There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly. I please myself with imagining a State at last which can afford to be just to all men, and to treat the individual with respect as a neighbor; which even would not think it inconsistent with its own repose if a few went to live aloof from it, not meddling with it, nor embraced by it, who fulfilled all the duties of neighbors and fellow-men. A State which bore this kind of fruit, and suffered it to drop off as fast as it ripened, would prepare the way for a still more perfect and glorious State, which also I have imagined, but not yet anywhere seen. –Henry David Thoreau, “Civil Disobedience” [1849]
HORNBERGER’S BLOG
December 8, 2023 Free Speech on Campus on the Israel-Palestinian War
The issue of free speech on U.S. college campuses has reappeared big time with the Israel-Palestinian war. Ross Stevens, a big donor to the University of Pennsylvania, is asking for the return of his $100 million donation unless the university fires its president Liz Magill. Stevens got angry when Magill answered a question before a congressional committee in which she did not …
The Impact of Karl Marx on Classical Economics
by Jacob G. Hornberger and Richard M. Ebeling
In this week’s Libertarian Angle, Jacob and Richard discuss Karl Marx in the context of the classical …
Freedom’s Greatest Hour of Danger Is Now
by John W. Whitehead
We are approaching critical mass, the point at which all hell breaks loose. The government is pushing us ever closer to a constitutional crisis….
The Beginnings of a Reborn Austrian School of Economics
by Richard M. Ebeling
Fifty years ago, on October 10, 1973, one of the leading members of the Austrian School of Economics, Ludwig von Mises (1881–1973), passed away …
Bastiat’s Concept of What is Seen and Unseen
by Jacob G. Hornberger and Richard M. Ebeling
In this week’s Libertarian Angle, Jacob and Richard discuss Frederic Bastiat’s famous essay about the broken window …