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Nicholas Buccola, “Frederick Douglass on the Right and Duty to Resist” (May, 2017)

Nicolas Buccola, a professor of political Science at Linfield College, discusses the moral problem Frederick Douglass raised in the 1850s about the justice of using violence to resist the evil of slavery. Douglass was radicalized both by his own experience of being a slave and using violence against a notorious “slave breaker,” as well as by the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 and how to oppose the state-sanctioned policy of kidnapping runaway slaves and returning them to their “owners.” Buccola points to a number of troubling aspects about Douglass “robust conception of duty to vindicate the natural rights” of slaves, especially as it relates to the present time. He is joined in the discussion by Helen J. Knowles is an assistant professor of political science at the State University of New York at Oswego, Peter C. Myers Professor of Political Science, University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, and the independent scholar George H. Smith. See the Archive of “Liberty Matters.”

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George H. Smith, “The System of Liberty” (September 2013)

This is a discussion of George H. Smith’s new book The System of Liberty: Themes in the History of Classical Liberalism published by Cambridge University Press (2013). Smith describes how he came to write the book, the works of the history of political thought which inspired him (in particular the writings of the German legal historian Otto von Gierke), and the methodology he uses in approaching the history of ideas (Locke’s idea of “the presumption of coherence”). He demonstrates his approach with a brief discussion of one of the key ideas he has identified in the history of classical liberal thought, namley, the idea of “inalienable rights,” or to phrase it in the terminology of 17th century natural rights philosophers like Pufendorf, the distinction between “perfect and imperfect rights.” His essay is discussed by Jason Brennan, assistant professor of strategy, economics, ethics, and public policy at Georgetown University; David Gordon, Senior Fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute; and Ralph Raico, Professor Emeritus of History at the Buffalo State College. See the Archive of "Liberty Matters".

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Stephen Davies, “Richard Cobden: Ideas and Strategies in Organizing the Free-Trade Movement in  Britain” (January 2015)

Today it is easy to be despondent about the prospects of bringing about radical change in public policy or the political and social order. Policies that are widely recognized to be foolish and self-defeating (such as the “war on drugs”) seem to be immoveable.  There are a plethora of analyses of faults in policy or in political institutions, but most of these lack the crucial ingredient of a plausible way of getting from A to B, from where we are now to somewhere better. However, history gives us a number of counterexamples that should lead us to think more carefully about how to understand both the need for certain kinds of political change and the ways of achieving this. One of the most striking of these counterexamples is the career of Richard Cobden and in particular the way that he pioneered forms of advocacy and organization in the Anti-Corn Law League in the late 1830s and early 1840s that were highly effective in his own time, had long-lasting effects, and are still relevant today. The Lead Essay has been written by Steve Davies who is education director at the Institute of Economic Affairs in London. The commentators are Gordon Bannerman who is a freelance writer and researcher, Professor Anthony Howe who is professor of modern history at the University of East Anglia, and Sarah Richardson who is associate professor of history at the University of Warwick. See the Archive of "Liberty Matters".

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Peter J. Boettke, “Israel M. Kirzner on Competitive Behavior, Industrial Structure, and the Entrepreneurial Market Process” (March, 2017)

In this Liberty Matters online discussion Peter Boettke of George Mason University examines Israel Kirzner’s insights into the rivalrous nature of competitive behavior and the market process, his analysis of market theory and the operation of the price system, the institutional environment that enables a market economy to realize mutual gains from trade and to continuously discover gains from innovation, and to produce a system characterized by economic growth and wealth creation. Boettke concludes by arguing that Kirzner has done more than nearly any other living modern economist to improve our understanding of competitive behavior and the operation of the price system in a market economy. Boettke is joined in the discussion by Peter G. Klein, professor of entrepreneurship at Baylor University’s Hankamer School of Business, Mario Rizzo, professor of economics at New York University, and Frédéric Sautet, associate professor at The Catholic University of America. Boettke and Sautet are the editors of Liberty Fund’s 10 volume The Collected Works of Israel M. Kirzner.

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Knud Haakonssen, “Pufendorf on Power and Liberty” (January, 2017)

Knud Haakonssen, of the Max Weber Center for Advanced Cultural & Social Studies, University of Erfurt, examines the political thought of the German protestant theorist of natural law, Samuel von Pufendorf (1632-1694). Pufendorf was much admired by John Locke, and made important contributions to natural law theory, especially the The Law of Nature and Nations (1672), German constitutional theory, and European history. In the immediate aftermath of the Thirty Years War (1618-48) Pufendorf appealed to educated Europeans using arguments derived from natural law and his study of history “to live sociably,” i.e. people had to be brought to see that this was the necessary requirement for their chance of leading whatever life they wished to pursue. Knud Haakonssen is joined in the discussion by Aaron Garrett from Boston University, Ian Hunter from the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Queensland, and Michael Zuckert from the University of Notre Dame. See the Archive of "Liberty Matters".

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David M. Hart, “Classical Liberalism and the Problem of Class” (Nov. 2016)

It is not well known that classical liberal thought has had a strong tradition within it of thinking about “class”, namely the idea that one group of people live off the labor and taxes of another group of people. In this discussion David Hart, the Director of Liberty Fund’s Online Library of Liberty, explores this “other tradition” of thinking about class which can be traced back to the 17th century and which was was taken up again by Murray Rothbard in the 1950s and 1960s in what he describes as the “Rothbardian synthesis” of classical liberal class analysis, Austrian economics, and New Left class analysis. He provides a brief survey of its history, examines some of the key concepts within this tradition, and raises some problems which contemporary scholars need to explore further, in particular the theoretical coherence and usefulness of the “Rothbardian synthesis.” He is joined in the discussion by Gary Chartier, Distinguished Professor of Law and Business Ethics at La Sierra University in Riverside, California; Steve Davies, the education director at the Institute of Economic Affairs in London; Jayme Lemke, a senior research fellow and associate director of academic and student programs at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University; and the independent scholar George H. Smith. See the archive of Liberty Matters.

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John E. Alvis, “The Corrupting Influence of Power in Shakespeare’s Plays” (July 2016)

To commemorate the 400th anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare (1564-1616) the discussion this month will focus on “The Corrupting Influence of Power in Shakespeare’s Plays". Lord Acton famously maintained that “power tends to corrupt. And absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Shakespeare’s plays qualify as so many imaginative investigations into the consequences of possessing power. From one perspective his dramas depict the effects of possessing power upon the soul of the person thus endowed. At the same time the plays portray the transitive effects of exercising power upon those who find themselves subject to the possessors of means to benefit or to harm. For both those who apply their power and those subject to the wielder thereof, Shakespeare’s works display the exercise of power to have consequences that bear upon one’s understanding of liberty and responsibility.The lead essay is by John E. Alvis, professor of English and director of American Studies at the University of Dallas, and the other participants are Sarah Skwire who is a senior fellow at Liberty Fund, Inc., David V. Urban who is a professor of English at Calvin College, and Michael Zuckert who is Nancy R. Dreux Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame. See the archive of Liberty Matters.

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Sanford Ikeda,”The Misesian Paradox: Interventionism Is Not Sustainable” (March 2016)

The Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) developed the theory of "interventionism" during the 1920s to describe the hybrid economic system which had emerged after World War 1 which was neither fully free nor fully centrally planned (as the Soviet Union was attempting to do). In a book written during World War 2, Interventionism: An Economic Analysis (1940), he gathered his thoughts together in a more coherent work. His claim was that an economy based upon interventionism was not stable in the long run since each act of intervention in the economy caused problems which could only be solved either by the repeal of that act of intervention and a return to a fully free economy, or further acts of intervention which would ultamtely lead to fully-fledged socialism. Sanford Ikeda, professor of economics at Purchase College SUNY, returns to the original problem posed by Mises in 1940 to examine it in the light of the work down in Austrian economic theory since then. He is joined in the discussion by Christopher Coyne, associate professor of economics at George Mason University, Robert Higgs, Senior Fellow in Political Economy at the Independent Institute, and Jeremy Shearmur, Emeritus Fellow in the School of Philosophy, Australian National University. See the Archive of "Liberty Matters".

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Randy E. Barnett, “The Significance of Lysander Spooner” (Jan. 2016)

In this month’s Liberty Matters online discussion Randy Barnett, the Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Legal Theory at the Georgetown University Law Center, explores the political thought and constitutional theories of the 19th century American individualist, anarchist, and abolitionist Lysander Spooner (1808-1887). He concludes that “Spooner’s approach to constitutional interpretation, construction, and legitimacy is as fresh today as it was in 1845. Indeed, it is more sophisticated and persuasive than the theorizing of most contemporary legal academics.” He is joined in the discussion by Roderick T. Long, professor of philosophy at Auburn University, Aeon J. Skoble, professor of philosophy at Bridgewater State University, and Matt Zwolinski, associate professor of philosophy at the University of San Diego. See the Archive of "Liberty Matters".

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Jacob T. Levy, “Rationalism, Pluralism, and the History of Liberal Ideas” (May, 2016)

Jacob T. Levy, the Tomlinson Professor of Political Theory at McGill University, argues in his recent book, Rationalism, Pluralism, and Freedom (OUP 2014), that there is a deep and recurring tension within liberal theories of freedom, between on the one hand a family of views concerned with the risk of tyranny posed by the modern, centralized and centralizing, Weberian state, and on the other a family of views that see the graver threats to liberty as arising from customary, local, religious, traditional, and decentralized authority. He describes these views as “competing liberal social theories of power” and explores their deep origins within the classical liberal tradition which goes back several centuries. Levy believes that the tradition known as “ancient constitutionalism” has been unjustly neglected my modern classical liberals and he attempts to resurrect aspects of it to make modern classical liberal theory more robust. He is joined in this month’s discussion by Gary Chartier, Professor of Law and Business Ethics at La Sierra University in Riverside, California; Jeremy Jennings, Professor of Political Theory at King's College London; and Chandran Kukathas, the Chair in Political Theory at the London School of Economics. See the Archive of "Liberty Matters".

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