The Humble Libertarian original

"Spiders don't need to be capitalists. And they don't need people making videos favoring them being capitalists." Ron Paul would love this video... because it's pure gold.

"No one is coming to save you." --Nathaniel Branden A woman discovers her controlling boyfriend has secretly bugged her cell phone, placed hidden cameras in her bedroom, and been reading her private emails. He refuses to admit wrongdoing and apologize. He even tells her he's doing it for her own good: "Honey, I'm doing this to protect you. I'm doing this because I love you." She should just tell him this is unacceptable and trust him to stop after she confronts him about it, right? Obviously wrong. Anyone who'd rather not end up putting the lotion on its skin before it gets the hose again would move apartments, get a new phone, change passwords, file a restraining order, and start carrying a Smith & Wesson. I'd probably adopt a couple pitbulls too. Spearheaded by digital privacy activists, today is The Day We Fight Back against mass surveillance. By "fight back" they mean do the literally most useless thing they could pos...

Today my very creative libertarian Muslim friend, Davi Barker , wrote on his Facebook: "Anyone feel like spotting me $900 bucks so I can start issuing custom full color plastic agorist identification cards? A commenter responded: "that's very statist of you" Davi's answer: "How do you figure? There are plenty of legitimate reasons to verify your identity. I don't see why the State should have a monopoly." Commenter's response: "touche.." Davi's followup: I'm not sure if you've noticed, but the whole point of Shiny Badges is to provide market alternatives of Statist insignia. Lapel pins. Badges. Declarations. Soon flags, maybe ID cards. That's the joke... or is it the strategy. Maybe it's a strategy disguised as a joke. Another commenter wrote: I'm saddened that you didn't check https://www.bitcoinstore.com/badgy-bdg101fru-card-printer.html first! You can save over $165 and pay with Bitcoi...

In response to some recent comments on my popular libertarian essay about abortion , it's time for me to mention that my views have shifted. I would argue that for the purpose of discussing law and public policy, the critically relevant issue is not the nature of the fetus as I have argued before, but the nature of the state. Let's come up with a libertarian consensus on abortion that even if a human fetus is a living human being entitled to self-ownership and non-aggression, and even if to abort a human fetus is to murder a human being, that we still don't want to pass a law against it in a monopoly legislature, appoint a standing army of career policethugs, and try to enforce that law with money we take from people against their will and under threat of violence-- because if all that isn't bad enough to begin with, even if protecting human fetuses was the only thing this government did, before long it would end up doing a hundred other unrelated things that make us ...

A former libertarian abandons his dream of a voluntary world and explains the potential worse case scenario after the overnight disappearance of government. The ending will SHOCK you! Via: School Sucks Project . Fist bump: Anthony Gregory .

“We Are the Future Rally” at the Sun Dome at the University of South Florida. ( Andrew Harnik/The Washington Time s By: Eric Sharp   The Sunday before the 2012 RNC, a unique political event took place. "We Are The Future Rally" with Ron Paul drew an overflow crowd of more than 10,000 young people. While the GOP Establishment was busy pushing Ron Paul's delegates to the margins with rule changes , the R3VOLUTION was making other plans. "We Are The Future" isn't just a name, it is a declaration. What we are looking at is a "libertarian long-march ", to borrow a Marxist term (it's pay back for stealing the word liberal). What this means is that the Ron Paul Revolutionaries are not going to quietly assimilate into the machine and become good cogs that do what they are told. They will " throw their bodies upon the gears ". They will keep pushing every way they can until a free society is achieved.  The method of each activist is ...

Doug French, in an article for the Mises.org website — a site, named for the conservative Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises, whose politics tend to fall on what’s conventionally regarded as the Right — makes some points about the current trend toward mergers and acquisitions that sound an awful lot like what the Marxists at Monthly Review have been saying for a long time. But they’re both right. In “Merger Monday and the Destruction of Wealth” (Feb. 15), French argues that the uptick in mergers and acquisitions is occurring because corporations are loaded down with cash burning a hole in their balance sheets, with no productive outlet to invest it in. That’s pretty much what the Monthly Review folks have been saying since the 1970s. Read the rest of Kevin Carson's article at The Center for a Stateless Society . James Tuttle , Regular Columnist, T H L Articles | Author's Page | Website

While House Republicans’ repeal of Obamacare is laudable, the stark truth is that true repeal is still elusive. An alternative some have considered -- as opposed to waiting on the courts or a new government -- is to try nullification, the oft-maligned, seldom-employed tactic used by state governments where they refuse to enforce laws they deem unconstitutional. Tom Woods of the Ludwig von Mises Institute has written not one but two recent books advocating nullification. In Nullification and Rollback Woods encourages the use of the tactic in a political landscape where choices between the two governing parties could hardly be worse. No shortage of liberal writers have denounced Woods’ book or the idea of nullification. But when scholars in reputedly conservative journals join the dog-pile of their defense of the status quo, one has to wonder why these conservative intellectuals are so intent on letting unconstitutional legislation become more easily enshrined. In the February 21, 201...

In press commentary on the recent events in Egypt, there were frequent expressions of concern that Egypt might be falling into “anarchy.” “Anarchy,” in conventional journalistic usage, means chaos, disorder, and bloodshed — a Hobbesian war of all against all — that occurs when the stabilizing hand of government is removed. “Anarchy” is the agenda of mobs of kids in black circle-A t-shirts, smashing windows and setting stuff on fire. But “anarchy,” as the term is understood by anarchists, is a form of society in which the state is replaced by the management of all human affairs through voluntary associations. Paul Goodman argued that it was impossible, through violence, to impose an anarchistic order on society, or to achieve a free society by replacing an old order with a new one. Rather, a free society results from “the extension of spheres of free action until they make up most of the social life.” Or to quote Gustav Landauer: “The State is a condition, a certain relationship b...

A legal system is any institution or set of institutions in a given society that provides dispute resolution in a systematic and reasonably predictable way. It does so through the exercise of three functions: the judicial, the legislative, and the executive. The judicial function, the adjudication of disputes, is the core of any legal system; the other two are ancillary to this. The legislative function is to determine the rules that will govern the process of adjudication (this function may be merged with the judicial function, as when case law arises through precedents, or it may be exercised separately), while the executive function is to secure submission (through a variety of means, which may or may not include violence) to the adjudicative process and compliance with its verdicts. A government or state (for present purposes I shall use these terms interchangeably) is any organisation that claims, and in large part achieves, a forcibly maintained monopoly, within a given geograph...

The prospect of a state collapsing brings forth worries about a “power vacuum,” an unrestrained state of nature where chaos rules until the strong take over. But chaotic conflict is produced by efforts to seize power and exert power over other people. It is not the rejection of rulership, but the struggle to achieve rulership, that creates deadly conflict. The negation of authority, as advocated by anarchists, does not necessitate the chaotic mess associated with the phrase “power vacuum.” Anarchy would mean that power is dispersed among individuals who would rather safeguard each others’ freedom than rule over each other. And if power is firmly in the hands of organized people then there is no power vacuum. Read the rest of Darian Worden's article at The Center for a Stateless Society . James Tuttle , Regular Columnist, T H L Articles | Author's Page | Website

A long running debate among the anarchists, especially between individualist and more communist type, centers around the justice of wealth disparities. Certainly the existence of the State serves to enrich particular interests at the expense of others, but in anarchy would the rich dominate society – just as they do with the State? Even if we could immediately switch off the institutions that forcibly manipulate society, there is danger that the legacy of privilege and accumulated wealth could persist for some time, distorting markets and continuing the frustrate the balance of power between individuals. Individualist anarchists have had a variety of responses to the problems of historical property and wealth distribution. Even anarcho-capitalists who see large scale social coordination as the natural direction of society have different views, such as Hans Hermann Hoppe’s theory of a natural elite and Murray Rothbard’s support of syndicalist takeover of State-supported corporations. On...

I want to talk about some of the main objections that have been given to libertarian anarchism and my attempts to answer them. But before I start giving objections and trying to answer them, there is no point in trying to answer objections to a view unless you have given some positive reason to hold the view in the first place. So, I just want to say briefly what I think the positive case is for it before going on to defend it against objections. Read the rest of Roderick T. Long's article at Lew Rockwell (dot) com . James Tuttle , Regular Columnist, T H L Articles | Author's Page | Website

Over at Strike the Root , Glen Allport makes the case for abolishing government (and the slavery that he believes necessarily accompanies the existence of government) altogether. Like the Ring of Power from the Lord of the Rings , Allport argues, no one can hold the power that is vested in government without it necessarily corrupting them. (If Allport is right about government and his analogy is apt, then Ron Paul is Tom Bombadil because power has no influence over him. If you don't catch my reference, you need to dust off your Tolkien and read.) W. E. Messamore , Editor in Chief Articles | Author's Page

By Daryl Luna, Editor: In Defense of the Constitution I am a libertarian, and I am a constitutionalist. But should I be? Not that I shouldn’t be a libertarian. I am sure most of the readers here at T H L would maintain that we should all be libertarians. But should I- being a libertarian- also be a constitutionalist? I contend that I should for good reason. First, let me note that I in no way want to give the impression that a libertarian must be a constitutionalist. Many true libertarians shun the Constitution (and sometimes the very existence of government altogether), and I can sympathize with their reasoning . However, I would like to explain why I personally feel comfortable as a libertarian and a lover of the Constitution. (It is sort of my job; I do maintain a blog titled In Defense of the Constitution .) Even though I am a bit of a constitutional apologist, I admit the Constitution is far from perfect and some of its provisions are downright hostile to liberty. Loo...

Ha ha ha ha ha ha! Is this guy for real? I've got to believe he's just joking. (H.T. The Mises Institute )