Spooner argues in this radical essay that the Constitution, which he frames as a legal contract, is not binding. The Constitution has no inherent authority or obligation. It has no authority or ...

Minocher Rustom “Minoo” Masani was an Indian politician, a leading figure of the erstwhile Swatantra Party, a three- time Member of Parliament, and was among the founders of the Indian Liberal Group ...

In Man Versus the State, Herbert Spencer argues that as the state tries to regulate more of our lives, it inches us closer to slavery. What is essential to the idea of a slave? We primarily think of ...

William Graham Sumner held a professorship in political economy at Yale and did pioneering work in sociology when the field was in its infancy. In addition to doing academic work that spanned a ...

Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments included this passage about spontaneous order vs planned economy. Adam Smith was a Scottish political philosopher and economist, considered one of the ...

“Servitude and mastery result from the struggle between the strong and the weak…and Blue Heaven has nothing whatsoever to do with it.” We know next to nothing about the man historian Etienne Balazs ...

“Plantain was resolved that he would now make himself King of Madagascar, and govern there with absolute Power and Authority.” Clement Downing served on a variety of ships in the Indian Ocean as an ...

“He fell upon Government, and shew’d, that every Man was born free, and had as much Right to what would support him, as to the Air he respired.” One of the most important primary sources of any kind ...

There is perhaps no writer better at articulating the economic way of thinking and exposing the myths that plague political debate than the Frenchman Frédéric Bastiat. During his short life (1801-1850 ...

In this excerpt from *Social Statics*, Spencer makes a radical claim: that an individual may sever all connections with the state. ##1. The Right to Voluntary Outlawry As a corollary to the ...

In this excerpt from The Rights of Man, here Thomas Paine argues that the order naturally observed in human society is not the result of government. Great part of that order which reigns among mankind ...

Kant discusses his theory of the state, concluding, “Whatever a people cannot impose upon itself cannot be imposed upon it by the legislator either.” Immanuel Kant is considered to be one of the ...