"George Jonas, a Hungarian who became a distinguished Canadian writer, was sophisticated enough to treat that provincial attitude with an urbane shrug. He remained forever an enemy of the Soviet Union and all other despotisms.

"With his opinions uninhibited, he plunged into a six-decades-long career in Canada as poet, playwright, novelist, CBC broadcaster and journalist, ending up with the widespread respect of his profession and membership in the Order of Canada. He died Sunday in Toronto at age 80.

"A lifelong belief in freedom ran like an electric current through his poetry, his fiction and his journalism. Long-established Canadians tend to take freedom for granted, never having known its opposite, but where Jonas came from it was scarce. As a child in the early 1940s, he was made to wear a yellow star on the street, like all other Jews. After 1945 he watched the Soviet Union impose a dreary and evil dictatorship on Hungary.

"Freedom was the song Jonas sang, in all his writing He never gave up trying to protect freedom — from communists, fascists, Islamists or any other totalitarians. I can’t forget the contempt he expressed in the 1960s when describing a Canadian nationalist poet who said that Mao’s China sounded like an admirable society. How could those who were born to freedom consider bartering it away, even in imagination? 

"Freedom was the song Jonas sang, in all his writing. He proudly called himself a classical liberal. Many people think that means a conservative but he believed it meant he was an enemy of every oppression, great or small."

Read more:  http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/robert-fulford-george-jonas-was-an-enemy-of-every-oppression-great-or-small
'via Blog this'

Financial Review has lunch with Charles Koch

Political machine man: Lunch with Charles Koch | afr.com - Stephen Foley:

January 10, 2016 - "While Charles and his younger sibling, David, feature as boo-hiss villains in Democratic candidate speeches, their activities concern those of all political hues who fear the unchecked power of private wealth to influence the US electoral system. The Koch brothers have pushed for and used new freedoms such as those opened up by the 2010 Citizens United Supreme Court decision, which removed limits on corporate political spending, to fundraise at large scale and in relative obscurity. Their network of organisations - a panoply of think tanks, campaign groups, voter registration and opposition research arms as well as political action committees - employs 1,200 people in 107 offices nationwide, about three and a half times the current staff of the Republican National Committee....

"Koch's staff have told him they expect to marshal close to $US900m from conservative donors. The money will be spent trying to influence this year's elections in favour of rightwing ideas; around a third of it on directly funding political campaigns against Democratic candidates.

"With the field crowded and voting still a way off, Koch has declined several times to endorse a Republican primary candidate....  I ask about the rhetorical turn the race has taken when it comes to dealing with Islamist terror, and about Trump's assertion that the US could require all Muslims in the country to register with the government. 'Well, then you destroy our free society,' Koch says of the idea. 'Who is it that said, "If you want to defend your liberty, the first thing you've got to do is defend the liberty of people you like the least"?'

"He then expounds on the war on terror. 'We have been doing this for a dozen years. We invaded Afghanistan. We invaded Iraq. Has that made us safer? Has that made the world safer? It seems like we're more worried about it now than we were then, so we need to examine these strategies'....

"Although Koch now calls himself a 'classical liberal' - citing William Gladstone as a political hero for opposing Corn Law trade tariffs and political patronage in 19th-century Britain - today's libertarian Republicans and leftish Democrats may find intriguing common causes. The Kochs have also financed efforts - to roll back harsh sentencing laws, reduce the US's prison population (the highest in the world) and make it easier for felons to be reintegrated into society - more commonly associated with Democrats.

"Where the Kochs and the left are never likely to see eye to eye is on the environment. Over lunch, Koch positions himself not as a denier of climate change but rather as sceptical that it justifies drastic government intervention. 'Over the past 135 years, the ground temperature has warmed - there's some debate on this - around eight-tenths of a degree centigrade. In the atmosphere [the temperature change] has been slightly less, but not enough to argue much about. A big driver is most likely man-generated CO2, but what we see is that this increase is much less than has been projected. So, the indications are that the temperature isn't as sensitive to increases in CO2 concentration as was thought. I don't see the evidence that there's an immediate catastrophe or even one in the future.'

"The level of climate change, says Koch, does not justify penalising the use of cheap fossil fuels or subsidising alternative energy companies. Tax breaks and other incentives to use solar panels, he explains, cut the cost of energy for homeowners who can afford to install them, at the expense of higher bills for the rest. 'It's the poor people subsidising the rich people, which is what happens with this corporate welfare everywhere'....

"Through our conversation, there seems to be no issue to which smaller government, freer markets and unfettered competition is not the solution. "Our worst example in this country is the way we've treated Native Americans," he says at one point. "A great portion of the property of the American Indians is held in trust by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. They are not allowed to control their own." Citing the high rate of unemployment among Native Americans, he says, "This is what this whole philosophy of control and dependency does. How do you have a life of meaning? It's hopeless. So, they're a bunch of alcoholics. Well, no kidding."

Read more: http://www.afr.com/news/politics/world/political-machine-man-lunch-with-charles-koch-20160110-gm2nlm
'via Blog this'

Salon interviews David Boaz

“That’s something that should make libertarians nervous”: Inside the tumultuous rise of an American ideology - Salon.com - Elias Isquith:

"'Libertarianism,' like its ideological cousin neoliberalism, is one of those words that people in the political world use a lot without establishing whether everyone agrees on its meaning.... But as support for libertarian-backed causes like marriage equality, opposition to the war on drugs, and resistance against the rise of mass incarceration become ever-greater parts of U.S. politics, the definition of libertarianism will matter more, too....

"Salon recently spoke over the phone with David Boaz, longtime member of the influential and Koch-founded Cato Institute think tank and author of Libertarianism: A Primer, which was just updated and rereleased as The Libertarian Mind: A Manifesto for Freedom. Our discussion touched on the big issues mentioned above, as well as Boaz’s thoughts on what liberals and conservatives misunderstand about libertarianism, and why he thinks his favored political philosophy’s future is so bright.... 

"If you had to pick one defining or differentiating characteristic of the libertarian mind, what would it be? 

"The first line of the book says that libertarianism is the philosophy of freedom, so what distinguishes libertarians is their commitment to freedom. That can manifest itself in lots of different issues, from marijuana and gay marriage to smaller government and lower taxes, but the fundamental idea of freedom as the proper political condition for society is the thing that unites libertarians....

"I do think that is a difference between libertarians and liberals or conservatives who value freedom but also value other things. Modern American liberals would say, I believe, that they value equality along with freedom. Libertarians would tend to respond, 'well, in the real world you get more equality when you have freedom and free markets', though libertarians certainly believe in equal rights and equal freedom. Some conservatives value doing God’s will or maintaining social order or maintaining tradition along with freedom.

"In that sense, I do think libertarians put freedom at the center of their political philosophy in a way that many liberals and conservatives do not."

"If you had to pick one thing about libertarianism that liberals misunderstand the most, what would it be? 

"I think there is first a misunderstanding that libertarians are conservatives — and I think that’s wrong. Libertarians are classical liberals. We trace our heritage back to, not the aristocracy or established church, but to the liberal thinkers and activists who challenged those institutions. 

"Secondarily, I think liberals overlook how many issues libertarians and liberals share even today: religious freedom, freedom of speech, First Amendment issues, concerns about surveillance, opposition to endless war, marriage equality, opposition to the drug war, etc. There are a whole lot of such issues and my sense is that a lot of American liberals don’t see those very specific connections between libertarian and liberal interests."

Read more: http://www.salon.com/2015/02/18/thats_something_that_should_make_libertarians_nervous_inside_the_tumultuous_rise_of_an_american_ideology/
'via Blog this'

Spencer and the anti-militarist libertarian heritage

The Anti-Militarist Libertarian Heritage - Reason.com - Sheldon Richman, Future of Freedom Foundation:

September 21, 2014 - "With the United States on the verge of another war in the Middle East — or is it merely the continuation of a decades-long war? — we libertarians need to reacquaint ourselves with our intellectual heritage of peace, antimilitarism, and anti-imperialism. This rich heritage is too often overlooked and frequently not appreciated at all. That is tragic. Libertarianism, to say the least, is deeply skeptical of state power. Of course, then, it follows that libertarianism must be skeptical of the state's power to make war — to kill and destroy in other lands. Along with its domestic police authority, this is the state's most dangerous power. (In 1901 a libertarian, Frederic Passy, a friend of libertarian economist Gustave de Molinari, shared in the first Nobel Peace Prize.)

"Herbert Spencer, the great English libertarian philosopher of the late 19th and early 20th century, eloquently expressed radical liberalism's antipathy to war and militarism. His writings are full of warnings about the dangers of war and conquest. Young Spencer saw and cheered the rise of the industrial type of society, which was displacing what he called the militant type. The industrial type was founded on equal freedom, consent, and contract, the militant on hierarchy, command, and force. Yet he lived long enough to see a reversal, and his later writings lamented the ascendancy of the old militant traits. We have a good deal to learn from the much-maligned Spencer, who is inexplicably condemned as favoring the 'law of the jungle.' This is so laughably opposite of the truth that one couldn't be blamed for concluding that the calumny is the product of bad faith....

"He starts by pointing out that the 'parent' country's government must violate the rights of its own citizens when it engages in colonial conquest and rule. Spencer advocated just enough government to protect the freedom of the citizens who live under it ... and he claims that the money spent on colonies necessarily is money not needed to protect that freedom.

"Spencer proceeds to demolish the argument that foreign acquisitions increase the wealth of the parent society, as though such acquisitions are analogous to voluntary trade relations.... He invokes the law of comparative advantage to argue that the parent society loses, not gains, when the government coercively creates artificial foreign markets for products the society can't produce as efficiently as others can.

"As for those on the receiving end of colonial policy, Spencer was blunt: 'We … meet nothing but evil results'."

Read more: http://reason.com/archives/2014/09/21/the-anti-militarist-libertarian-heritage
'via Blog this'

Senator Leyonhjelm hires Helen Dale as adviser

David Leyonhjelm calls on Helen Dale to help fight for libertarianism - Paul Sheehan, Sydney Morning Herald:

September 10, 2014 - "Only one official libertarian sits in the [Australian] federal Parliament, though there are many closet libertarians hidden inside the tax-and-spend big government of Tony Abbott. This week that libertarian, Senator David Leyonhjelm of the Liberal Democratic Party, ... appointed Helen Dale, born Helen Darville, also known by the literary pseudonym Helen Demidenko, to his staff as a senior adviser.....

"I first met Dale and Leyonhjelm at a libertarian conference in Sydney earlier this year where both were delivering papers. Dale's presentation focused on social changes caused by technology, not expensive social engineering....  Practising law, she saw government regulation and compulsion as frequently having both adverse and unintended consequences.

"'I noticed the extent to which government regulations often had a malicious effect,' she said. 'Unlike many lawyers, I do not think the solution to every problem is "pass a law". Law has limits.'

"She arrived at this belief via a circuitous path, having become famous at age 20, as Helen Demidenko, for a novel written when she was 19, The Hand that Signed the Paper. It won the Miles Franklin Award in 1995....

"In 2002, at the age of 30, she turned to the law. She graduated with first-class honours from the University of Queensland and became a judge's associate. She won a scholarship to the University of Oxford, where she graduated with a bachelor of civil law. Because she has dual nationality, holding British and Australian passports, she remained in Britain and practised law. While doing a graduate course at the University of Edinburgh School of Law, she won the Law Society student essay prize....

"'Senator Leyonhjelm is a classical liberal, as am I," Dale says.... 'Working for him means leaving a job I enjoy and a city, Edinburgh, I love, ... but if I can help introduce the public to the radical notion that people are often best left alone, then my move will be wholly worthwhile'."

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/comment/david-leyonhjelm-calls-on-helen-dale-to-help-fight-for-libertarianism-20140910-10f132.html
'via Blog this'

Libertarian parties provide "fresh air from the fringe"

MIchael Den Tandt: Libertarians have it in them to provide fresh air from the fringe | canada.com:

June 26, 2014 - "This country increasingly could benefit from a libertarian option that is healthy, voluble and represented in all 338 federal ridings. What’s remarkable is that the movement hasn’t flowered more fully before now.

"Let’s consider, first, the Libertarian Party of Canada; probably as good a representative of 'pure' libertarianism as you will find. As fringe parties go, our Libertarians define the genre. They fielded just a handful of candidates in Ontario and British Columbia in the last election, and in no riding won more than a few hundred votes.

"That’s likely because their policies are extreme. They advocate personal property rights, privacy rights, the right to free speech, gun rights, and all other individual rights, to the nth degree. They would place severe limitations on taxation and the size of government. They would adopt a policy of strict non-involvement in world affairs. They would cancel the minimum wage, and Medicare, and the Canada Pension Plan, and welfare. They would, of course, sell off the CBC. Oh, and they would end taxation. And that’s just for starters. Ack.

"But now consider the flip side, through a less swivel-eyed lens. What would a more moderate version of libertarianism, call it classical liberalism, have to say about some of the more intractable problems we face today? Libertarians believe in personal freedom and equality for every individual under the law. What might that look like, translated into policy in Canada in 2014?...

"A national libertarian or classical liberal movement would create pressure for greater responsibility and caution from governments at all levels in imposing new taxes, in borrowing, and in spending.

"Classical liberals are of course free traders; given greater influence they’d increase pressure on government to scrap dairy supply management, which is a carbuncle of interventionist, regressive, consumer-unfriendly policy left over from a bygone age. Libertarians would not tolerate inter-provincial trade barriers; nor could they countenance state-owned monopolies such as the Liquor Control Board of Ontario, or the big-beer compact.

"A classical liberal wave would send an equally refreshing gust of common sense blasting through some of our more insoluble social problems."

Read more: http://o.canada.com/news/libertarians-have-potential-to-provide-fresh-air-from-the-fringe
'via Blog this'