A Parliament of Lawyers and Rights
One of the great advantages of the ever-increasing plethora of rights conferred upon us by government (except that of keeping the product of our own labor) is that it requires lawyers to adjudicate...
View ArticleThe Simple Truth about J.S. Mill’s Simple Truth
There are two main arguments, one philosophical and the other practical, for the legalization of drugs whose consumption is currently prohibited. I will take up the former here, and the latter in a...
View ArticleRisk, Liberty, and Drugs: A Response to Theodore Dalrymple
Theodore Dalrymple’s provocative four posts outlining a case against the legalization of drugs provide an interesting contrast to the contemporary momentum in the Western world today toward relaxing...
View ArticleModeration in Drug Policy Is a Virtue: A Response to Patrick Lynch
I am obliged to Patrick Lynch for his thoughtful reply to my four posts concerning drug policy. Mill’s “very simple principle” is important for two reasons. First: This harm principle is, at least in...
View ArticleThe Dangers of an American Caste System
John Stuart Mill is a pretty complicated figure in the history of liberty. The phenomenon of Donald Trump is a pretty complicated development in American politics currently. Both had demanding fathers,...
View ArticleRousseau’s Contrarian View of the Marketplace of Ideas
The idea of the “marketplace of ideas” in which truth wins out through competition with error has a strong tradition in the U.S. Suggested in nascent form by Milton and Mill, US Supreme Court decisions...
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How to Defend Tolerance
Police try to block counter-protesters of the ‘Free Speech’ Rally on August 19, 2017, in Boston. (Shay Horse/NurPhoto via Getty Images) In historical terms, tolerance is a relatively recent invention....
View ArticleA Defense of the Neoliberal University
Keith E. Whittington has written the best of the recent books on free speech and higher education, a confident defense of what I would call the neoliberal university. Let me explain my terminology,...
View ArticleCensoring “Error,” Destroying Free Speech
A typical defence of the freedom of speech focuses on the centrality of the free exchange of ideas to the pursuit and acquisition of truth. We need other people to tell us when we are wrong by...
View ArticleSecuring Academic Liberty
Patrick Deneen, self-described as a post-liberal, one of the most brilliant bomb-throwers on the American intellectual scene today, has written an article with the provocative title, “Against Academic...
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