Bassani shows that Jefferson was a special kind of libertarian. He did not believe in government, but for one or two areas. Nor did he believe in the “union” much less the nation state. He was a radical individualist who had no use for the political collective. This is where we find the very core of his thought. Author of the Declaration of
The first myth one has to debunk in order to assess the relationship between the provision of law and order and the rise of the (modern) State is that this political institution is merely a natural and organic outgrowth of political power, as old as the history of mankind or of organized society. Actually, it would be wise to dispose of the
New from the Journal of Libertarian Studies: ABSTRACT: This article will show that there is nothing innocent about taxation. While coercion had various and rather ruthless forms in premodern times, with the birth of the state, the expansion of taxation has increasingly become the repudiation of a visible brutality. The Enlightenment period marks
[The State] forbids private murder, but itself organizes murder on a colossal scale. It punishes private theft, but itself lays unscrupulous hands on anything it wants, whether the property of citizen or alien. —Albert Jay Nock, 1928, On Doing the Right Thing LIBERTARIANISM AND THE STATE: A CRITICAL ASSESSMENT Libertarianism has proved to be a
Natural law does not depend directly on God’s will. Natural law goes back to at least the scholastics and perhaps Thomas Aquinas. Modern Natural Rights theory began in 1625. Modern theory recognizes the institution the state. Natural law is thought to produce inalienable natural rights. They speak to the dignity of the individual and life and
Jeffersonian States Rights Doctrine until the Civil War was grounded in three freedom documents: The Declaration of Independence , The Articles of Confederation , and The Treaty of Paris of 1783 . Those documents emphasized independent states, not a single nation or union. Many people in America thought that authority still derived from the King.
Jeffrey Tucker interviews Marco Bassani, professor of History of Political Theory at the University of Milan, and author of ‘Liberty, State, and Union: The Political Theory of Thomas Jefferson’ ( available for purchase here ). Recorded at the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on February 3rd,
The real sovereign is the small ruling class that makes the final decisions in the state of emergency, writes Carlo Lottieri and Luigi Marco Bassani. This audio Mises Daily is narrated by Keith
From The Myth of National Defense: Essays on the Theory and History of Security Production , edited by Hans-Hermann Hoppe. Narrated by George Pickering.
Most people believe that they know something about Thomas Jefferson’s political thought. If the object of study has been Jefferson’s own writings, this may be true. If, however, people read only the usual accounts of Jefferson’s that are made available to students, they are likely to be burdened with some serious misunderstandings. A typical
What is the Mises Institute?
The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.
Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.