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Law vs. Legislation

By on February 11, 2008 3

[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]

Guess who wrote this:

Legislation, as it has been usually understood, is not an affair of human competence. Immutable reason is the true legislator, and her decrees it behoves us to investigate. The functions of society extend, not to the making, but the interpreting of law; it cannot decree, it can only declare that which the nature of things has already decreed, and the propriety of which irresistibly flows from the circumstances of the case. … Men cannot do more than declare and interpret law; nor can there be an authority so paramount as to have the prerogative of making that to be law which abstract and immutable justice had not made to be law previously to that interposition.

See the answer.

Smearbund Funnies

By on February 5, 2008 22

[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]

Smearbund Funnies

Case in point: critics of the Mises Institute often imply that it, or various people associated with it, are “pro-Confederate” in the sense of regarding the Confederacy as a legitimate government or regarding slavery as a defensible institution. As Tom DiLorenzo and Tom Woods point out on LRC today, this charge is completely false, and the critics should stop insinuating otherwise.

On the other hand, though, it’s a bit silly to act as though that’s all the “pro-Confederate” charge comes to. Surely it’s true that the overall tone of much that has come out of the Mises Institute on the Civil War has been not just critical of Lincoln and the Union (both well-deserving of criticism) but sympathetic toward and soft-pedaling of the Confederacy. This seems, well, blindingly obvious. To exaggerate this tendency into unproblematic “support” for the Confederacy, as the critics tend to do, is unfair. To downplay it into nothing at all also seems unfair. (And so on, mutatis mutandis, for most of the other issues dividing the “Beltway libertarians” and the “fever swamp.”)

Anarchist Anthology Advenes Auspiciously

By on February 4, 2008 12

[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]

A nice birthday present came in the mail today: my anthology with Tibor, Anarchism/Minarchism: Is a Government Part of a Free Country?, hot off the presses. It looks very nice. (Well, at 40¢ a page, it’d better!)

The book features contributions from a variety of philosophical perspectives within libertarianism, including consequentialist, deontological, contractarian, Randian, and Hayekian approaches.

The contents:

PART 1: MINARCHISM

1. Why the State Needs a Justification – Lester H. Hunt

2. Libertarianism, Limited Government and Anarchy – John Roger Lee

3. Rationality, History, and Inductive Politics – Adam ReedAnarchism/Minarchism

4. Objectivism against Anarchy – William R Thomas

5. Reconciling Anarchism and Minarchism – Tibor R. Machan

PART 2: ANARCHISM

6. Radical Freedom and Social Living – Aeon James Skoble

7. The State: From Minarchy to Anarchy – Jan Narveson

8. The Obviousness of Anarchy – John Hasnas

9. Market Anarchism as Constitutionalism – Roderick T. Long

10. Liberty, Equality, Solidarity: Toward a Dialectical Anarchism – Charles Johnson

It strikes me that four of the ten contributors have some connection to the Auburn Philosophy Department. Tibor and I are Professor Emeritus and Associate Professor, respectively; Aeon was an Instructor here in 1993-1994; and Charles was an undergrad philosophy major here, graduating in 2003.

Ethics Quiz

By on January 29, 2008 9

[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]

If the difference between an innocent person’s going free and that innocent person’s serving a ten-year prison sentence depended on your say-so, and if you could set that person free with zero risk to yourself, what would you do?

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