Did Adam Smith—celebrated hero of free trade—make a big exception for reasons of national defense? Would he support the Jones Act of today? Caleb Petitt argues that a careful reading of Smith on the ...

In this excerpt from Letter IX of John Rankin’s Letters on American Slavery, Rankin argues that slavery is incompatible with ...

During a time when enslaved Americans sought freedom through escape, Elizabeth Freeman challenged her legal status as ...

Paul Meany is the editor for intellectual history at Lib er tar i an ism .org, a project of the Cato Institute. Most of his work focuses on examining thinkers who predate classical liberalism but ...

Hoskins and O’Driscoll explore the role of property rights in economic development ...

Mutualism, as a particular strain of anarchist thought, develops from a search for equilibrium, for the spontaneous balance of economic forces. 1 At its most basic, mutualism is an ethical principle ...

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 has a long and storied history. Even the secret societies that formed under tyrants in the days before mass communication were antecedents. For the sake of brevity, though, let’s ...

In this episode we cover Marcus Tullius Cicero, the famed statesman, lawyer, orator, and above all a lover of liberty. Today Cicero is often read only by classical scholars and reluctant students, ...

The stereotypes of libertarian attitudes toward the poor range from indifference to outright hostility. Yet a libertarian world would offer the poor a greater opportunity to escape poverty, become ...