See Ronald Bailey, “We Lost the Lyme Vaccine. Under Rand Paul’s New Vaccine Liability Bill, We’ll Lose More.“: The End the Vaccine Carveout Act would expose vaccine makers to lawsuits that once drove companies out of the industry,” Reason (3.5.2026).
Pro-vaxxers and anti-vaxxers all seem to be going apeshit about this, from various angles. I’m no expert, I don’t follow all this nonsense closely, I’m just a caveman lawyer.
Faith Seeking Freedom: Libertarian Christian Answers to Tough Questions (Libertarian Christian Institute Press, 1010; Amazon) is an important book written several of my Christian libertarian friends. 1 All four of the authors are intelligent, well-read, articulate, and principled libertarians. As my endorsement my notes:
Achieving liberty will require enlightening our fellow men about its eternal truths. The contributors to this volume, Christians who are also principled and articulate libertarians, argue for a more libertarian interpretation of Christian teachings, and seek to explain to fellow Christians and other people of faith the glory and morality of liberty in terms they will already relate to. Liberty is ultimately about peace, love, and cooperation, which is a message that can appeal to the 2.4 billion Christians on the planet. This is a big potential audience. This is an important book and undertaking.
A second, expanded edition is forthcoming. I look forward to it. My blurb:
Achieving liberty will require enlightening our fellow men about its eternal truths. Building on the success of the first edition, this updated and expanded second edition of Faith Seeking Freedom features additional authors and new insights from Christians who are also principled and articulate libertarians. They argue for a more libertarian interpretation of Christian teachings, explaining to fellow Christians and other people of faith the glory and morality of liberty in relatable terms. While remaining accessible and not overburdened with scholarly jargon, it still manages to show that libertarian principles are supported by Biblical teachings—such as the explanation, in Sections 12, 14, and 15, of the connection between the libertarian principles of non-aggression, self-ownership, homesteading, and production, on the one hand, and the Biblical teachings about treatment of neighbors, stewardship of the gifts God has bestowed, and the admonition to be productive—to “be fruitful and multiply”—on the other. These insights and principles support and complement each other.
Liberty is ultimately about peace, love, and cooperation—a message that can appeal to the billions of Christians worldwide. This remains a big potential audience, and this enhanced book is an even more important undertaking. In addition, while the book is aimed at Christians, its linkage of principles of freedom to deeper moral truths is valuable to nonreligious libertarians as well. Liberty is not an isolated value; connecting related but different areas of thought is important. I am delighted that this book exists.
Kinsella on Liberty Podcast: Episode 484.
Praxeology, Property Rights & Bitcoin with Stephan Kinsella | Bitcoin Infinity Show #192. With Knut Svanholm. Recorded Jan. 20, 2026. My shownotes and transcript below.
Knut’s Shownotes:
Stephan Kinsella joins the Bitcoin Infinity Show to talk about why praxeology is the hardest science in economics, how Austrian theory explains Bitcoin’s unique monetary properties, and whether you can truly own a Bitcoin or merely act as if you do. The conversation covers the foundations of property rights and natural law, the subjective nature of fungibility, and what a hyperbitcoinized future might actually look like. Kinsella and Knut also explore why intellectual property restrictions threaten the very knowledge accumulation that makes humanity richer over time.
Podcast (kinsella-on-liberty): Play in new window | Download (122.6MB)
Kinsella on Liberty Podcast: Episode 483.
I delivered the following lecture yesterday: “The Economics and Ethics of Intellectual Property,” Loyola Economics Club and Louisiana Mu chapter of Omicron Delta Epsilon, Loyola University—New Orleans, Miller Hall (12:30 pm–1:45 pm, Feb. 24, 2026). Hosts were the aforementioned Econ club and econ honor society, as well as Walter Block and Leo Krasnozhon. 1 Audio for the Q&A portion was poor due to some technical mishaps, but has been boosted as much as possible.
Slides streamed below. Pictures, transcript and shownotes below.
Podcast (kinsella-on-liberty): Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:09:59 — 96.1MB)
Related:
I love law reviews. In law school I aced grades the first semester so thought I was a shoo-in, but then I started relaxing, figuring hey, law school is easier than I thought, so I started slacking, playing too much Robotron (I even rented a Robotron arcade game for a few months to get it out of my system), 1 grades fell and I missed the law review cutoff. I tried to write on and thought I was a shoo-in because my paper was ossum, but… no go. Anyway, jokes on them because I’ve now published in many law reviews now (as well as books), not only libertarian topics, but also purely legal topics. 2 Anyway they just fascinate me. 3 I even love footnotes. 4 [continue reading…]
For a while I toyed with the idea of writing corrections of Supreme Court opinions which are often wrong and, even when the results are right (e.g. A Libertarian Defense of Kelo and Limited Federal Power), the reasoning is typically often still confused, muddled, statist, legal-positivist, anti-decentralist (anti-antifederalist), and economically illiterate (other than that, it’s just fine). I would play Shadow Justice. Great use of my time. See, e.g., my short-lived blog The Shadow Justice which I discontinued because I was lazy too busy.
Anyway in a recent case, Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump (Feb. 2o, 2026), 1 the Supremes struck down Trump’s use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to impose tariffs, holding that IEEPA does not authorize the President to impose tariffs. (I also thought Roberts was basically right to conclude that Obamacare’s mandatory fees are permissible, by characterizing them as a “tax.” Unfortunately.) [continue reading…]
Related:
מדע אומלל (“Unhappy Science” (?); @guy_carmell; Guy Kedem), Hoppe’s Argumentation Ethics: A User Friendly, Neighborly Introduction, (Dec. 25, 2011).
“What we cannot speak about, we must pass over in silence.”
–Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
Humans act in incredibly stupid, as well as incredibly clever ways. Trade and production coexists alongside murder and rape. The application of deductive reasoning to actions such as trade and production (“praxeology“) gives us interesting insights into economics. We can deduce trade to be mutually beneficial and artificially low interest rates to cause an unsustainable economic boom. However to apply praxeology only to trade and production, as if they were the sum total of human activity, would be somewhat of an understatement. Us humans know some other tricks.
As mentioned in Robert Pascal, R.I.P., after law school I became friends with retired Professor Emeritus Robert Pascal, a famous law professor at LSU that I never met until after I graduated (likewise, I also became friends and correspondent with LSU Law professor Saúl Litvinoff after graduation). 1 We had a good deal of correspondence in the 1990s and even after, when I was an attorney in Houston and then Philadelphia, and would meet on occasion at his home in Baton Rouge when I would return home for visits. He passed away in 2018 at the age of 102.
Much of his correspondence with me was elegantly hand-written. It spanned from 1993 to 2011, and I have at least 75 pages worth. I may post it some day after reviewing it more closely, even though some of my youthful enthusiasm and desperation to find anyone intelligent to converse with is a bit embarrassing now (this was before the Internet starting making it easier to discourse with remote people in our Phyles). 2
But as I mention him in Herman, The Louisiana Civil Code: A European Legacy for the United States, I’ll post below some selected text from two of our interchanges in 1993–1994, concerning, in part, the “Tournament of Scholars” between Pascal and Batiza. As was clear in our first discussion, Pascal was a leftist and what he called a “catholic communist,” small-c catholic, he emphasized. But he was smart and courtly and decent and I really liked and admired him. [continue reading…]
Thanks, Grok!
Prompts include:
“The Renaissance emphasized a “rebirth” (from the French word renaître, meaning to be born again) of classical Greek and Roman knowledge, arts, and culture.” Why was it dormant or lost?list the top 10 enlightenment figures, and the top 10 classical liberal figures, and show overlap.explain the difference between classical liberalism, libertarianism, and conservatism, and whether libertarianism is right or left, and what about the influence on libertarianism of both classical liberalism as well as the Old Right thinkers and the reason who there seems to be more of an affinity between libertarians and modern conservatives and Republicans than there does to be between libertarians and democrats. Consult https://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/09/hans-hermann-hoppe/smack-down/ and https://stephankinsella.com/2022/01/the-three-fusionisms/what is the difference between the renaissance and enlightment. explain their significance and relation to classical liberalism
now combine all your previous answers into one final unified overall report. And include in this an analysis of the question of whether libertarianism is of the left, or of the right, and trace its progenitors, influences, and origins. Consult also the attached
Related:
In my libertarian and law school studies I was fascinated with law and legal history, reading books and articles touching on both topics, e.g. Bruce Benson’s The Enterprise of Law, Bruno Leoni’s Freedom and the Law, and so on. 1 As an aspiring legal scholar and lawyer, and Louisiana-educated “civilian” lawyer, I was also interested not only in the common law but the Roman and European civil law, and in law reviews in general. Even footnotes. 2 I also became interested in international law when pursuing an LL.M. in international law at King’s College London, and ended up publishing a lot in this area and melding it with my libertarian-related theorizing. [continue reading…]
Related:
In my libertarian and law school studies I was fascinated with law and legal history, reading books and articles touching on both topics, e.g. Bruce Benson’s The Enterprise of Law, Bruno Leoni’s Freedom and the Law, and so on. 1 As an aspiring legal scholar and lawyer, and Louisiana-educated “civilian” lawyer, I was also interested not only in the common law but the Roman and European civil law, and in law reviews in general. Even footnotes. 2 I also became interested in international law when pursuing an LL.M. in international law at King’s College London, and ended up publishing a lot in this area and melding it with my libertarian-related theorizing. [continue reading…]
Stephan Kinsella is a libertarian writer and retired patent attorney in Houston, Texas. He has published widely on various areas of libertarian legal theory and on legal topics such as intellectual property law and international law. His publications include Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Papinian Press, 2023), Against Intellectual Property (Mises Institute, 2008), International Investment, Political Risk, and Dispute Resolution: A Practitioner’s Guide (Oxford, 2020), and The Universal Principles of Liberty (2025).
My Failed Libertarian Speaking Hiatus; Memories of Mises Institute and Other Events, 1988–20192025
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