Talking with High School Students About Open Borders

New at e3ne.org, I discuss my conversations with high school students about the moral legitimacy of border restrictions: We started our discussion with a little bit of improv theatre. I played a foreigner trying to get into the United States without documentation. Students volunteered to play a border guard trying to keep me out. Between …

Michael Huemer, *The Problem of Political Authority*

University of Colorado philosopher Michael Huemer's book The Problem of Political Authority deservedly made a large splash when it was released last year. The book consists of two parts, the first making the case that states enjoy no moral right to rule and that subjects have no moral duty to obey them, and the second …

Can Public Reason Save Us?

At Bleeding Heart Libertarians, Kevin Vallier has an interesting piece on the failure of "Enlightenment libertarianism" and the case for "post-Enlightenment libertarianism." While I agree fully with Dr. Vallier's critique of libertarian dogmatism in the Randian and Rothbardian modes, I have considerably more difficulty with the public-reason liberalism he associates with "post-Enlightenment" thinking. You can't …