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“Convincing people that most of our present schools are bad for learning is not going to do much to change them; learning is not principally what they are for.” – John Holt Some of the most interesting figures in the libertarian tradition are the people I call the Outsiders. The Outsiders are generally independent intellectuals and writers who are

[This article is transcribed from the Libertarian Tradition podcast episode “Karl Hess and the Death of Politics.”]   Karl Hess was born Carl Hess III in Washington DC, 87 years ago this month — on May 25, 1923, to be exact (and here on the Libertarian Tradition, we are nothing if not exact). Hess was the son of Carl Hess Jr., a wealthy Filipino

When Robert Anson Heinlein died 22 years ago this month, in Carmel, California, at the age of 80, the wonder of it all was that he had managed to live as long as he did. Heinlein , who was born in 1907 in Butler, Missouri, a small town about 65 miles south of Kansas City, had been in poor health for most of his adult life.   His family had

[This article is transcribed from the Libertarian Tradition podcast episode “The New Libertarian Generation.”]   Mark Lilla is a professor of humanities at Columbia University, where he specializes in the history of ideas — in particular, the intellectual legacy of the Enlightenment. Now, one of the principal intellectual legacies of the

[This article is transcribed from the Libertarian Tradition podcast episode “Voltairine de Cleyre.”] The libertarian movement of today dates from the early 1940s, the period of US participation in World War II. It underwent a very sudden and very substantial spurt of growth during the late 1960s and early 1970s, and has grown steadily ever since.

[This article is transcribed from the Libertarian Tradition podcast episode “Eric Arthur Blair aka George Orwell (1903–1950).”]   Eric Arthur Blair, who is best known under his pseudonym, George Orwell, was born 107 years ago this month in India, where his father was a British civil servant. His father’s job, according to Orwell biographer Gordon

[This article is transcribed from the Libertarian Tradition podcast episode “Vince Miller and the International Libertarian Movement.”] When the libertarian movement we know today was launched during and just after World War II, the founders were men and women who ranged in age from their 30s to their 60s. They represented, really, two different

[This article is transcribed from the Libertarian Tradition podcast episode “Emma Goldman.”]   The first American libertarian movement got underway in 1881, when Benjamin R. Tucker published the first issue of his fortnightly paper, Liberty . The movement might well be thought to have died in 1908, with the fire that ended the publication of

[This article is transcribed from the Libertarian Tradition podcast episode “Henry David Thoreau.”] Henry David Thoreau was born David Henry Thoreau on July 12, 1817, in Concord, Massachusetts, a small country town about 20 miles northwest of Boston. Nancy Rosenblum of the Harvard University Department of Government writes in the “Introduction” to

[This article is transcribed from the Libertarian Tradition podcast episode “Mervyn Peake.”] It was 99 years ago this month that Mervyn Peake , the author of one of the most notable individualist novels of the 20th century, was born, in the unlikely setting of Tientsin, China, where his father, Dr. Ernest Cromwell Peake, a “nonconformist” — that