Pope Innocent Was A Hippie

Great anecdote from Tom Palmer:

I once heard Irving Kristol dismiss libertarian ideas of property in one’s person as “an invention of some hippies in the 1960s.” I challenged him to explain his unusual historical claim in the context of documents such as the Decretal of Innocent IV (c. 1250), the writings of Henry of Ghent (c. 1217-1293), the Defensor Pacis of Marsilius of Padua (1324), the writings of Francisco de Vitoria (De Indis, 1524) and Bartolome de las Casas (In Defense of the Indians, 1550), Richard Overton (An Arrow Against All Tyrants, 1646), John Locke (Two Treatises of Government, 1689), and more. He looked at his wife, the distinguished historian Gertrude Himmelfarb, who shook her head, and charmingly replied that “On the advice of counsel, I decline to answer the question.”