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Risk, 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...
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Moderation 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...
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The 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,...
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Freedom and the Natural Law: A Conversation with John Lawrence Hill
Is the natural law necessary for any enduring consideration of freedom and responsibility? Answering in the affirmative is John Lawrence Hill who joins us in this edition of Liberty Law Talk to discuss...
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Rousseau’s Contrarian View of the Marketplace of Ideas
Jean-Jacques RousseauThe 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...
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The Personal Is Always Political: A Conversation with David Walsh
Who is the human person and has modern philosophy given us a truncated understanding of the person? Those are some of the questions put to philosopher David Walsh as we discuss his latest book,...
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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....
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Can Fairness Make a Comeback?
Echoes of Aristotle and Mill abound here, but Jacobs also uses recent psychological studies to make the case for intellectual probity.
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The Problem with the “Simple Principle” of Liberty
In response to: Can Libertarianism Be a Governing Philosophy? Mock-up of a new, libertarian frontier: "sea-steading"Communities may restrain liberty. These social features of human nature are as much...
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A Defense of the Neoliberal University
(image: Jose Gil / shutterstock.com) Keith Whittington on how to recover the American university as a place of free inquiry and intellectual rigor.
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Libertarian Wars
One of libertarianism’s more admirable traits is its spiritedness, a welcome addition in a grey world. My blogging colleague Mike Rappaport adds thoughtfulness to spiritedness in his various...
View ArticleA 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...
View ArticleClik here to view.
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...
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