[An article from Free Life]
Such was the title of a political leaflet received through my door last week.
Readers familiar with my work on this blog will know that I place little faith in the mainstream, political process as the primary means of achieving a freer society in the UK. There is no point in trying to grab control of the system when it is the system itself that is rotten.
Continue readingI chat to Andy Duncan about one of my recent articles, Toward a Libertarian Political Strategy.
Continue readingIn my most recent article for Free Life, I discussed a number of ways in which libertarianism differs from many statist philosophies at the fundamental level. One of these ways is the fact that it is more accurate to regard libertarianism as a behavioural ethic rather than as a grand, political system. This present article will echo and develop this particular theme in order to lay some basic groundwork for a libertarian political strategy.
Continue readingMuch of the pro-liberty movement (myself included) tends to focus on the role of education as the prime driver towards a freer world. Given that, ultimately, any regime is cemented in place by the will of the people, such a world is unlikely to thrive unless people are motivated to embrace their freedom while rejecting all forms of force and coercion.
Continue readingHow Britain’s Wars at the Top Could Sow Distrust in the State
2022 has seen the upper echelons of the British state locked in a game of musical chairs – and we still have two months left to go. This has been the year of two monarchs, three prime ministers, four chancellors and three/four home secretaries (depending on how one counts Suella Braverman’s non-contiguous terms).
Continue readingBrowsing through a single day’s worth of articles on the libertarian website lewrockwell.com is enough to confront one with a smorgasbord of despair:
In a recent guest article for Free Life, the composer Laurence Hughes lamented, on his seventieth birthday, his relative lack of success in a culture that is waning in appreciation for the kind of art he has dedicated his life to producing:
Continue readingThe disappointment and disillusionment is now complete. As far as I am concerned, there is nothing left to aspire to or strive for. I just can’t be bothered any more. I have had enough. What a massive waste of time and energy!
Debates between libertarians and those who advocate any kind of statist intervention frequently take the form of “X should happen vs. X should not happen”. For example a budding libertarian might argue “the post office should be privatised!” whereas his opponent may cry “the post office should be state owned!”
Continue readingA key question for libertarian activists is the extent to which the circumvention of unjust laws imposed by the state can serve as part of a political strategy. A prominent, if somewhat extreme example from recent times is Ross Ulbricht, who went as far as actually breaking a whole plethora of narcotics laws by operating the darknet (i.e. black market) site “Silk Road”. As a result, he was convicted, in February 2015, of a whole raft of offences, including conspiracy to traffic narcotics.
Continue readingIn the battle of ideas, Austro-Libertarianism – either in spite or because of its logical consistency – is lumbered with several burdens that are not always shared with opposing philosophies. Some of these – such as the fact that libertarianism is not a complete moral philosophy and can look, at best, cold and emotionless, or, at worst, a recipe for rampant selfishness and egotism – we have examined elsewhere. Let us explore a few more of them and suggest reasons for how they can be overcome, or at least mitigated as much as possible.
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Duncan Whitmore 