“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
Charlatans and statists (but I repeat myself) are very fond of calling things they support “rights.” Single-payer healthcare is a “right.” Speedy internet is a “right.” Public education is a “right.” However, in libertarian and classical liberal theory, natural rights...
The world is filled with self-evident truths — truisms — that philosophers, lawyers and judges know need not be proven. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west. Two plus two equals four. A cup of hot coffee sitting on a table in a room, the temperature of which...
Patrick Henry told us that “government is no more than a choice among evils.” Thomas Paine held the same view. In Common Sense, he wrote, “Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its...
Do people exist for the sake of government? Or is it the other way around? That’s the question James Wilson attempts to answer in his 1790 work, “Of the Natural Rights of Individuals.” A signer of the Declaration of Independence and member of the...
There is a powerful physical basis for the natural rights claimed by the words “endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights” found in the Declaration of Independence. My intent is not to remove the creator from our rights, but to show how that...
“I see the liberty of the individual not only as a great moral good in itself (or, with Lord Acton, as the highest political good), but also as the necessary condition for the flowering of all the other goods that mankind cherishes: moral virtue, civilization, the...