“Neoclassical Liberalism,” Property Rights, and Capitalism

Matt Zwolinski and John Tomasi have a thought-provoking piece entitled, “A Bleeding Heart History of Libertarianism,” in the latest Cato Unbound. They criticize postwar libertarians (specifically mentioning Mises, Rand, and Rothbard) for seeing property rights as absolute and, in their view, regarding the welfare of the working poor as irrelevant to moral justifications for capitalism: [...]

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Moral Philosophy & Dogmatism

Political libertarians are a motley lot in terms of their moral philosophies. There are three dominant strands – utilitarians like Milton Friedman, deontologists like Robert Nozick, and teleologists like Ayn Rand – but I’ve also met egoists, postmodernists, and Rawls-style egalitarian consequentialists. In debates over moral foundations, Randians often ally themselves with the deontologists in [...]

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Libertarian Welfare Statism

I agreed with the first half of Jessica Flanigan’s essay on “A Feminist Libertarian Dilemma,” but then nearly choked on my invisible coffee when I read this: Bleeding heart libertarianism doesn’t rule out public policies that help women with families succeed in the workforce, like affordable public childcare, subsidized family leave, elder care, or a [...]

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Interposition: Part Nine: The Hartford Convention

Few in power find it convenient to notice inconsistencies in their own conduct. Alas, but President Madison was no exception. Federalism and decentralization exist precisely because free constitutions should not depend on the good graces of those in office, but on the checks necessary to harry them back under the law. Seeking the financial means [...]

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Locke and liberalism

I do not recognize the Locke or classical liberalism some critics of each claim to find. A good example is a recent post by Patrick Deneen, in which he claims to find the joint roots of “individualism” and “statism” in classical liberal thought, drawing at least in part on Locke’s work. The mashup of ideas [...]

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Redistribution of Grades

Andrew Breitbart has posted a video (HT: Phil Arena) showing liberal, pro-income-redistribution students rejecting out of hand the concept of redistributing grade point averages (GPAs) from the best-performing students to those less fortunate, saying things like “It’s not fair” and “I worked for my grades.” Does their position constitute hypocrisy, and does this experiment show [...]

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Interposition: Part Four: New York and the First Act of Interposition

New York was Hamilton’s great project. So closely divided was the state, that at various moments, he despaired of its coming into the union. At one point the Antifederalists offered a compromise. They would support a conditional ratification dependent on the passage of certain key amendments, including the all important construction of delegated and reserved [...]

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Interposition:Part Two: Publius and the Federal Check to National Power

Among the defenders of the Constitution, a great deal was said about the states as a check to the power of the national government that informed the first ideas about interposition.  Madison’s contention in Federalist 39 is well-known. Our union was to be “partly federal and partly national.” Among the premier federal attributes were such provisions as the equal [...]

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The Libertarian Case for Prescription Laws

In general, libertarians oppose laws requiring a physician’s prescription for purchase or dispensing of controlled drugs, on the grounds that these restrictions are paternalistic infringements on an individual’s right to choose for himself or herself. But under what conditions might libertarians support prescription laws? Libertarian activist Rachel Mills recently asked on Facebook whether baby formula [...]

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Bleeding Heart Libertarians

There’s an interesting new philosophy blog called “Bleeding Heart Libertarians,” featuring an all-star cast of Andrew J. Cohen, Daniel Shapiro, Jacob T. Levy, James Stacey Taylor, Jason F. Brennan, and Matt Zwolinski. Actually, some of the participants reject the term “libertarian”; one of the first posts, by Jason Brennan, is entitled, “Neoclassical Liberalism: How I’m [...]

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The Hobbesian Argument for Limited Government

Even under Hobbes-like assumptions skewed to the case for big government, the evidence proves that government is far larger than optimal in the U.S. and other advanced welfare states.

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