Let us imagine that tomorrow morning, when you flip on CNN, you see Wolf Blitzer being jostled by surging crowds. Everyone is running, staring at the sky in fear. “Space aliens have landed in Luxemburg!” cries Wolf, wide-eyed and almost hysterical, “and they have a message for all mankind!” There is a burst of static, […]
Containing Danger without Enslaving CitizensBy Stefan Molyneux, MAHost, Freedomain Radio - www.freedomainradio.com One of the great challenges of anarchistic philosophy is the challenge of prisons, or the physical restraint of violent criminals. I have dealt with this topic once before, but I am still receiving numerous requests for clarifications on how a stateless society might […]
By Stefan Molyneux, MAHost, Freedomain Radio – www.freedomainradio.com A free society is by its very nature based on negative rights – i.e., thou shalt not rather than thou shalt. One common opposition to these negative rights is the ‘saving strangers’ scenario often advanced by statists. In this moral parable, an onlooker sees a man who […]
Problems and Solutions By Stefan Molyneux, MA Host, Freedomain Radio – www.freedomainradio.com The current controversy over immigration obscures – as most current controversies do – the depth and scale of the moral problem that is ‘immigration control’. Even the word ‘immigration’ is specious, since what is merely being described is ‘moving’. Moving from New York […]
A commonly-heard response to criticisms of existing state policies – or, heaven forbid, the existence of the state itself! – is the demand that the person criticizing either drop his objection, or leave the country. (A third option is sometimes given, which is the option of working to reform the existing state system, however, the […]
One of the central challenges faced by libertarians is the need to prove that libertarian moral theory is universally correct, while statist and collectivistic moral theories are incorrect. Until moral rules can be subjected to the same rigour and logic as any other propositions, we will forever be stymied by subjectivism, political prejudices and the […]
All moralists interested in improving society must answer the most essential questions about human motivation, and show how their proposed solutions will create a rational framework of incentives, punishments and rewards that further moral goals generally accepted as good. The 20th century clearly showed that there is no possibility for ideology to invent or create […]
Does more government equal less violence? By Stefan Molyneux, MAwww.freedomainradio.com When the subject of anarchy comes up, the most common objection to a stateless society is that violence will inevitably increase in the absence of a centralized state. This is a very interesting objection, and seems to arise from people who have imbibed a large […]
One of the sad paradoxes of the environmental movement is the degree to which it tends to ignore or obscure State destruction of natural resources. One chilling example of this was the fairly recent obliteration of the cod stocks off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada – which powerfully illuminates the dangers of allowing the State […]
Most libertarians have, at one time or another, been challenged by the problem of public property, or how the market can best protect and allocate goods ‘owned’ in common such as fish in the sea, roads, airwaves and so on. An old economics parable sums up the problem nicely – let’s briefly review it before […]
Abortion is always a tragedy, and one of the saddest occurrences on this earth. Government ‘solutions’ are also always disastrous, and so it is hard to understand how combining a tragedy with a disaster can create any kind of positive solution. Mixing arsenic with mercury does not solve the problem of poison – and combining […]
So you want to help the poor. After gazing at pictures of homeless men living in cardboard boxes under the shadows of skyscrapers, you’ve been struck with the urge to expand the welfare state, just a little more, to even things out. Or you’ve seen pictures of sad-faced women abandoned by men and ringed with […]
It has been often said that war is the health of the State – but the argument could also be made that the reverse is more true: that the State is the health of war. In other words, that war – the greatest of all human evils – is impossible without the State. The great […]
In my last article on www.lewrockwell.com, I used the argument from morality to approach the problem of health care. Today I would like to show how it can be used to prove the immorality of welfare. We’ll be as kind as possible and define welfare as the redistribution of money and resources from the rich […]
This weekend, my wife asked me my opinion of a particular chapter in a ‘self help’ book she was reading. I did so, and was suitably horrified, because although I know that the world is in terrible shape, and everyone seems to believe false things, I can still be shocked. The basic gist of the […]
All freedom-lovers hunger for an answer to a basic and seemingly-essential question: when will we win? When will the headlong rush of State power be arrested – let alone reversed? We can we begin the process of exploring just how little violence is needed in a free society? The odds are formidable, of course. The […]
Those who have read my recent series of articles on LewRockwell.com know that I believe that libertarians can achieve great success by using the argument from morality. This argument demands that those who propose moral theories must prove that those theories are both consistent, universal and absolute. Since the only way to know the difference […]
For three main reasons, freedom can never be won by arguing for economic efficiency. Such efficiency is always debatable, inevitably rests on technical details obscure to most people, and is one of the topics most subject to government misinformation. In Canada, arguing that a free market will produce lower costs in health care, for instance, […]
By any objective standard, the freedom movement has, over the past fifty years – if not the entire history of mankind – been an utter and complete failure. More than fifty years after the publication of seminal works clinching the case against State control, the power of the State continues to grow. State control remains […]
At the end of my article "Forget the Argument from Efficiency," I promised to write about the argument from morality – which is also, in my view, how we will win – and so here it is.The argument from morality is the most powerful tool in any freedom-lovers arsenal – but also the most personally […]
After my first article ‘The Stateless Society’ (www.lewrockwell.com/orig6/molyneux1.html) was published, I was asked to explain how a society without government would deal with violent crime. Lew was kind enough to publish my article on ‘Caging the Beasts’ (www.lewrockwell.com/orig6/molyneux2.html) which provoked quite a flurry of positive and negative (though never unkind!) responses and requests for clarifications, […]
My recent articles on the stateless society have generated some fascinating feedback. Questions, issues and criticisms rained heavy on my inbox – here are some of the more challenging queries I received, and my responses. Question #1: Mass Pollution In my own discussions with friends and such about anarchy, there is one sticking point where […]
After Lew Rockwell was kind enough to publish The Stateless Society (http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig6/molyneux1.html), I received many emails asking the same question: how can violent criminals be dealt with in the absence of a centralized government? This is a challenging question, which can be answered in three parts. The first is to examine how such criminals are […]
Two objections constantly recur whenever the subject of dissolving the State arises. The first is that a free society is only possible if people are perfectly good or rational. In other words, citizens need a centralized State because there are evil people in the world. The first and most obvious problem with this position is […]
So now that it’s the 60th anniversary of the Second World War, it’s time for what you might consider a truly shocking argument. We are constantly told that WWII was fought against tyranny, in order to secure our own freedom. However, like almost all assertions that come from the State, it is put forward without […]
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