Currently viewing the tag: "liberty"

Stop the OTHER War on May Day, Too!

By On May 1, 2013 · 10 Comments · In Current Events, Liberty

The estimable Rod Long argues in an earlier post that we should stop the war on May Day by returning to its origins as a celebration of worker’s movements, rather than transforming it into a commemoration of the crimes of governments.

I’m more interested in the OTHER war on May Day.

Back in [...]

Continue Reading →

Blogging at Libertarianism.org, part 5: More on Liberty and Property

By On February 25, 2013 · 5 Comments · In Academic Philosophy, Liberty

A few weeks back, I posted an essay at Libertarianism.org arguing that property rights necessarily restrict freedom. I noted in that post that I thought that property rights enhance freedom in certain ways too, and promised to go into that more in a future post.

Thanks to a skirmish with David Friedman [...]

Continue Reading →

Blogging at Libertarianism.Org, Part 4: Liberty and Property

By On February 5, 2013 · 7 Comments · In Libertarianism, Liberty, Links, Rights Theory

Speaking of property, my latest at Libertarianism.org is up, looking at the relationship between freedom and property. The controversial part of my thesis, at least for libertarians I guess, is that property rights necessarily restrict freedom. I think they enhance it in various ways too, but it’s important for libertarians [...]

Continue Reading →

Blogging at Libertarianism.Org, Part 3: Quantifying Liberty

By On January 25, 2013 · 24 Comments · In Libertarianism, Liberty

My latest post at Libertarianism.org is up, in which I continue my critique of “maximizing liberty.” In my last post, I argued that the goal of maximizing freedom is an immoral one. In this post, I argue that is incoherent insofar as there is no non-arbitrary way of measuring [...]

Continue Reading →

Blogging at Libertarianism.Org, Part 2: Libertarianism and Liberty

By On January 17, 2013 · 19 Comments · In Libertarianism, Liberty

My latest post at Libertarianism.org takes on the idea that libertarianism should be understood as a doctrine committed to the maximization of freedom.

There are several serious problems with this view. The first is one that is common to all maximizing views—most notably, classical utilitarianism. In classical utilitarianism, of course, the goal [...]

Continue Reading →

Freedom of Association Revisited

By On August 29, 2012 · 88 Comments · In Liberalism, Libertarianism, Liberty, Rights Theory

In my last post, which generated a lot of controversy, I discussed (but did not defend) FIRE’s (apparent) plan to defend the freedom of association rights of religious groups at Vanderbilt. The issue, briefly, is that the Vanderbilt administrators decided to require all student groups to allow anyone into their organization, regardless [...]

Continue Reading →