The following is Professor Philip Pettit’s response to Jason Brennan’s piece on the nature of democracy. This is the second installment in a five-part debate between the two professors on the legitimacy of democracy as a system of social order.
Decades before the socialists gained power, Eugene Richter saw the writing on the wall.
In the absence of a compelling interest, such as preventing physical harm, governments have no right to control what goes on inside of churches and other houses of worship.
Politics isn’t just bad; It’s the worst. It brings out the literal worst in people.
Most arguments in favor of the death penalty fold under their own weight.
Frederic Bastiat lived a prolific life and left an even grander legacy.
It’s a useful illustration of the logic of political action when the state is in a position to dispense favors, whether those favors be subsidies or mandates or barriers to entry that protect special interests’ profits.
Beneath the surface there’s a lot of progress occurring that should make us all feel a little more optimistic about the future.
Stranger Things, anarchist Spaniards, and Edward Snowden.
The first amendment protects the rights of individuals to record the actions of government officials in public. US Customs and Border Protection disagrees.
The Democrats and Republicans have largely been the only two choices in presidential and congressional elections since the Civil War. It’s for that to change.
To answer this question we must first learn the distinction between contemporary conceptions of freedom and “The Freedom of the Ancients.”
The spread of markets into the healthcare sector has allowed us to live longer than ever before.
“Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.” — Milton Friedman
The ballooning prison population in the U.S. implies that there’s a certain ease of obtaining an indictment from grand juries. Here are some modest proposals to reform grand juries to make obtaining indictments more difficult.
Local communities have a better understanding of their communities’ needs than far off centralized government anti-poverty directives.
One’s right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.
Because students educated at home or in private schools regularly outperform students in public schools, it seems reasonable to conclude that such accommodations have not had a detrimental effect on the quality of education in these states.
“Americans are so enamored of equality that they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom.” – Alexis de Tocqueville
A focus on jobs missing the forest for the trees. We should be focused on creating wealth, not maximizing employment.
The government is, at best, another tool societies can sometimes use to good effect. It is not a Deus ex machina that societies can rely upon to swoop in and bring about a happy ending.
In this second installment to the series on religious freedom, Professor Mark Hall explains a third way to protecting both religious liberty and the public interest.
Duke University’s great historian of thought and Hayek scholar Bruce Caldwell sent the following e-mail to me, which I share here with Bruce’s kind permission (link added): Has anyone in the blogosphere noticed the chilling similarity between Hayek’s description in the Road To Serfdom (in the chapter titled “Why the Worst Get on Top“) of […]