I’ve got a new essay up at Libertarianism.Org celebrating Lysander Spooner as a kind of early Bleeding Heart Libertarian. In it, I talk about a number of arguments and episodes from Spooners writings and life that illustrate this theme, including his famous battle with the United States Post Office with his own private alternative, the American Letter Mail Company.

Competing with the US government in this arena was illegal, of course, and Spooner hoped the government would try to shut him down so that he might argue the unconstitutionality of the government’s monopoly before the Supreme Court. But Spooner saw in that monopoly more than just an unjust restriction of people’s economic liberty. It was that, to be sure. But it was also a way for the government to confer privileges upon an economically and politically powerful group of citizens at the expense of another, less powerful group. A government monopoly on mail made it possible to subsidize delivery in the rural South, where low volume and large distances made business relatively unprofitable, by charging higher rates in the urban North. But why should a factory worker in Chicago be forced to pay higher rates for postage merely in order that a wealthy landowner in Virginia might pay less? As Spooner saw it, the postal monopoly was doubly immoral. It furthered the unworthy goal of regressive redistribution, by the unjust means of restrictions on individuals’ freedom of labor and contract.

For more on Spooner, you can also listen to a podcast I did with Libertarianism.org on his “Letter to Grover Cleveland.”

There’s also a discussion of Lysander Spooner taking place over at David Hart’s terrific Liberty Matters site. Randy Barnett has a nice lead essay on Spooner’s constitutional theory, and response essays by Rod Long, Aeon Skoble, and me have all now been posted. Check back next week for the open discussion between us.