News – Politics – Opinion – Podcasts
David Gordon 
One way to grasp the essence of Politics Without Politicians (by Hélène Landemore) is to view it as the polar opposite to Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s Democracy: The God That Failed. Hoppe thinks that democracy is a mistake: Hélène Landemore—a professor of political science at Yale University—thinks we do not have enough of it. What we call “democracy” today, in … Read more
In many countries, though not in most parts of the United States, laws prohibit “hate speech.” Those who, in Jeremy Waldron’s opinion, uncritically elevate the benefits of free speech over competing values oppose hate-speech laws; but Waldron thinks that a strong case can be made in their favor. (Waldron thinks that there are “very few … Read more
In this week’s column, I’d like to discuss an important contribution to libertarian theory by the philosophers Douglas Rasmussen and Douglas Den Uyl in their book, Norms of Liberty (2005). This book has meant a lot to me over the years, and I read the manuscript before publication. The book is a sustained attempt to solve what … Read more
Walter Kennedy’s outstanding new book is much more than a defense of Robert E. Lee from the charge of treason, though it is certainly that. Kennedy offers us a careful analysis of the nature of the union of states established by the Constitution, in the course of which he argues that Abraham Lincoln—far from being … Read more
It is always encouraging when a non–Austrian School economist accepts through his own reasoning an essential tenet of Austrian economics. Ruchir Sharma, who is chairman of Rockefeller International, founder and chief investments officer of Breakout Capital, and a well-known economic journalist, is not an Austrian, though he is aware of Friedrich Hayek’s work. He lends … Read more
Walter Block asks us to consider the following case: Suppose someone is shooting at you. He has two babies strapped in front of his body. He is clearly an aggressor and, of course, you have the legal right to shoot back in self-defense. The moral and ethical considerations as to whether you ought to shoot … Read more