Monthly Archives: May 2011

In 2005, Barbara Fried, a law professor at Stanford, published a 34-page essay titled “Begging the Question With Style: Anarchy, State and Utopia at Thirty Years.” Fried’s piece appeared in an anthology of philosophical writings dedicated to the memory of Robert Nozick, who had passed away three years before. (Natural Rights Liberalism from Locke to Nozick, Paul et al., eds.). An electronic version of Fried’s contribution is available here: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=523743.

As we shall see, Fried’s essay is a strange, bordering on the bizarre piece of work, rife with intellectual dishonesty and manifestly unfair in its treatment of Nozick. Until now, it has received no rebuttal in the philosophical literature. I address it here both to challenge its characterization of Nozick’s most famous project, but also as an illustrative case study of the hysterical reaction of egalitarian-minded theorists to arguments that challenge their dogma. References to this essay below are in the form of “Begging,” plus the relevant page number in Natural Rights Liberalism. Continue Reading »

I wish to discuss a problem I have encountered in prescriptively applying libertarian theory to real world situations.  I believe that this difficulty is not idiosyncratic, and that other theorists have encountered the same issue, but I cannot find much discussion of it in the literature. I am referring to common situations, such as those covered by motorcycle helmet laws, where it is impossible (in practice) to realize the libertarian ideal because our laws do not (and most probably never will) require individuals to assume full responsibility for their free choices. Continue Reading »