Philosophy and Methodology

Can there be a right to freedom of speech without that right being firmly based on property rights?

The Lord of the Rings is the epic journey to destroy the One Ring, which symbolizes power. More precisely, the book aligns itself against power--not "economic power" or "social power," but specifically political power. This is also the central theme of the classical liberal political tradition.

Robert Nozick writes, "The fundamental question of political philosophy, one that precedes questions about how the state should be organized, is whether there should be any state at all. Why not have anarchy?" Why not, indeed? James Ostrowski reflects on the recent death of philosopher Robert Nozick.

Why shouldn't the worker who is willing to render the best services for the least pay be the one who gets the job?  Instinctively, most of us recoil in disgust at the suggestion that wages should reflect nothing more than the cold calculus of supply and demand.  Yet few of us realize just how essential this "cold calculus" is for the long-run welfare of laborers themselves.

Edmund Burke was born in Dublin on this day--January 12--some 273 years ago. He is often called the father of conservatism, but the central passion throughout his writings and speeches is opposition to arbitrary power, especially in the hands of the government, with its "officious, universal interference" in people's lives.

It occurred me last weekend that children should not grow up without a thorough exposure to the great cartoon from 1962, "The Jetsons." Its celebration of technology and commerce, its retro-style optimism, its hilarious dovetailing of bourgeois normalcy with gizmo-crazed futurism, its complete absence of political correctness (excluding, of course, the atrocious 1990 movie by the same name) – all combine to make this one of the great cartoon achievements of any time.

Wilhelm Röpke made it his life's work to help construct and defend the free society, to diagnose the ills of capitalism, and to suggest concrete solutions. Röpke was never shy about criticizing the abuses of the body politic which endangered its health and rendered it defenseless against infections from the far Right and far Left. Röpke favored untrammeled free trade, regional liberties, and respect for traditional peoples and ways of life.

When individuals are not owners of resources, they are not able to assess their value; and when resources are publicly owned, their use will be systematically hasty and imprudent. When we realize that public ownership leads to systematic haste and imprudence, we get a hint that the inability of assessing the value of resources has deleterious consequences for most of us, with no one to blame except perhaps those who insist on keeping the institution of public ownership in force.

One's chance of winning a top prize in one of the rigged state lotteries is so close to zero as to be indistinguishable from zero. In California's feverish drive to take more money from a citizenry that is already overtaxed, officials are looking for an even better bet for the state: selling tickets to games that have already been decided.

Now that the economy is in a slump, many of the workers who gave up their welfare benefits are finding themselves without a job.  Many of the industries that were most likely to hire former welfare recipients have been those worst affected by the recession. These workers are finding that they have no legal right to a resumption of welfare payments because the disgraceful Aid to Families with Dependent Children program was abolished.