April 2010

The War on Nutrition

by Editor April 24, 2010

Slate writer Melinda Wenner Moyer makes a big to-do over new mainstream medical-research findings that suggest that saturated fats affect your blood-cholesterol levels in ways that don’t really hurt you, while processed sugars affect your blood-cholesterol levels in ways that do hurt you.  I agree with Moyer that the topic is something over which it [...]

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Left-Libertarians Admit Opposition to “Capitalism” is Substantive

by Stephan Kinsella April 22, 2010

I’ve noted in recent posts that while some left-libertarians seem to oppose standard libertarians’ positive endorsement of “capitalism” for semantic or strategic reasons, for others they actually oppose the substance of what libertarians mean by (non-crony, non-corporatist) capitalism (see, e.g., Capitalism, Socialism, and Libertarianism, and links in that post; see also Wirkman Virkkala’s post A [...]

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Better Than the Golden Rule?

by Wirkman Virkkala April 22, 2010

Attempts to summarize all morality into a simple principle are ancient. Long before Kant’s categorical imperative we were blessed with the Silver and Golden Rules. Indeed, there is a sort of progress in the development of these rules: Silver: Do not do unto others that which you do not want done to yourself. Golden: Do [...]

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Parsing Political Language: Is Obama an Inveterate Liar?

by Michael Barnett April 22, 2010

With the news breaking today that “Obama suggests value-added tax may be an option,” many of my fellow libertarians are going to pat themselves on the back while (cynically) claiming that the President has broken yet another campaign promise and is, therefore, a liar. They’re wrong, of course. Politicians don’t lie. They speak precisely. Libertarians [...]

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Counterfeit Property Rights

by Isaac Bergman April 22, 2010

One of the reasons to oppose intellectual property is that it assigns partial ownership rights to real, tangible, and already-owned property to non-first-comers. For example, that copy you made of Microsoft Office, although you own the disk, you are restricted by law in how you may use this disk, e.g. installing the program, or selling [...]

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Four questions for “anti-capitalist” libertarians

by Juan Fernando Carpio April 21, 2010

Sheldon Richman, one of the best libertarian writers of the last decade and an all around excellent human being (I’m a grateful person and as my teacher at FEE in 2003, I must say he was by far the most fun and persuasive of the lecturers in an already very good set of speakers) has [...]

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How Big Is Your Tent?

by Wilton Alston April 20, 2010

“I am not one of ‘those’ types, whatever type you have in mind.” ~ Anna O. Morgenstern When I was regularly attending church, between the early and late 80’s, way back before becoming a fire-breathing atheist (and thereby damned myself to a life of unfettered and guilt-free joy on earth, followed by an eternity fighting [...]

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