Did Adam Smith—celebrated hero of free trade—make a big exception for reasons of national defense? Would he support the Jones ...

A libertarian is committed to the principle that liberty is the most important political value. Liberty means being free to make your own choices about your own life, that what you do with your body ...

The non- aggression axiom is an ethical principle often appealed to as a basis for libertarian rights theory. The principle forbids “aggression,” which is understood to be any and all forcible ...

Libertarianism, and the classical liberalism from which it sprang, supports a strictly limited state, if indeed its adherents recognize the legitimacy of the state at all. The minimal state is a ...

Crypto- anarchism is a philosophy whose advocates think technology can assist them in creating communities based on consent rather than coercion. Crypto- anarchists wish to be free from state ...

Black women were in the forefront of abolitionist lecturing and writing. In September, 1832, free black domestic Maria W. Stewart (1803-1879) became the first American woman to address a public ...

Published in 1859, John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty is one of the most celebrated defences of free speech ever written. In this elongated essay, Mill aims to defend what he refers to as “one very simple ...

Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the ...

We revisit the lives of Elizabeth Freeman, Lemuel Haynes, and James Forten, three Black Americans who lived through the contradictions of the Revolutionary era and helped expand its ideals. These ...

By 1776 they were no longer merely at the brink of revolution. Shots had been fired at both Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts and the colonial militias had fought a major engagement with the ...

Mencius was a devout follower of the philosopher Confucius; he wrote, “Ever since man came into this world, there has never been one greater than Confucius.” Confucius was born in roughly 551BC in the ...

Josiah Warren was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1798. His biographer, the anarchist writer William Bailie, notes that he was “of historically famous Puritan stock”—a relative of General Joseph ...