In response to this post:
Stephan, these detailed taxonomies are just sand in the eyes. There are only two kinds of libertarian, much as some would like to obscure it: Rothbardian and non-Rothbardian. But even that can be a distraction in our everyday work. As Murray noted — minarchist or anarchist, constitutionalist or monarchist — there is really only one consideration: Do you hate the state?
Re people who say they “don’t believe in labels” …. Labels are just words that correlate with concepts. So what is the person against–conceptual thinking, or being able to communicate them by language? When someone tells me he doesn’t believe in labels, I say, “So, you’re one of those non-labelers, eh?”
[Old LRC post]
Some of the best fiction I’ve read in some time, maybe ever, definitely just about the best sci-fi I’ve ever read: The Golden Age trilogy, by John C. Wright. If you liked Atlas Shrugged and like hard sci-fi (e.g., fans of Gregory Benford’s Galactic Center saga; Dan Simmons’ Hyperion novels; Orson Scott Card’s Ender books; and Vernor Vinge’s Fire Upon The Deep), you’ll like this. It’s sci-fi by an obvious libertarian and proponent of individualism and free-market, if not Austrian, economics (some of the mini-speeches about the necessity of money even in an advanced society a million years down the road, are very impressive), but it’s not “libertarian sci-fi” of the jokey, preachy, or humorless (no offense, Ayn Rand) type. Highly recommended.
[continue reading…]
From the Mises blog. Archived comments below.
On an email discussion list, some of us libertarians were talking about a recent incident in Ohio where a large group of black teens attacked a white family on the 4th, for apparently racially-motivated reasons. The question arose as to whether this is a “hate crime.” My response was:
The thing is there is a difference between the intentionality of an action or crime, and its motivations. The race-crimers conflate these. It is rational to classify a crime or tort by its intentionality: thus if it’s accidental, it’s mere negligence; if it’s fully intentional (you intended to murder the guy) then it IS murder. It does not matter WHY the criminal killed you for purposes of classifying what the action IS: he might have murdered you b/c he is racist, b/c he is a sadist, b/c he’s a socialist, or b/c he’s taking orders from General Washington.
That said, an understanding of the motivation of a given crime can be helpful in understanding, tracking, combatting it; and it might even factor in to the punishment phase. So if you steal b/c you are just a professional thief, or you steal a loaf of bread out of desperation to feed your children, then both are intentional crimes, both are theft. But maybe you have mercy on the latter guy and don’t punish him as much. Etc.
The problem as I see it is that a racist motivation to assault someone is not really any worse for the victim than other (evil) motivations for assault. If I assault you b/c I hate your skin color and am a racist, why is that worse for the victim than if I assault you b/c I want to make my bones or whatever? In the case of the starving bread thief vs. bank robber, the former is more pitiable and has more of an excuse. In the case of a racially-motivated crime such as murder, rape, assault, it’s not really any worse than a non-racially-motivated act of murder, rape, etc. It’s different in that the motivation is different, but I dont see that it’s worse (or better) as a crime.
And here is an older Mises.org post of mine on this issue:
July 25, 2005 10:18 AM by Stephan Kinsella | Other posts by Stephan Kinsella | Comments (5)
On a private list I posted the following:
I’m looking for a couple of good libertarian articles that oppose hate-crime legislation on grounds that the motive behind a particular intentional crime do not make the particular act of crime better or worse from the victim’s point of view, or similar criticism.
I received a few private replies to my post. Let me clarify and answer them generally here.
First, my post was not an attempt to argue any point; I was just asking for an article that makes this argument, so I can use it in a footnote.
But let me mention my views briefly here on this. I am not implying that intention does not matter when assessing criminal action. Far from it. However, I do distinguish between the intentionality of the crime, and its motivation or purpose. A human action (such as a crime) is necessarily intentional, or purposeful. But it is intentional regardless of what the specific purpose is. I would view a racist attack on someone as an intentional act, with a racist purpose. A non-racist attack on someone is still intentional, and thus still a crime; it still has a purpose, but the purpose is something other than a racist one, e.g. it might be to further a robbery or sheer sadism. (For further discussion of these issues, see my article Causation and Aggression, distinguishing between mere behavior, and action, which is intentional, for purposes of identifying criminal human action; and Causation and Aggression, concerning the relevance of the intentional nature of action, and its purposes, including criminal action.)
For example, if I am playing basketball with you and my fist accidentally hits you in the face, as we are jostling; or if I have an epileptic fit and my arm strikes you; or if I am joking with you, trying to tease you, and swing at you, intending to miss, but you move unpredictably and I strike you–all these are cases of a non-intentional, at worst negligent, action. I believe mens rea, or intent, is indeed an important element of a crime. The crime has to be intentional.
To me, the motive is the reason why you (do intentionally) commit a crime. If I intend to univitedly punch you in the face, this is a crime–battery. I might intend to do so because I want to frighten you; or I get a weird pleasure out of it; or I can’t control my temper; or as part of a robbery; or because you are gay or black, say.
A rape of a woman is an intentional crime. The motive may be to punish her (say, she broke up with you) or her husband; to have sex; to commit violence; or because she is the wrong race.
I can see motive being taken into account when determining punishment, once it is established that it is an intentional crime and thus that some punishment or response is justified. For example, if I break into your house (intentional–crime) for the purpose if robbing you (motive), that might receive a harsher punishment than if I break into your house (intentional–crime) for the purpose of surviving from a freak blizzard (motive). Likewise, if I steal a loaf of bread b/c I am desperate and need to save my baby who is starving, it is still an intentional crime but the purpose or motive is to save my baby’s life. If I steal your money to buy drugs or buy a Gamestation, the motive is different.
In my view, an out and out intentional criminal act, such as battery, rape, or murder, is not made worse if it is done for racist motivations than some other vile motivations. The more PC jurors might feel otherwise, I realize.
One of my correspondents replied,
agreeing that the motive may be relevant, the issue is just whether this motive is worse than others. I think we’re on the same page here. One difference is that many motives you’ve mentioned (e.g., robbery) are for the gain of the criminal, whereas this motive is solely to harm the victim. I’m not sure that warrants a harsher sentence (but I’m also not sure it doesn’t).
I would say that in the examples I would use to warrant harsher punishment, it is because the motive or goal is to harm the victim. In other cases, the harm to the victim is more like collateral damage. But in MY view, a guy who rapes a woman because he wants to get laid; and the guy who rapes a woman because he dislikes her race, are equally bad. They are both commiting intentional crime; and both are intending to harm the victim. I do not see that the race-motived rape is any worse in any way than the non-race motivated one.
My point is you have to not only show that the motives are different, but that they are relevantly different. Stealing money to keep from starving seems more innocuous than stealing money to guy a gun to rob a bank. But murdering someone intentionally, because they are in the way of a crime; or because they are black; do not seem morally distinguishable to me. I would execute either one.
***
Side-point: this is one reason, in my view, outright intentional crimes ought to be punished more severely than “negligent” acts. I think of it this way. Libertarianism has a certain symmetry about it; we believe that punishment or responsive force may only be used in response to initiated force. So it is force, versus force. But we also believe in proportionality in response. A disproportionate response that “overpunishes” is itself, to an extent, aggressive. Now an intentional crime, such as murder (e.g., first-degree murder) is punished by, say, capital punishment. This is just because the punishment is an intentional administration of the penalty of death; this corresponds to “what the aggressor did,” namely he also intentionally caused someone’s death.
Now in the case of negligent causing of death, i.e. manslaughter, where you accidentally kill someone, the reason that this is not punishable by death is that the this would be disproportionate. Punishment is always fully (100%) intentional. Yet the action being punished may be thought of as only partially intentional–say, 5% instead of 100% (that is why it is manslaughter–negligence–instead of first-degree–intentionally–murder). Since the punishment must be fully intentional, the punishment given must be reduced to balance it out. Instead of executing the tortfeasor, you give him, say, 5% of capital punishment–maybe 5 years in jail, say, or a corresponding obligation to pay damages. For more on proportionality in punishment, see my article Punishment and Proportionality.
July 25, 2005 at 11:21 amPunishing a criminal has nothing to do with compensating the victim. In case of a murder the victim is already dead and no amount of punishment meted out to the murderer will give any benefit to the victim.
What the rest of the society is interested in is to avoid further occurences of such cases. It is only for this reason that we use criminal prosecution.
Therefore, it makes sense to punish criminals based not only on their intentions but also on their purposes!
July 25, 2005 at 2:54 pmI accept that punishment deters some crime, but it tends to be of limited effect. Even with the ultrabureaucratic and tyrannical state (or sometimes because of it) there are a lot of things which are not “crimes”, but do involve force or fraud.
(I will restate this below, but if by “hate crime”, you mean any crime whose victim is on a list of “politically correct” groups (women are not a minority), it is corruption or nonsense so doesn’t merit discussion)
And many crimes are committed without thought of punishment. If one lacks the virtue of prudence to not commit a crime on principle, one usually doesn’t have a few dregs of it left to prevent committing crime because of the practical problem – you might get caught, tried, convicted, and punished.
In the case of negligence – what about someone who acts carefully or negligently based on the race of the person who may get hurt or one of the other bases whereby things become hate crimes?
There is also a proper function of quarantine. If someone hears voices (without headphones, sort of an iPod-person) and ends up doing well intended harm, we normally want to prevent his action. If someone does harm out of hate (which may be no more willed than the person with the audio hallucinations), ought they not be isolated too?
In this case the reason for the incarceration is not punishment but quarantine. The person is a threat (as opposed to willing threats). Something is broken, and until it is fixed there is a reasonable expectation of harm.
The usual problem with “hate crime” legislation is that it doesn’t try to identify hate, but tends toward saying a crime against a PC class is by definition a “hate crime” even without any evidence. Periodically, someone brings up a gang of minority members who go to attack a member of a majority specifically because they are a member of a majority – yet that is not called a “hate crime” though the motivation is specifically hatred.
Such PC laws are nonsense, but it is hard to talk about the subject as if the laws were really to be used against people who acted irrationally on hatred.
Then there’s people who have been wronged – someone’s relative is killed, and they seek revenge, which is a form of hate. If they act, is that a “hate crime”?
July 25, 2005 at 4:05 pmLet us not forget that from a libertarian point of view, a legal system exists to impart retribution to the afflicted and not to benefit some third party (“society”). Therefore, it doesn’t matter to me if someone steals my car because that person is greedy, needy, depressed, hated my Latino mustache, or wanted to rub his cheeks against my cheap car seat fabric. The retribution should be aimed at trying to return me to my prior condition. And beyond this, the punishment should also go according to the actual crime done, not the causes (for example, Rothbard/Block would argue for two teeth for a tooth).
July 25, 2005 at 4:12 pm“Then there’s people who have been wronged – someone’s relative is killed, and they seek revenge, which is a form of hate. If they act, is that a “hate crime”?”
I don’t think that would be a hate crime at all. Revenge is totally justified as part of punishment. If I am killed, my estate (brother, for example, or son) would be entitled to at the very least kill my killer, and even demand extra compensation, perhaps determined on a case-by-case basis or via pre-determined insurance company policies, for the legal fees and other costs.
July 26, 2005 at 4:28 pmI suppose one could argue that enforcing a stiffer sentence for crimes that are committed with racist motivations would marginally decrease the incidence of such crimes, thus hate-crime laws would be justified for that reason. Of course, one could then argue that if stiffer sentences really did reduce crimes committed with racist motivations, then why not simply increase the sentences for all crimes with similar outcomes (murder and assault, for example), in which case there would now be no differences in the severity of the punishments. So I think I would have to come down on the side of those that think there should be no difference in the punishments for crime based on whether the crime was committed with racist motivations or simply evil intent.
Gary North’s column on Bill Marina, who passed away yesterday, mentioned Marina’s 2007 LRC article The Anti-War March on Washington: The Real Issue Is Empire. Marina’s article contains some interesting comments on the imperialist motives of George Washington at the founding of the American nation-state, which are especially apropos in light of recent posts such as ‘Untold Truths About the American Revolution’, Revising the American Revolution, The Murdering, Thieving, Enslaving, Unlibertarian Continental Army, and Goodbye 1776, 1789, Tom. A few key excerpts, with bold emphasis, are pasted below:
“[T]he British Constitution is more like a republic than an empire. They define a republic to be a government of laws, and not of men. . . . An empire is a despotism, and an emperor is a despot, bound by no law or limitation but his own will; it is a stretch of tyranny beyond absolute monarchy. For, although the will of an absolute monarch is law, yet his edicts must be registered by parliaments. Even this formality is not necessary in an empire.” ~ John Adams, Novanglus Papers, 1775….
…
Empire has always meant, not only a collapse of the idea of Law, but an enormous centralization of power, not only in foreign and military affairs, but domestically as well, with huge unaccountable bureaucracies developed to administer the State.An interesting question is when did America change from a Republic to an Empire? [continue reading…]
Classic post from Karen de Coster’s blog (see also David Gordon’s dissection of the Kochtopus):
Friday, July 11, 2008
The amazing Charles “anarchteacher” Burris whips out another analysis that’s worthy of entry into the Libertarian Blogging Hall of Fame.
It was highly amusing to read the New York Times story of billionaire David Koch’s $100 million dollar donation to the New York State Theater.
Mr. Koch, the story asserts, is the richest man in New York City, the financial capitol of America.
Next we will be reading of how this munificent multibillionaire has arranged with Parker Brothers to have his cheeky image placed on the cards of Monopoly, replacing the antiquated caricature of Wall Street mogul J. Pierpont Morgan.
Koch is chairman of the Reason Foundation, publisher of the ersatz-libertarian publication, REASON. In 1980, he was the vice presidential nominee of the Libertarian Party (back when it was known as “the Party of Principle”).
The NYT account only further dramatizes how far the once “principled” Koch brothers, David and Charles, have tragically fallen in three decades.
Once financial angels of the Libertarian Movement and the nexus of entities referred to by critics as the Kochtopus, now grandiose benefactors of the Republican Party while bailing out the New York City Opera and Ballet.
Its the same old statist song and dance.
At the pinnacle of the Kochs’ libertarian network was to be the Cato Institute.
While the Institute was initially financed by the Kochs’ largess, it was named by economist and historian Murray N. Rothbard for the celebrated libertarian essays, Cato’s Letters, by eighteenth century British authors John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon which later help inspire the American Revolution.
All this is particularly bittersweet to me.
This week marks a special milestone in my life. Its the thirtieth anniversary of the Cato Institute’s first Summer Seminar on Political Economy held at Wake Forrest University in 1978.
It was the intellectual highpoint of my libertarian education.
The heavyweight faculty included Murray N. Rothbard, Arthur A. Ekirch, Walter E. Grinder, Leonard P. Liggio, and Roy A. Childs.
This was before the big Cato Institute split detailed recently by David Gordon in his excellent series of articles at LewRockwell.com.
The curriculum was hardcore Rothbardian — natural rights libertarianism from The Ethics of Liberty, Austrian economics, revisionist history, libertarian class analysis, etc.
The Cato organizers gave us all a ton of excellent books (including Rothbard’s Power and Market) and photocopy reprints of classic articles, including Rothbard’s libertarian strategy memorandum which served as the guideline behind the Institute’s creation.
Rothbard later admitted that these early Seminars were organized as “best and the brightest” talent searches for Cato.
Out of that week-long event emerged future Kochtopus minions such as Tom G. Palmer, Jule R. Herbert, Tyler Cowen, and Sheldon Richman.
The celebrated Dr. Tom G. is known all too well today for his shaded infamy and catty back bitting slurrs regarding the Mises Institute, Lew Rockwell, Hans-Hermann Hoppe, and Gary North.
After Cato president and CEO Ed Crane stole Herbert’s wife Christina, “Jule the Tool” faded out of the picture into private legal practice in Alabama after a stint in the Reagan administration.
The precocious Tyler Cowen has gone on to be one of the most pliable instruments in the Kochtopus toolbox, especially when it comes to denigrating Austrian economics and the work of Ludwig Von Mises.
Sheldon Richman, it seems, has finally seen the light and is pursuing an independent destiny at the Foundation for Economic Education and the Future of Freedom Foundation, and has emerged as one of our finest libertarian writers.
How far the mighty Cato has fallen.
What was once the principled pinnacle of the Libertarian Movement has sunk below the Beltway waterline of the Potomac.
How pathetic and tragic.
What a waste of talent and treasure.
Lord Acton was right.
The Kochtopus lust for power did indeed corrupt.
From pinnacle to pimps in just three decades.
But then, you won’t think so, if you dislike male chauvinist pig fratboy antics or don’t have a juvenile sense of humor: “The Now Infamous Tucker Max Charity Auction Debacle” Story. “How Tucker became an urban legend (This is the complete, true story behind the famous email. If you aren’t familiar with this story in some way, you might want to read the others first; this one is long and gets very involved, especially if you aren’t a lawyer or never got the renowned “The Now Infamous Tucker Max Charity Auction Debacle” email.)”
Also funny is Tucker Max’s just recently restored story of his dating Miss Vermont–it was taken down until her lawsuit against him was recently dropped.
This story, by Tucker Max, about how he got fired when he was a summer associate at the California law firm Fenwick & West during the dot-com boom times, is one of the funniest things I’ve read in a while — it reminds me of my summer in 1990 clerking for Vinson & Elkins … NOT! Note that though he puts quotes around the names of two of the Fenwick trademark partners he mentions, I’m not so sure they are pseudonyms….
Also hilarious is his SFGirl “iGuy” profile (example: his “Favorite Practical Joke” is: “I like to go down to the dog pound and pretend that I’ve found my dog. Then I tell them to kill him anyway because I already gave away all his stuff. Dog people sure don’t have a very good sense of humor.”).
The Unidirectionality of Conversions
Several times I have noticed something about “conversions”–political, religious, what have you. It seems to me–and I suspect other libertarians have had similar thoughts from time to time, though I don’t recall seeing this written about before–that it’s an indication of the objective superiority of a view if conversions are almost always to that position, and rarely away from it.
The most obvious case would be libertarianism and socialism. You almost never hear of someone, once they become a libertarian, all of a sudden becoming a socialist. Whereas, many people, if they are sincere, ethical, and searching for politically sound views, will become libertarians to one degree or the other. This seems to be true, to varying degrees, of conversions of muzzy-headed liberals to “conservatives”–as people get older or wiser, many become more conservative. Do you ever hear of conservatives becoming more liberal? Arianna Huffington is the exception that proves the rule. [continue reading…]
So asks this Reason post, discussing five types of libertarian identified by Tyler Cowen. The five types are:
“Cato-influenced” is defined as “orthodox” libertarianism, “defined by the troika of free markets, non-interventionism, and civil liberties. It is based on individual rights but does not insist on anarchism. A ruling principle is that libertarians should not endorse state interventions.” Of course, Mises Instituters tend to adhere to these principles (and to be Rothbardians, often anarchists; and not “nationalists”). As Wirkman Virkkala notes:
Cowen apparently desired to carry water in the culture war between George Mason economists and the scholars and enthusiasts associated with the Mises Institute. His characterization of a “Mises Institute Nationalism” borders on bizarre, though I see why he would make the attempt. The fact that so many of these folks are themselves anarchists means that whatever “nationalism” they promote must be a different sort. I took from this short description that Cowen doesn’t like Hans-Herman Hoppe. Yeah, thanks for sharing. This description of a strand of libertarianism is less coherent than the previous.
The list is odd, indeed. Mises Institute people are not nationalists and generally are Rothbardians, so really 3 should collapse into 2. Hayek was not really a libertarian. 1 And it’s not clear that Jeffrey Friedman is either; he’s some kind of “postlibertarian.” 2
As for Cato: Look, I’m glad Cato is generally on our side. But the implication that Cato is “orthodox” libertarian, compared to the Mises Institute’s “nationalism” is guffaw-inducing. Of course, no group’s members have perfectly uniform views, but consider the following cases that seem to stray from the troika of basic libertarian principles of free markets, non-interventionism, and civil liberties, where various Catoites: [continue reading…]
Re What About the Ossetians?: Cato’s piece on the Russia-Georgia-Ossetia crisis is a bit odd. First, as Sheldon Richman notes, “the Georgian military response to … the secessionist ambitions of the majority in South Ossetia … was the immediate cause of the current war”; but the Cato piece blames Russia (”The war was a spectacular provocation that had been long prepared and successfully executed by the Russian ’siloviki’”), without so much as mentioning Georgia’s own complicity, or Georgia’s status as neocon stooge.
Further, as Richman notes, “Defenders of liberty … should … champion the cause of the brutalized Ossetians, who … demand independence from Georgia. … When President Bush says the ‘territorial integrity of Georgia’ must be respected and GOP presidential candidate John McCain declares, ‘Today we’re all Georgians,’ they are putting politics above justice.” He’s right: any libertarian ought to favor decentralization, secession, and independence. Yet, the Cato piece seems to bemoan the possibility that the breakaway regions may actually succeed in gaining independence–it’s a “loss” (”Under the new situation, the idea of legitimizing the de facto loss of South Ossetia and Abkhazia may gain traction in Georgian society.”)
Interestingly, the Cato piece is linked to approvingly on the smearblog of Cato’s vice president for international junketeering, hissy fitting, and slandering. And in the comments section, one of his fellow slimers apes the neocon line in opposing Ossetian independence in the name of the international law doctrine of “territorial integrity“. But the libertarian aspect of this doctrine is its prohibition of invasions of one nation by another. To the extent the principle is opposed to secession, it is unlibertarian. Update: The aforementioned VP of Junketeering (VPJ) has pitched a hissy fit about this post. My post was not inaccurate or false; by contrast, his is, as usual, riddled with outright lies and falsehoods, and bizarre complaints. Let’s see: He whines that I called the linked piece on Cato’s site the Cato piece… which it was. No falsehood there on my part.
The VPJ complains about my noting that the Cato piece seems to oppose the “loss” of South Ossetia and Abkhazia–well, I quoted the sentence at issue and linked to it, and only said it “seemed” this way to me, so readers can make up their own mind. No falsehood.
Said junketeer says the Cato piece does not call for a military response; and I never said it did.
In fact it was his fellow smearblogging slimer who called for Russia to be “confronted” and opposed Ossetian independence in the name of “territorial integrity”. Regarding that issue, I clearly stated that this doctrine is good insofar as it opposes nations invading others. I also said “To the extent the principle is opposed to secession, it is unlibertarian.” It was the VPJ’s fellow slimer who called on this principle to oppose Ossetian independence–and the VPJ has the temerity to imply that I am opposed to the doctrine of “territorial integrity”–even though I am not–and that I “support the Russian occupation and expulsion of the entire Georgian population from the Soviet-era territory of the South Ossetian Autonomous Oblast”–which I do not. Further Junketeer falsehoods. I support the doctrine of territorial integrity as a means of stopping states from invading other states; I merely oppose its use as a way to legitimize central state use of force to stop secession (no offense, Abraham Lincoln Cultists).
As for the Russian actions here–I of course completely oppose Russian occupation–as should be clear from the Richman lines I quoted approvingly above. Another lie from the VPJ is that we LRCers “idolize” Putin. And yet a further falsehood from the Prince of Junketeering, Lying & Smearing is the insinuation that those of us who opposed Abraham Lincoln’s murderous, illegal, unlibertarian war do so because we are neoconfederate racists who are glad to see blacks kept in chains. Absurd. It is states that have harmed minorities the most; we anarchists cannot have this pinned on us. The pro-state beltwaytarians are the ones who ought to look in the mirror for supporting the state that enslaves and robs and kills. (In any case, Southern secession actually made slavery less secure by annulling the Fugitive Slave Act. To say the opposite implies that the slaves were somehow kidnapped and then “rescued” by the Republican Party. This is the total sum of Harry Jaffa’s theory of the “Civil War” and is of course pure BS.)
VPJ is quite right that one problem of secession is that the seceding group might themselves abuse the rights of minorities or subgroups within the seceding region. But this is a problem of having states. That is one reason I, as an anarcho-libertarian, oppose all states and favor any group seceding from another, down to the individual. If VPJ were an anarchist, he could take this position too. In fact, the VPJ says we LRCers would not favor the Georgian-populated areas of South Ossetia seceding (no scare quotes needed) from South Ossetia. I would! And if a town in this area wants to secede, fine! And if a family living in that town wants to secede–yes!
Old LRC post:
Law professor Tom Bell critiques Tim “a billion lives for a single slave’s!” Sandefur’s latest Lincoln idolatry screed. My comments to Bell’s post are below, in case they get … misplaced:
Professor Bell,
Your comments are reasonable. Lucky Sandefur’s reply was so measured–I was waiting for him to call you a neoconfederate or apologist for slavery.
I too had a few civil email discussions with Sandefur in the past, and some substantive disagreements (e.g. here, here and here) but eventually he adopted the Catoite line of attacking those who disagree with his Jaffaite Lincoln idolatry as “neo-confederates” and the like (see here; some replies here and here). I guess Sandefur is too timid [read: cowardly] to call you a neoconfederate slavery-lover for your views, though he must be biting his tongue.
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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