Natural Rights Libertarian

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 »

If pressed to sum up their political philosophy in a single sentence, many libertarians will cite the following proposition, formulated by Ayn Rand in her essay “Man’s Rights”:

A civilized society is one in which physical force is banned from human relationships–in which the government, acting as a policeman, may use force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate force.

In a second essay, “The Nature of Government,” she expresses the same essential idea in a slightly different way:

The precondition of a civilized society is the barring of physical force from social relationships–thus establishing the principle that if men wish to deal with one another, they may do so only by means of reason: by discussion, persuasion and voluntary, uncoerced agreement.

The moral stance referenced above has come to be known as the “non-aggression principle” (or”axiom”). Continue Reading »

One of the major fault lines in libertarian theory runs between those who regard the state as inherently evil (the “anarcho-capitalists”) and those who contend that the minimal state, i.e. one limited essentially to the provision of national defense and  domestic law enforcement, is morally legitimate. The anarcho-capitalist indictment of the state is quite simple and straight-forward: any coercion employed against innocent persons (those not themselves engaged in aggression against others) is wrong (the “non-aggression principle”). Since the minimal state, among other things, collects taxes on a non-consensual basis to fund its activities, it is morally objectionable. Continue Reading »

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