StephanKinsella.com

Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Houston, Texas: Papinian Press, 2023) has been translated into Portuguese as Fundamentos Legais de uma Sociedade Livre (forthcoming 2025), by Rick Theu and VAP of the Instituto Hoppe (Brasil). The book has been divided into two voluments: Vol. 1 (Parts I–III; pdf) and Vol. 2 (Parts IV–VI; pdf).

According to the publisher (and as also noted in the Publishers note below), “there is still some revision to be done (some of the footnotes need to be corrected—some are referencing the wrong pages, some could reference the corresponding Portuguese edition of the works that have already been translated, etc.).” I will post updated files when received. I append below Hoppe’s Foreword and my Preface.

The Publisher’s note is included below. I wish to make one correction. They write “The work of translation is always thankless.” Not true: they have my gratitude and appreciation. ¹ It is always a pleasure to encounter others with a passion to help spread the ideas of liberty. [continue reading…]

1. I am reminded of my correspondence with the late, great Dr. Petr Beckmann in the 1990s (see various posts here). I had proposed writing a treatment of some of his ideas on nuclear power and asked his permission; he replied that I had not only his permission but his gratitude. Also, as I pointed out to the translators here: my comment above was more jocular—just an excuse to express gratitude. As I pointed out to him, in my 1994 review of Hoppe, jokingly wrote this: “18. Hoppe dedicates the volume to Murray N. Rothbard, stating that ‘words cannot express my personal gratitude.’ Economics and Ethics xi. Of course (I point out in jest), by using words to express his personal gratitude Hoppe contradicts himself by stating that words cannot express his gratitude.” I was being cheeky. I removed this comment from the version in my book … ch. 22 of Legal Foundations of a Free Society. [↩]

• The “Liberty Is Your Only Value” Canard

New paper:  Łukasz Dominiak and Igor Wysocki, “Libertarianism, Defense of Property, and Absolute Rights,” Analiza i Egzystencja 61 (2023): 5–26. Abstract:

The present paper argues that libertarians (e.g. Murray Rothbard, Stephan Kinsella) who subscribe to the proportionality principle while embracing the view that to have a right to property is to have a right to defend it run into what we call the Property Defense Dilemma. For if the only way to defend property is to defend it disproportionately, then a private property right—contrary to what these thinkers claim—is not accompanied by a right to defend it. The most plausible way out of the dilemma—the present paper argues—is to conceive of private property rights as only weakly absolute, to use Matthew H. Kramer’s illuminating distinction. On the other hand, libertarians who, like Walter Block, would like to escape the dilemma by replacing the proportionality standard with the gentleness principle run into other sorts of problems (moral implausibility, incoherence), which also shows that it is the libertarian view on rights as infinitely stringent side constraints that calls for revision and attenuation.

[continue reading…]

Stephan Kinsella’s Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Houston, Texas: Papinian Press, 2023) is now available in a Chinese translation as 自由社会的法律根基 (Feb. 2025) (pdf) (previous draft mentioned here). The proofread text of the translation is also available below.

The book was translated by Li San (李三) of the Mises Translation and Compilation Society (米塞斯编译社译丛), a group dedicated to translating and editing the classic works of the Austrian School.

As the Society is not licensed to publish, I plan to publish paper and kindle versions of this with Papinian Press. Stay tuned.

[continue reading…]

There is apparently yet another new libertarianism-related book in the works: The Freedom Scale: An Accurate Measure of Left and Right, by one Christopher Cook, whom I have never heard of before (h/t Adam Haman). See:

• “Why You Should Read This Book: Teaser and praise for ‘The Freedom Scale’ (Read me first.)”
• Title Page and Dedication

My initial impressions from a quick glance: [continue reading…]

I have argued against voluntary slavery contracts previously (see “A Libertarian Theory of Contract: Title Transfer, Binding Promises, and Inalienability,” Legal Foundations of a Free Society [LFFS], Part III.C.1; KOL285 | Disenthrall: Contracts with Stephan Kinsella; see also my query to Grok, appended below).

As I wrote in LFFS:

But in the case of an attempted voluntary slavery contract, the promisor, by saying, “I promise to be your slave,” or “I give my body to you” does not commit an act of aggression. It does not create any victim who has a right to retaliate against him. So if the would-be slave decides to renege on his promise and run off, the would-be master has no right to use force to stop him. It is always current consent that matters. If a girl promises a kiss at the end of the date and the boyfriend an hour later kisses her, she cannot claim it was nonconsensual. In effect, she communicated her consent, she set up a standing presumption that is reasonable to rely on—until and unless she changes her mind. If at the end of the date she announces she no longer wants a kiss, it is that consent that matters. It is always the most recent consent that matters since this is the best evidence for what was consented to. There is nothing in libertarianism that says people cannot change their minds. To simply state that you can make an irrevocable, binding promise is just question-begging since it is just another way of sneaking in the assumption that our bodies are alienable, even though our rights to our body do not stem from homesteading or acquisition but rather from our direct control of them.

[continue reading…]

In discussing an article by Ron Johnson, The Government Says Money Isn’t Property—So It Can Take Yours, I mentioned that in previous writing ¹ I had argued that just as bitcoin is not ownable, in today’s world of fiat money even dollars are not exactly ownable—but that I would not want to get the state to accept this argument at present time. A friend asked me: “what would follow if the courts accepted your premise? How could that affect intellectual property law?” [continue reading…]

1.  Nobody Owns Bitcoin and Libertarian Answer Man: Eminent Domain and Ownership of State Monetary Payments. [↩]

Related:

• The problem of particularistic ethics or, why everyone really has to admit the validity of the universalizability principle
• Chapter 5: A Libertarian Theory of Punishment and Rights
• Chapter 6: Dialogical Arguments for Libertarian Rights
• Chapter 7: Defending Argumentation Ethics: Reply to Murphy & Callahan,
• Hans Hermann Hoppe, “On The Ethics of Argumentation” (PFS 2016)
• The A priori of Argumention, video introduction by Hoppe
• Lecture 3 of my 2011 Mises Academy course, “The Social Theory of Hoppe” (slides here)
• Lecture 2 of my 2011 Mises Academy course, “Libertarian Legal Theory: Property, Conflict, and Society” (slides here)
• my “Dialogical Arguments for Libertarian Rights,” in The Dialectics of Liberty (Lexington Books, 2019)
• Kinsella, “Explaining Argumentation Ethics and Universalizability Concisely to a Facebook Friend” (March 1, 2019)
• ——, The Genesis of Estoppel: My Libertarian Rights Theory, StephanKinsella.com (March 22, 2016)
• ——, Hoppe’s Argumentation Ethics and Its Critics, StephanKinsella.com (Aug. 11, 2015)
• ——, The problem of particularistic ethics or, why everyone really has to admit the validity of the universalizability principle (Nov. 10, 2011)
• Other Argumentation ethics posts

From an email:

Hello Mr. Kinsella,

I have been interested in Libertarianism for some time now and Hoppes AE has especially fascinated me. However, I have some questions which were left open. Hoppes central claim seems to be, that you cannot argue without accepting NAP and self-ownership.

Not exactly. It is that all truth claims must be established in argumentation, including claims about what norms or conduct is justifiable. Also, that the activity argumentative justification necessarily presupposes certain norms or values, such as peace, universalizability, non-contradiction, truth, the ability to homestead unowned resources, the ability to control one’s own body, the value of avoiding conflict, and so on; and that these norms–which we may think of as “grundnorms”–cannot be denied without contradiction since they are inevitably presupposed by every participant in argumentative justification; and finally, that any political norm other than libertarianism (that is, all forms of socialism) are incompatible with these grundnorms and thus cannot be argumentatively justified. It is essentially a proof by contradiction: that any non-libertarian political norm contradicts more basic norms that are necessarily presupposed by all participants in argumentation. Socialism is aggression and violence and contradicts the norms presupposed by the participants by virtue of participating in the peaceful activity of argumentation.

I go into some of this in Stephan Kinsella, Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Houston, Texas: Papinian Press, 2023) (LFFS), e.g. ch. 2, n. 22, ch. 14 Part II.C, et pass.

But I could be a utilitarian or a moral nihilist, who just uses argumentation to maximise utility or for selfish reasons. It doesn’t require me to accept that me or you own our bodies, just that we control them. Hoppe seems to use ownership and control interchangeably.

I actually address this issue in LFFS, e.g. ch. 22, Part II.G. I think he does use them interchangeably sometimes (English was not his native language) but it does not seriously affect his argument. Hoppe correctly observes that for argument to take place actors must have the ability to control their body, to use standing room, and to have previously acquired and used natural resources; and he also is correct that participants in argumentation cannot object to the right of the parties to have done this. So it does not matter if a nihilist is just pretending to be sincere; it is still the case that it is impossible to argumentatively justify institutionalized aggression, since if and to the extent he is engaging in argumentation then he does recognize the value of peace and the value of he and the other participant being alive and being able to use resources and thus being able to acquire them in a conflict free way, which thus implies grundnorms that are compatible only with libertarianism and not with any form of socialism.

Also saying that one cannot speak is a performative contradiction, but saying that one should not speak seems more like hypocrisy. I would be thrilled, if you could clarify.

I am not sure what you are referring to. AE does not rest on the notion that it is a contradiction to say “one should not speak”.

You should review the more recent literature on this—by Hoppe, me, and others, before coming back with more questions. Many of your questions may be already answered there. See for instance the sources linked below, which I take from an answer to an email I received just a few days ago:

Meanwhile you might check out these in case you are not aware of them: namely, the material listed here, “Argumentation Ethics and Liberty: A Concise Guide,” including:

these updated chapters in my book Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Houston, Texas: Papinian Press, 2023):

• Chapter 5: A Libertarian Theory of Punishment and Rights
• Chapter 6: Dialogical Arguments for Libertarian Rights (an update of “New Rationalist Directions in Libertarian Rights Theory“)
• Chapter 7: Defending Argumentation Ethics: Reply to Murphy & Callahan

As well as more recent pieces by Hoppe and others listed in the Supplemental Resources and Updates section of that post, e.g.

• Hans Hermann Hoppe, “On The Ethics of Argumentation” (PFS 2016)
• The A priori of Argumention, video introduction by Hoppe
• Lecture 3 of my 2011 Mises Academy course, “The Social Theory of Hoppe” (slides here)
• Lecture 2 of my 2011 Mises Academy course, “Libertarian Legal Theory: Property, Conflict, and Society” (slides here)
• my “Dialogical Arguments for Libertarian Rights,” in The Dialectics of Liberty (Lexington Books, 2019)
• Kinsella, “Explaining Argumentation Ethics and Universalizability Concisely to a Facebook Friend” (March 1, 2019)
• ——, The Genesis of Estoppel: My Libertarian Rights Theory, StephanKinsella.com (March 22, 2016)
• ——, Hoppe’s Argumentation Ethics and Its Critics, StephanKinsella.com (Aug. 11, 2015)
• ——, The problem of particularistic ethics or, why everyone really has to admit the validity of the universalizability principle (Nov. 10, 2011)

***

Followup:

Thank you for clarification. One last criticism I have of Hoppe, is that he seems to follow the neo-Kantian mystic tradition of Mises rather than Rothbards Aristotelian approach. However, this is a separate issue.

I think Rothbard’s approach is actually somewhat confused, as the natural rights/natural law idea has flaws, in that it attempts to go from is to ought: e.g., the way something is (its nature) determines what it ought to do. But there is a problem with this approach as Hoppe rightly points out: “[O]ne can readily subscribe to the almost generally accepted view that the gulf between ‘ought’ and ‘is’ is logically unbridgeable.” See Kinsella, Legal Foundations of a Free Society, ch. 6, text at n.12 (p. 119). In fact Rothbard himself recognized this:

In a dazzling breakthrough for political philosophy in general and for libertarianism in particular, he [Hoppe] has managed to transcend the famous is/ought, fact/value dichotomy that has plagued philosophy since the days of the scholastics, and that had brought modern libertarianism into a tiresome deadlock. Not only that: Hans Hoppe has managed to establish the case for anarcho-capitalist, Lockean rights in an unprecedentedly hard-core manner, one that makes my own natural law/natural rights position seem almost wimpy in comparison. (Ibid., p. 121)

As for Kant’s “mysticism,” I am not quite sure what you mean but I suppose this is the bound up with the Randian criticism of “mysticism” and Kant and his idealism. In my view, there is nothing mystical about Hoppe’s argument nor about Mises’s own epistemology and methodology which is based on some Kantian concepts and insights (Ludwig von Mises, Epistemological Problems of Economics, 3d ed., George Reisman, trans. (Auburn, Ala.: Mises Institute, 2003)).

I assume by mysticism you mean the idealistic interpretation of Kant made by Rand. A few things here. First, I tend to agree with Rand that the Kantian idealism (skepticism, subjectivism) they describe is flawed and their criticisms of it are largely accurate. However, it is far from clear that this is actually what Kant’s views claim. Kant’s writing is complex and sometimes murky, and it appears there are two interpretations of him: the American one which reads him as promoting idealism; and the European interpretation of Kant which is essentially realistic. This latter one is the Kantian approach adopted and employed by Mises and Hoppe, who are realists, and it is perhaps why this realist-Kantian perspective is similar in some respects to the more Aristotelian approach of Rothbard (in ethics, say) and why Rothbard had essentially no problems with the Misesian approach to economics, praxeology, “apriori” truths, and so on, even if he would use different terminology. For more on this see Kinsella, “Mises and Rand (and Rothbard)” and Kinsella, LFFS, ch. 22, n.53; also Rothbard, “The Mantle of Science,” “In Defense of ‘Extreme Apriorism,’” and other chapters in Section One: Method, of Economic Controversies (Auburn, Ala.: Mises Institute, 2011). On Mises’s realism, see Ludwig von Mises, “Epistemological Studies,” in Memoirs, Arlene Oost-Zinner, trans (Auburn, Ala.: Mises Institute, 2009) (formerly Notes and Recollections); Mises’s dismissive remarks on Popper in The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science: An Essay on Method (Princeton, N.J.: D. Van Nostrand Company, Inc., 1962), chap. 4, §8 and chap. 7, §4; idem, Theory and History: An Interpretation of Social and Economic Evolution (Auburn, Ala.: Mises Institute, 2007 [1957]), chap. 1, §3. See also Edward W. Younkins, “Menger, Mises, Rand, and Beyond,” J. Ayn Rand Stud. 6, no. 2 (Spring 2005): 337–74, p. 342 et pass. (also in Edward W. Younkins, ed., Philosophers of Capitalism: Menger, Mises, Rand, and Beyond (Lexington Books, 2005)), and Heidi C. Morris, “Reason and Reality: The Logical Compatibility of Austrian Economics and Objectivism,” Rebirth of Reason (May 10, 2005).)

I do not really trust Rand’s interpretation of Kant; as noted, her critiques of the idealism she is describing are mostly well taken, but it may be aimed at a straw man. As Hoppe wrote:

Among some followers of Austrianism, the Kant interpretation of Ayn Rand (see, for instance, her Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology [1979]; or For the New Intellectual [1961]) enjoys great popularity. Her interpretation, replete with sweeping denunciatory pronouncements, however, is characterized by a complete absence of any interpretive documentation whatsoever. On Rand’s arrogant ignorance regarding Kant, see B. Goldberg, “Ayn Rand’s ‘For the New Intellectual,’” New Individualist Rev., vol. 1, no. 3 (1961).

Kinsella, LFFS, ch. 22, text at n.53.

[Update: Re Rand and Kant: Objectivist Round-up, April 2025: “2. Ayn Rand Institute (ARI) philosopher Greg Salmieri is asked how much of Kant Rand read.  He says he doesn’t know because we don’t have any books by Kant that she “marked up.”  Salmieri says that Rand likely learned a lot about Kant from Peikoff and she may have studied the various arguments in the Critique of Pure Reason with him.  Brook asks Salmieri about Rand’s take on Kant and he says it’s correct albeit on a high level.”]

***

My interpretation of Kant came largely from Liquidzulu. I think he is an objektivist. His recent video goes into detail on this topic. You should check out his content sometime. … here are the two sources for my critiques of AE and Kant: https://youtu.be/QoU3KsZaj-M?feature=shared and https://youtu.be/W-NQWJn-AHw?feature=shared

I know of Zulu and like a lot of his stuff. See my post LiquidZulu’s Free Course: “The Fundamentals of Libertarian Ethics”. However I am not sure about all of it and only have limited time at present to look into this.

In any case, this is another reason it’s important not to rely only on secondary (or tertiary) sources, or at least to be wary of it. I think if you are serious about this, about forming views about Kant and how it relates to Hoppe’s work, you need to actually read scholarly works about Kant, at the very least, if not Kant himself, and not just rely on Youtube video especially those by amateur scholars instead of professional philosophers. Unfortunately many younger libertarians seem not to actually read anymore but learn mainly from informal sources like youtube videos. To really understand libertarian theory one must read the world of past thinkers. Like … books.

Ok, I have one question left. Do you consider the Action axiom a law of thought or of reality?

I would not call it an axiom. That is an idiosyncratic usage by Rand to describe truths we know that are self-evident or whose denial leads to contradiction. Instead I would refer to what Mises calls apodictic knowledge or truths–what he would call apriori true knowledge.

Such knowledge includes Descartes’ cogito: I think therefore I am. I.e., I know that I exist, because I (know that) I am thinking. It cannot be denied by any thinking person that he exists. This is apodictic knowledge. Likewise other knowledge like consciousness, the law of non-contradiction, and so on. E.g. see Rand’s comments about consciousness.

To assert that “man acts” reads at first like an assertion fact, like “monkeys eat bananas.” We can imagine a world with no acting men, but to the extent there is anyone wondering about whether man acts, there must be a man in existence to ask the question, and if he exists, he does act: he employs means to achieve ends. This seems apodictic to me, though it is not simple and it is somewhat complicated. For example I accept Mises’s dualist approach where he sees the methods of the natural sciences are appropriate to the study of causal phenomenon and other methods appropriate to the study of teleological phenomenon.

Thus we can view humans in the causal realm as behavers and in the teleological realm as actors, and the latter us usually more useful. Introspectively we are aware that we experience life as a series of actions: choices to pursue a given end in an attempt to overcome felt uneasiness by employing efficacious scarce means to achieve those ends. We reasonably assume that other humans with a similar biological makeup have a similar internal experience and thus we characterize their motions not as mere behavior but as action: we impute meaning to what they do, we impute purposes to their motions. This is neither right or wrong; it is a useful framing. To say that humans act is to say that one way to understand what we observe is to think of it in terms of the means-ends framework.

But it is conceivable to view humans purely causally in which case they do not “act” any more than a lawnmower acts. God could view us this way, for example. Or as Hoppe writes, in Economic Science and the Austrian Method,

“One might hold this conception of freedom to be an illusion. And one might well be correct from the point of view of a scientist with cognitive powers substantially superior to any human intelligence, or from the point of view of God. But we are not God, and even if our freedom is illusory from His standpoint and our actions follow a predictable path, for us this is a necessary and unavoidable illusion”.

But for us, it seems unavoidable to understand what we ourselves do as actions, that is, from the teleological framework, and thus to apply this to understanding what others do as well. It is undeniably useful and probably unavoidable and indispensable. Does this mean humans “really” “act” “instead of” being “caused”? I am not sure. I am not sure it matters to be able to answer this question, and I do not think I am enough of a philosopher to answer this—but I am beginning to suspect no one is. I am a dualist, in the Misesian sense (see Human Action and The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science).

Causality is apriori true since it is presupposed in any action and any inquiry into either the causal or teleological realms of phenomena. As Mises explains, “we may speak of causality as a category or an a priori of thinking and acting. … All we can say about causality is that it is a priori not only of human thought but also of human action.” The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, ch.1, §4.

So it is an undeniable “fact” “that” “humans act”? I would say that it is true enough so as to not matter.

It is a truth; I am not sure how to easily answer the question as to whether it is a law of thought or of reality. I am not sure it is a “law” at all. It is an assertion about one aspect of reality, in the end, but it stems from the way we understand reality conceptually and according to various categories and framings. As Mises writes, “Eminent philosophers have tried to elaborate a complete list of the a priori categories, the necessary conditions of experience and thought. One does not belittle these attempts at analysis and systematization if one realizes that any proposed solution leaves a broad margin for the individual thinker’s discretion.” I.e., it is useful to think of humans as acting; within that framework, yes, humans “do” “act.”

In my book Stephan Kinsella, Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Houston, Texas: Papinian Press, 2023), ch. 5, p. 73, n.23, I provide a quote, “What you do speaks so loud I can’t hear what you are saying.” which I took from an article by Clarence Carson. Carson calls it an “old saw” but provides no attribution.

I have realized this is a version of a quote widely attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson. According many sources on the Internet, the original quote is “What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.” Emmet Fox, in The Sermon on the Mount: The Key to Success in Life (HarperOne, Reissue ed., 2009), provides a subtly different version, also attributed to Emerson: “What you are shouts so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.”

I found it curious that none of the sources attributing this to Emerson provide a citation. I was unable to find this exact quote anywhere in Emerson’s work. With the help of people on Twitter, I finally came across this: “What you are stands over you the while, and thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary,” from this paragraph:

Let nature bear the expense. The attitude, the tone, is all. Let our eyes not look away, but meet. Let us not look east and west for materials of conversation, but rest in presence and unity. A just feeling will fast enough supply fuel for discourse, if speaking be more grateful than silence. When people come to see us, we foolishly prattle, lest we be inhospitable. But things said for conversation are chalk eggs. Don’t say things. What you are stands over you the while, and thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary. A lady of my acquaintance said, “I don’t care so much for what they say as I do for what makes them say it.

[continue reading…]

Interesting recent paper, Norbert Slenzok, “Libertarians Against the American World. A Critical Analysis,” Athenæum: Polish Political Science Studies 84, no. 4 (2024): pp. 7–27 (pdf).

Abstract:

The paper deals with the view of contemporary world politics presented by American libertarians. Specifically, it examines the claims of Murray N. Rothbard and his successors with regard to the role of the United States of America in the international arena. The article argues that since the Cold War, the libertarian account of international relations has been staunchly critical of the US, while exhibiting a soft spot for competing powers, particularly the USSR and the Russian Federation. As the article submits, this asymmetry is supported by two flawed theoretical contentions: the liberal imperialism thesis (LIT) and the American hegemony thesis (AHT). Moreover, the article shows how anti-Americanism impinges on libertarian analyses of contemporary Central- Eastern European politics, in particular the war in Ukraine.

[continue reading…]

[UPDATE: See final version here]

Here is a first draft of a translation of Stephan Kinsella, Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Houston, Texas: Papinian Press, 2023) into Chinese, translated by Li San (李三). The following is not yet proofread, according to the translator.

[continue reading…]

• On Taxing Harvard: Ranting about Thuggocrats and Waystation/Post-libertarians

I’ve learned and profited a great deal from libertarian legal scholar Randy Barnett’s work—on contract theory, punishment, constitutional and ninth amendment issues, originalism, and more. ¹

In his really unique and excellent new book, A Life for Liberty: The Making of an American Originalist (2024), which I read cover to cover, he has an intriguing section near the end on “What’s Next for Libertarianism” where he hints a possible future book extending his previous thought on liberty and libertarianism. He suggests several extensions to or possibly modifications to libertarianism that might try to address. For example: “If we are to be libertarians and not propertarians, … libertarians need also to be concerned about threats to individual liberty now posed by privately owned companies. … A good theoretical start would be to separate the “public-private” binary from the “government-nongovernment” binary.” I have concerns about conservatives and libertarians who try to blur the distinction between between private and state actors—for example in attempts to subject big tech platforms to defamation liability out of spite or because they just don’t like them ², or in arguments that private actors (banks, big tech, New York Times) are really “part of the state” and thus it’s fine to subject them to otherwise unjust and unlibertarian laws, such as libel law, or even to justify having the state regulate these corporations, since they are after all effectively state organs ³—but it would be interesting to see Barnett grapple with these matters. [continue reading…]

1. See my review of his book, The Structure of Liberty, “Knowledge, Calculation, Conflict, and Law,” in Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Houston, Texas: Papinian Press, 2023), and many other references to Barnett’s work in this book. [↩]
2. No, Libertarians, We Should NOT Abolish the CDA §230 and DMCA Safe Harbors! [↩]
3. KOL354 | CDA §230, Being “Part of the State,” Co-ownership, Causation, Defamation, with Nick Sinard; Van Dun, Barnett on Freedom vs. Property; Is Macy’s Part of the State? A Critique of Left Deviationists; on Block’s defamation suit against the New York Times, see Walter Block Defends His Libel Suit Against The New York Times; A Libertarian Analysis of Suing for Libel (“How … can I justify suing the New York Times for libel? It is simple. The libertarian case against suing for libel applies only to innocent people, and this newspaper does not at all qualify. Rather, this organization is a member in good standing of the ruling class, and all bets are off for criminals of that ilk.”), and others here. [↩]