#the consequences of a war are not political is a deranged take. what constitutes a genocide is political

[maddy-ferguson]

i'm so sick of the human rights aren't political crowd if you think a country's government, its army, killing people and politicians all over the world encouraging it isn't political you're an actual idiot. stupid. unintelligent

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

If there’s one enduring theme about tyrants in myth, literature, and history it is that, for a long time, no one takes them seriously. And there are few better examples of this than Shakespeare’s fictional Richard III. He’s a preposterous figure in many ways, an unsightly hunchback, far down the line of royal accession, socially outcast, riven with resentment, utterly dismissible — until he serially dismisses and/or murders everyone between him and the throne. What makes the play so riveting and often darkly funny is the sheer unlikelihood of the plot, the previously inconceivable ascent to the Crown of this indelibly absurd figure, as Stephen Greenblatt recently explored in his brilliant monograph, Tyrant.

I’ll never forget watching a performance by Antony Sher of Richard decades ago — playing him as a spider, instinctually scuttling on two legs and two black canes, to trap, murder, and ingest his foes. The role is, of course, a fictional portrait, designed to buttress the legitimacy of the Tudor dynasty that followed Richard III and that Shakespeare lived under. But as an analysis of the psychology of tyranny, it’s genius. Like Plato and Aristotle, Shakespeare saw this question not merely as political, but as wrapped up in the darker folds of the human soul, individual and collective.

The background of the drama is England’s “War of the Roses”, the civil war between two regional dynasties from which Richard emerged. And that’s often key in tyrant narratives: it’s when societies are already fractured into tribes, and divisions have become insurmountable, that tyrants tend to emerge, exploiting and fomenting chaos, to reign, however briefly, over the aftermath.

The war seems resolved when the victorious Edward, Richard’s older brother, succeeds to the throne: “For here I hope begins our lasting joy!” And no one thinks the deformed, bitter sibling, of all people, would be a threat. It seems preposterous. But it’s true. And at each unimaginable power grab by Richard — murdering one brother, killing the late king Edward’s young heirs, killing his own wife, and then trying to marry his niece to secure the dynasty — Richard’s peers keep telling themselves that it isn’t really happening. Greenblatt notes: “The principal weapon Richard has is the very absurdity of his ambition. No one in his right mind would suspect that he seriously aspires to the throne.”

But he has one key skill, Greenblatt notes, the ability to lie shamelessly: “‘Why, I can smile and murder whiles I smile, And cry ‘Content!’ to that which grieves my heart, And wet my cheeks with artificial tears, And frame my face to all occasions.’” It’s a skill that serves him well — and there seems no limit to the number of those eager to believe him. His older brother George, Duke of Clarence, told by thugs that Richard wants him dead, exclaims: “Oh no, he loves me, and he holds me dear. Go you to him from me.” At which point the hired goons reply — “Ay, so we will” — and merrily murder him, taking him to Richard as a corpse. (In a good production, that can get a laugh.) One of Clarence’s young sons, told that his own uncle hates him, declares, “I cannot think it.” Others witness obvious depravity but can’t quite call it out. One official receives clearly illegal orders from Richard, and follows them, asking no questions: “I will not reason what is meant hereby, Because I will be guiltless from the meaning.”

Denial. Avoidance. Distraction. Willful ignorance. These are all essential to enabling a tyrant’s rise. And keeping this pattern going is Richard’s profound grasp of the power of shock. He does and says the unexpected and unthinkable in order to stun his opponents into a kind of dazed passivity. It’s this capacity to keep you on your heels, to keep disorienting you with the unacceptable (which is then somehow accepted), that marks a tyrant’s relentless drive. He does this by instinct. He craves chaos, lies, suspense, surprises — not because he’s a genius, but because stability threatens his psyche. He cannot rest. He is not in control of himself. And whenever the dust settles, as it were, he has to disturb it again.

This is what we’ve been dealing with in the figure of Donald Trump now for five years, and it is absurd to believe that a duly conducted election is going to end it. I know, I know. I’m hysterical and over-the-top and a victim of “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” Trump is simply too incompetent and too lazy to be an actual tyrant, I’m constantly scolded. He’s just baiting me again. And so on. But what I think this otherwise salient critique misses is that tyranny is not, in its essence, about the authoritarian and administrative skills required to run a country effectively for a long time. Tyrants, after all, are often terrible at this. It is rather about a mindset, as the ancient philosophers understood, with obvious political consequences. It’s a pathology. It requires no expertise in anything other than itself.

You need competence if you want to run an effective government, or plan a regular campaign, or master policy with a view to persuading people, or hold power for the sake of something else. You need competence to create and sustain something. But you do not need much competence to destroy things. You just need the will. And this is what tyrants do: they destroy things. Richard III ruled for two short years, ending in his own death in battle, and a ruined country.

This is Trump’s threat. Not the construction of a viable one-party state, but the destruction of practices, norms, civility, laws, customs and procedures that constitute liberal democracy’s non-zero-sum genius. He doesn’t need to be competent to destroy our system of government. He merely needs to be himself: an out-of-control, trust-free, malignant narcissist, with inexhaustible resources of psychic compulsion, in a pluralist system designed for the opposite. All you need is an insatiable pathological drive to avoid any constraint on your own behavior, and the demagogic genius to carry a critical mass of people with you, and our system, designed as the antidote to tyranny, is soon unspooling into incoherence, deadlock, and collapse.

I’m told he’s been ineffective even as a tyrant, so no worries. To which I can only say: really? Once you realize he doesn’t give a shit about any actual policies, apart from doing all he can to wipe the legacy of Barack Obama from planet earth, he’s been pretty competent. Note how he turned Congressional subpoenas into toilet paper; how he crippled and muzzled the Mueller inquiry; how he installed a crony at the Department of Justice to pursue his political enemies and shield him from the law; how effectively he stymied impeachment; how he cucked every previous Republican opponent; how he helped destroy the credibility of news sources that oppose him; how he filled his cabinet with acting secretaries and flunkies; how he declared fake emergencies to claim the power of the purse assigned to the Congress; and how he has reshaped the Supreme Court with potentially three new Justices, whom he sees solely as his loyal stooges if he comes up against the rule of law.

And gotten away with all of it!

In protecting his own power over others, he has been as competent as hell. Imagine where we’d be in four more years. Despite a mountain of criticism, he has not conceded a single error, withdrawn a single statement, or acknowledged a single lie. His party lost the mid-terms, but seriously, what difference did that make? His control of the Republican party, and his cult-like grip on the base, has never been greater than now. Yes, he has said and done racially polarizing things — but the joke is he may yet have more support from blacks and Latinos in 2020 than he did in 2016. Think of his greatest policy failures: the appalling loss of life in the Covid epidemic and the collapse of law and order in the cities. Now recall that on February 1 of this year, Trump was at 43.4 percent approval; 200,000 deaths later, and the wreckage from Seattle to Portland to Minneapolis, and his approval today is at 43.1 percent.

This is, of course, not enough to win re-election. And Trump has no interest in broadening his appeal, because it would dilute the tribalism he feeds off. So he has made it abundantly clear that if the results of the election show him the loser, he will not accept them. Simple, really. He said this in 2016, of course, refusing to honor the result in advance. But this year, he has stumbled upon something quite marvelous for his purposes. Because of Covid19, it is likely that mail-in ballots will be far higher in number than before, and, as Barton Gellman has shown in this essential new piece, this gives Trump an opportunity he has instinctively seized. He has been saying for months now that: “MAIL-IN VOTING WILL LEAD TO MASSIVE FRAUD AND ABUSE … WE CAN NEVER LET THIS TRAGEDY BEFALL OUR GREAT NATION.” In late summer, Gellman noted, Trump was making this argument four times a day: “Very dangerous for our country.” “A catastrophe.” “The greatest rigged election in history.” He is telling us loud and clear that, if he has anything to do with it, this election will not be decided at the ballot box, but at the Supreme Court, which he expects to control.

If you haven’t, read Gellman’s piece closely. It seems inevitable to me that, unless it’s a Biden landslide, Trump will declare himself the winner on election night, regardless of the actual results. Because most mail-in ballots will take more time to count, and several swing states have not changed their laws to allow for counting before election day, and mail-ins are easily challenged, it is quite likely that much of Biden’s vote will remain uncounted or contested — and could remain so for a long time. And after declaring victory within hours of polls closing, Trump will follow the script he used for Florida in 2018: “The Florida Election should be called in favor of Rick Scott and Ron DeSantis in that large numbers of new ballots showed up out of nowhere, and many ballots are missing or forged,” he tweeted, making shit up as usual. “An honest vote count is no longer possible — ballots massively infected. Must go with Election Night!”

I’ve no doubt this bullshit will be challenged by the networks, the press, and many of the states, and other sane people, who will urge patience. I’ve also no doubt that many states will do their best not to pervert the process. But I fear the result will be close (I’m underwhelmed by Biden’s near-invisible campaign), which will give Trump a chance. The fanaticism and alternate reality of a base already addicted to conspiracy theories means a hefty chunk of the country will back him. And it’s perfectly possible that Trump’s pre-emptive strike on the election result could prompt a massive revolt across the country from those who want to defend our democracy. (I will be marching in such a scenario myself). Most presidents would balk at anything close to this kind of scenario. Trump can’t wait. Violence? You can almost feel Trump’s hankering for it.

All he wants is chaos, because in chaos, the strong leader wins. Would he incite violence on his behalf if the votes seem to be drifting away from him? You bet he would. Would he urge his supporters to physically prevent ballot-counting? He already has. Would he try to corral Republican state legislators to back him in electing electors? Gellman has sources. Would he take this country to the brink of civil conflict? Way past it. Will anyone in the GOP do anything to stop him? We know the answer to that already. If they cannot condemn him this week, when would they? And he will do all this not out of some strategic calculation or tactical skill but because he cannot do anything else. He is psychologically incapable of conceding anything. And he has no understanding of collateral damage because his narcissism precludes it.

In every Shakespeare play about tyranny — from Richard III to Coriolanus to Macbeth — the tyrant loses in the end, and often quite quickly. They’re not that competent at governing, or even interested in it. The forces they unleash come back to wipe them from the stage, sooner or later. They flame out. Richard III lasted a mere couple of years on the throne.

But in every case, they leave a wrecked and reeling society in their wake. Look around you now and see the damage already done. Now imagine what we face in the next few months. We are tethered to Trump at this point because he is the legitimate president: the man who cannot control himself is in control of all the rest of us. And that’s why I desperately want to appeal to right-of-center readers at this point in the campaign to do everything they can to vote and to vote for Biden. This is not about left or right. This is about the integrity of a system that can give us such a choice. It really is an existential moment for liberal democracy, and its future, not just here but across the world. The next few months are critical.

It fills me with inexpressible rage that we have been brought to this. But there is no way out now other than through. This was always going to be the moment of maximal danger. And we cannot lose our focus now.

[beinglibertarian]

Shortcuts & Delusions Special Edition: The Absurdity of Gary Johnson

“The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutly free that your very existance is an act of rebellion.” – Albert Camus

Obituary:

Libertarian satirist and vengeful deity Dillon Eliassen (spelled with an E for comedic purposes), whose work I sincerely admire, has died. Spiritually. Only spiritually. He is to be succeeded in spiritual death by a micronation of homeless people, his fellow members of the Fictitious Cement Workers’ Union, and Being Libertarian’s very own Editor-in-Chief Martin van Staden.

Dillon “The Jesuit” Eliassen (née Ottovordemgentschenfelde) was probably born on Christmas morning 1949, somewhere in Canada. Known for his youthful shenanigans, Dillon brought a smile to the faces of all who encountered him at San Quentin. While fighting for our freedom on the blood-soaked soil of Vietnam, Dillon gave birth to a mostly healthy yet premature appendix, and he named it me.

Let us begin.

Introduction:

Dillon left off with an in-depth analysis of ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome,’ a very real ‘condition’ that ‘I’ have personally heard firsthand accounts of on multiple occasions. This was a fitting place to conclude. The torch was not passed to me, but I am hereby picking it up off the ground, wiping the dirt and canine feces from its gleaming bronze exterior, and running with it in the exact opposite direction of any achievable goal.

I am Nathaniel Owen. If you don’t recognize my name, it’s because I am legitimately the least important person you’ve never heard of. I’m unknown for my efforts to bear the heaviness of the Imperial Antarctic Crown, and my occasional bouts of productive cyber-vigilantism. In 2014 I made a mistake, and today that mistake is Being Libertarian. They locked me in the CEO’s office until I pay for this crime.

Like my obvious relatives, Nathaniel Bacon, Nathaniel Branden, and Nathaniel Hawthorne, I am a revolutionary. I haven’t got a Che t-shirt, and I never attend the meetings. But like many communist tovarisch, I do have an iPhone. In the postmodern age, that’s a clever weapon to have! Climate scientists, for instance, have indicated that it’s really all the humble revolutionary needs these days. I am constantly confused as to the value of my executive role at Being Libertarian but remain the least confused as to why I maintain this position.

Today is my favorite day of the year, second only to New Year’s Eve. For me, today acts as a reminder of the closest thing I have ever encountered to universal truth; a realization that haunts, comforts, astounds and enchants me. Yesterday, we were but individuals rolling boulders up a hill. Today, we will try again to roll the boulders up that hill. Tomorrow, yet again, we will return to this habit. You have been doing this with me since the day you were born.

I like to count the number of seconds it takes the boulder to reach the bottom of the hill each sunset. In the morning, we will start over.

We Are All Sisyphus:

It’s quite pointless, analytically speaking. You probably don’t remember being born, nor were you an integral part in making that happen to you. No number of artifacts can preserve the complexity of an individual human being, and even if one could live immortally in the memory of others, time turns existential into the mythological.

The universe is dying. It will live scarcely longer than we will. You appear to have come into existence at random, in a time and place inherently foreign. As a child, you wander into a adulthood without happening on the answer key to any questions relating to how or why you exist in the first place. Much less, how or why the universe itself exists. A consequence of this is that We, The People tend to convince ourselves conveniently that the answers to such questions not only exist, but can be found in such subtle hiding places as your local political party, whatever holy book you were raised to read, your arbitrary interpretations of the signs and seasons presented to us by the light of the cosmos, or even in our own imaginations.

And we know because we can’t avoid knowing, that whatever facade we’ve sold ourselves is, in fact, still a facade even if we fall for it.

Every day spent living is a performative affirmation that something about you, even if you can’t figure out exactly what it is, still wants to find those answers. If this weren’t the case, the players of this game would be dropping like flies when they discover that there is no point in playing and no conceivable way to win and that eventually there will be no evidence that you ever played at all. In short, that life itself is highly unlikely to be worth the trouble.

Albert Camus, French philosopher, and journalist, was plagued with thoughts like those stated above. Camus became a constitutive inspiration of the Existentialist Movement (a tradition of philosophy asserting the importance of human experience in the appraisal and interpretation of ideas), partially during the Second World War, while serving in fierce defiance as the Editor-in-Chief of the French Resistance newspaper ‘Combat’ amidst the Nazi occupation of his homeland, and continuing this roll into the post-war world.

Though such matters in the realm of fundamentals and absolutes can be difficult to define, you may have wondered similar things about yourself, and perhaps continue to. Camus was particularly perturbed by the sheer fact that the universe itself and all that exists within it have no objective meaning or purpose. The rational insights we are both blessed and cursed with poke holes in all our mortally limited attempts to invent meaning of our own, and in the Modern Age, the old ideas of Abrahamic deities, universal truth, and inherent ethical rules, each of which having been rudimentary to the shaping and formation of modern society in some way, have been penetrated into philosophical Swiss cheese.

The Non-Aggression Principle is a rather useful little limerick when one doesn’t overthink it. But like all things implying morality, thinking it all the way through will lead you to fundamentals that cannot possibly be confirmed or denied. What, exactly, makes murder wrong? What about robbery? Or socialism? Or the unfairness of free markets? When all is said and done, is it really going to matter whether every little thing we chose to do was right, or wrong, or equitable, or unfair? At the top level, with capital crimes especially, it is not hard to find that the supermajority of humanity agrees on some basic ethical positions. But when applying these basics, they become more complicated. By the point that we are discussing the specific rights and wrongs of typical human behavior, no two people will find themselves in agreement on the application of what they may believe are universal, self-evident principles.

Camus asserted, rather poignantly, that suicide has always been an option. And the scariness, confusion, and uncertainty of existing in such an uncertain world have apparently not driven you to it. And why shouldn’t we die now? It all adds up to the same summary. Nothing is permanent. It’s very possible that nothing matters. Yet we, practically all of us, seem to be making the conscious choice each day to live on. It’s as though if we pull away some of that upstanding rationalism gifted to us during The Enlightenment, there is some other part of us playing such an integral role in our existence that it stabilizes and confirms our will to exist at all.

Camus was a hero in several ways, and today is his day. There are very few people who want to legalize murder, yet droves of people who wish to legalize marijuana, and to many hearty fundamentalists, these may be comparable issues. Sin is sin, oppression is oppression, and aggression is aggression. To many libertarians, and to what should be our collective shame, such things as unionizing the local labor force, stealing a sandwich from a street vendor, violently raping a helpless victim, and aborting the fetus conceived in such tragic circumstances are all comparably “aggressive,” and may not even be considered in terms outside of “aggression” regardless of how useful a new approach or perspective may be when considering such cases.

At the risk of losing all of my libertarian acquaintances, I will admit that once upon a time, I charged my iPhone (yes, my revolutionary weapon of choice) using a stranger’s charging cable without asking when he wasn’t around. I aggressed. I haven’t repented and I’m not sure my soul will be where yours will be on judgment day.

The point is, it makes so little difference whether we are right or wrong about what is “aggression” and what is not “aggression,” that it’s a wonder anybody even cares to discuss it for more than a few than a few minutes.

I do not care who builds the roads, or who decides what color to paint the bathrooms at Beacon Hill, or which Union and/or Confederate heroes/villains are memorialized in stone. I do not care to pay taxes of a meager nature. Of course, I will consistently support lower taxes; it’s my own self-interest at stake. I will not, however, declare that anyone who doesn’t concern themselves with it as deeply as myself to be a “sheep.” Sheep are blind followers. To the best of my knowledge, I have never met anyone who doesn’t fit that description, and yes, this includes myself. I’m no determinist, but I know that I know essentially nothing about the mechanics of what REALLY makes something moral or immoral. I also know that you don’t know either.

The universe you live in doesn’t care what you think. It doesn’t “care” in any way about anything, as far as we can tell. Clinging so staunchly to principles may as well be escapism from the dread and uncertainty of having existed in the first place. Cults operate by exploiting this inherent dread, and unlike the average man on the street who will immediately deny any experiences of being uncertain about his own existence, cults can see through this bullshit. The Liberty Movement should be no cult.

“The Absurd” is a boulder. Every second you live is an exercise in pointlessness. Searching for meaning, embracing the experience of uncertainty, and cracking a smile as your shoulders yet again shove that boulder up the hill… these are exercises in defiance. It is no coincidence that Albert Camus, espousing the conviction (or lack thereof) that no objective truth or purpose may ever be identified, was willing to put his life on the line to dignify and endorse the French Resistance Movement, and despite his eventual death in a car crash, his words live on.

We libertarians are the quintessentially anti-establishment political identity. When our fists are clenched around the chains of dogma and theoretical universal principles we may as well be chained to the same despotic foundation we’re trying to help others liberate themselves from. To think for one’s self, one must realize the degree to which the nuances and practicalities of the world we live in influence us. Peddling promises of applying some universal ethic that we, as representatives of the Liberty Movement, can’t even agree on the parameters of is no different than selling a religious experience; a method by which to keep the conscience clean, and supply some convenient, flimsy certainty that will never stand up to the scrutiny of the skeptical. If our universal truths were as permanent as they are constructed to be, we would never change our minds or opinions.

This rant will resume in 365.25 days when National Absurdity Day returns in all its glory, memento mori, and calendarial obscurity.

And speaking of scrutiny, I’m going to have to toss in a trigger warning. This isn’t even my first trigger warning. I’m a professional.

**TRIGGER WARNING** What you are about to read may cause severe bouts of Trump Derangement Syndrome. If you are a leftist, please do not read the following paragraphs while in close proximity to sharp objects. Symptoms may include blood shooting from the eyes, indecipherable screaming, close encounters of the fourth kind, and varying degrees of irritable face syndrome. Please notify a physician if you encounter itchiness of the spleen, cirrhosis of the autobiographical memory, or diarrhea of the oral cavity.

Why We MUST Defeat Gary Johnson You’re probably wondering about the guy in the title of this article who, thus far, has been absent from said article. In fact, he’s absent from things quite often, I’m told.

Gary Johnson is not a real libertarian. Why libertarians get starry-eyed in his presence is beyond me, with his espousal of blatant communism and acceptance of homonormative deconstructionist Islamomarxism. Johnson as a representative of libertarianism is a clear sign that the left is invading the liberty movement, further eroding private property norms and propping up support for the deep state agenda of the globalists.

Johnson has pretended to support unfettered free market capitalism, and even went as far as to insist that tearing down barriers of entry could give the average person better, fairer access to goods and services. “The model of the future is the sharing economy. It’s Uber. It’s Airbnb. I think it’s gonna be Uber everything.”

“Uber everything” sounds like a great idea until you take your morning Red Pill and see that this is just code for white genocide. Without a heterogenous government of the people, who will stop immigrants from driving Uber taco trucks and parking them on every street corner, forestalling traditional values and private property norms. Americans would lose their jobs, possibly to immigrants. Even libertarian heroine Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez sees through Gary Johnson’s thin veneer of egalitarian lies!

He ran for president. Twice. On the second try, he broke every Libertarian Party presidential vote count record in the party’s history, surpassing even the likes of Our Lord and Savior Dr. Ron Earnet Paul. Mark my words, we will never forgive Gary Johnson for not being Ron Paul. His tax cuts were clearly a Democrat ruse to give spending power to the politically correct internationalist cabal of globalist elites like George Soros, Walt Disney, and Oliver Cromwell.

After making the Libertarian Party lose twice, Gary Johnson snuck in one more attack on libertarian legitimacy by losing in New Mexico in a Senate race where he only claimed 15.4% of the vote, singlehandedly handing victory over to communist Democrat Vladimir Len- I mean… Martin Heinrich (if that’s his real name).

Gary Johnson must be stopped. He cannot be allowed to run for office again, regardless of what degenerate socialist feminazis say about “free speech” and “democracy.” Democracy is a secret codeword known to the Fourth International for white genocide and subversion of private property norms. To Make America Great Again

, we must Physically Remove

this man that even the Democrats recognize as a tyrant. Socialists say that Gary Johnson is no threat to the system. This means Gary Johnson is probably a socialist (and a threat to the system the Founding Fathers put in place to protect our freedoms) because everything socialists say are lies.

What further evidence do you need? So far, I have used some of the most Red Pill buzzwords on the market, and even considered using “optics,” “LOLbertarian,” “SJW,” “libertine,” “postmodernism” and “open borders.” Libertarianism is an obvious right-wing ideology. We have standards, you know.

I won’t keep you here. Now that I’ve owned you with facts and logic, you are free to go.

Outro: Left intentionally long and with minimal editing, everything written above makes a single point that, in context, doesn’t mean anything. Most things, and probably all things, don’t mean anything. But that observation is no taskmaster; true freedom is the freedom to waste your time, and the time of others, in a way that is archetypically you. There are no strict parameters here. Drifting a little off the straight and narrow shouldn’t be cause for panic. If there was a takeaway in this article, I don’t know what it is. Perhaps there is a Gary Johnson in all of us, rolling a boulder up Mount Everest just to watch it roll back into the ravine, much like the Libertarian vote count will in 2020.

Do as thou wilt, and don’t overthink it.

Happy National Absurdity Day, comrades.

سُبْحَانَ اللہِ

The post Shortcuts & Delusions Special Edition: The Absurdity of Gary Johnson appeared first on Being Libertarian.

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[fabiofernandes]

Literature on Liberalism

Liberalism has been presented as being identical to conservatism, yet more reactionary, like a mask for exploitation. Furthermore, there has been a lot of confusion as to what liberalism truly is. To help you navigate thru the values I believe are the base for more freedom, wealth and happiness in our society, I compiled this list with the classic literature that created the classic Liberalism.

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)

Main work: “Leviathan”, 1651 Known for: Among the earliest of a handful of writers to set out principles for liberalism. Because the natural state of man is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short,” liberty for an individual is tied to the power of a sovereign, administering through laws, within a commonwealth. His detailed construction became the foundation for numerous other works examining the proper role and structure of government.

John Locke (1632-1704)

Main works: “A Letter Concerning Toleration”, 1689, and “The Second Treatise of Government”, 1689 Known for: Expanded on Hobbes to provide the architecture for a modern liberal state. In “A Letter” Locke argues, contrary to Hobbes, for the state to tolerate different religious beliefs. In his “Second Treatise”, he echoes Hobbes’s view of the need for strong government, writing: “where there is no law, there is no freedom”. But, rather than endorse Hobbes’s all-powerful Leviathan, Locke thought that the system should separate those who make laws from those who execute them.

Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755)

Main work: “The Spirit of the Laws”, 1748  Known for: Montesquieu devised the tripartite structure of government adopted by America. His monumental work provides guidance on how governments should be structured “by fallible human beings” to serve “the people for whom they are framed” with the most liberty that would be feasible. To accomplish this requires limits: “Liberty is a right of doing whatever the laws permit, and if a citizen could do what they forbid he would no longer be possessed of liberty.”

Thomas Paine (1737-1809)

Main work: “Common Sense”, 1776 Known for: In just a few dozen pages of argument, Paine creates the intellectual catalyst for the American Revolution. The work received immediate, widespread circulation in America and then in other countries. “Government,” Paine argues, “is a necessary evil”, inevitably restricting liberty. He attacked both hereditary rule and monarchy, proposing instead a government of elected representatives and a limited, rotating presidency.

Adam Smith (1723-1790)

Main work: “The Wealth of Nations”, 1776 Known for: Smith laid the intellectual foundation of modern economics, markets and free trade. His assertion that an “invisible hand” is at the heart of the market is among the most cited phrases in economics. But he also explored the division of labour, the benefits of trade, the mobility of capital, the rigging of markets by businesses and government, and public goods (notably universal education).

Olympe de Gouges (1748-1793)

Main Work: “Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen”, 1791 Known for: Gouges is often heralded as a founder of modern feminism. Her “Declaration” is a response to “The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen”, drafted by the Marquis de Lafayette, Thomas Jefferson, and Honoré Mirabeau, which did not extend the natural rights of the citizen to women as well as men. Gouges was a prolific defender of free speech, women’s rights and political dialogue, as well as an abolitionist and pacifist. She was executed by guillotine for her support of constitutional monarchy at the beginning of Maximilien Robespierre’s “reign of terror” in 1793.

Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797)

Main Work: “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman”, 1792 Known for: Wollstonecraft’s treatise is considered by many to be the first feminist manifesto. Others grapple over whether her writings, which critique excessive emotion and female sexuality, are indeed feminist. “A Vindication” contains endless references to the paragon of rational thought, and a vehement defence of the importance of equal educational opportunities for men and women.

John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)

Main Work: “On Liberty”, 1859 Known for: Mill has become a reference point for liberalism. “On Liberty” is a defence of individual freedom with a caveat: “The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.” Mill views even a society under representative government to threaten liberty, notably, in a term he popularised, the “tyranny of the majority”. 

James Wilson (1805-1860)

Known for: Founding The Economist Magazine Our name originally included the phrase: “Free Trade Journal”. The Economist was an impassioned defender of laissez-faire while Wilson was editor, from 1843-59. In 1849 we wrote: “all the great branches of human industry are found replete with order, which, growing from the selfish exertions of individuals, pervades the whole. Experience has proved that this order is invariably deranged when it is forcibly interfered with by the state.”

Thomas Hodgskin (1787-1869)

Main work: “Labour Defended against the Claims of Capital”, 1825  Known for: One of Wilson’s deputies, Hodgskin had a far-ranging suspicion of intervention. “All law making,” he wrote, “except gradually and quietly to repeal all existing laws, is arrant humbug.” He argued that property rights are antithetical to individual liberty. Writing about capital, he said, “the weight of its chains are felt, though the hand may not yet be clearly seen which imposes them.” The book was praised as “admirable” by none other than Karl Marx—who used the chains metaphor rather more memorably in the “Communist Manifesto”.

Herbert Spencer (1820-1903)

Main work: “The Man verses the State”,1884 Known for: A lowly editor in the early years of The Economist, Spencer went on to become an intellectual rival of Marx. He is perhaps best known for coining the phrase "survival of the fittest." An influential thinker in many fields, Spencer writes: "The degree of [man’s] slavery varies according to the ratio between that which he is forced to yield up and that which he is allowed to retain; and it matters not whether his master is a single person or society."

Baruch (Benedict) de Spinoza (1632-1677)

Main political work: “Theological-Political Treatise”, 1670 Known for: A polymath beloved today but often reviled in his own time, Spinoza earned his living grinding lenses and his fame by changing how people saw the world. While accepting the existence of an absolute sovereign, he argued that freedom of thought, speech and academic inquiry should not only be permitted by the state, but were essential for its survival.

Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859)

Main work: “Democracy in America”, 1835 Known for: His study of America remains at the heart of ongoing debates over questions with vast importance, including how to ensure democracy and individual liberty coexist. His conclusion was that America’s success stemmed from devolving responsibility to the most local of all organisations, often voluntary, an approach now threatened by the centralisation of resources and authority in Washington, DC. See our briefing for more on the gloomiest of the great liberals.

Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850)

Main work: “The Law”, 1850 Known for: “Everyone wants to live at the expense of the state,” Bastiat wrote. “They forget that the state lives at the expense of everyone.” He was an incisive debunker of flawed reasoning in support of government policies that come at the cost of individual freedom. His definition of “legal plunder” (if the law takes from one to give to another) remains a living sentiment for those who resist state expansion, as does his definition of what comprises good economic policy: it must be judged on not only what would be produced but what would be lost—the innovations and activities that do not occur.

Harriet Taylor Mill (1807-1858)

Main work: “The Enfranchisement of Women”, 1851 Known for: Though little was published under Taylor Mill’s own name, her second husband, John Stuart Mill, readily admitted the influence she had on him and his work. They were an intellectual duo to be reckoned with. Taylor Mill wrote anonymously or under a pseudonym on the nature of marriage, sex and domestic violence. She was a fierce advocate of women’s suffrage, writing along with her husband, “It is neither necessary nor just to make imperative on women, that they shall be either mothers or nothing.”

Salvador de Madariaga y Rojo (1886-1978)

Main work: A principal author of the Oxford Manifesto, 1947 Known for: Madariaga led a group of representatives from 19 countries in drawing up a charter laying out the fundamental principles of liberalism, as they defined it: a commitment to individual liberty, economic freedom, the free exchange of ideas and international coalition-building. Madariaga and his contemporaries worried that the death and destruction of the world wars were caused largely by the abandonment of these ideals. But he believed equality and liberty did not necessarily go hand in hard, writing in 1937 that “inequality is the inevitable consequence of liberty,” which may explain why “security” and “opportunity” were written into the manifesto as “fundamental rights”. 

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)

Main works: “Critique of Pure Reason”, 1781; “Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch”, 1795 Known for: Kant favoured republican governments over majoritarian ones. He worried that rule by majority could undermine the freedom of individuals, and called direct democracy a kind of “despotism” of the masses. He argued that lasting international peace could only be realised through a “political community” of countries committed to what came to be known as “Rechtsstaat”, or the constitutional state. Kant’s faith in the supremacy of law and the social contract seems to be derived from his thinking on moral philosophy. Kant says that free will requires individuals to “self-legislate”, or police themselves, so that they act morally. If we scale up that idea, then having political freedom means entire societies must do the same, preferably—if it were up to Kant—with a constitution.

Harriet Martineau (1802-1876)

Main works: “Illustrations of Political Economy”, 1832-1834; “Society in America”, 1837 Known for: Half-way between a novel and a political treatise, Martineau’s “Illustrations” argued that economics was the least understood science and the one most integral to the wellbeing of society. Initially a non-interventionist, Martineau came to believe that governments should intervene in the interest of curbing inequality—unsurprising conclusions if one considers her reputation as a feminist and abolitionist. Like Tocqueville, she made one of the first sociological studies of America.

John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946)

Main political work: “The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money”, 1936 Known for: The father of the economic theory that bears his name, Keynes belonged to a new breed of 20th-century liberal that believed in accomplishing collectively what could not be achieved individually. In his “General Theory”, Keynes lays the case for heavily guided capitalism and comprehensive economic planning by government. In a turn away from laissez-faire liberalism, Keynesianism became a central organising principle of developed economies following the Great Depression.

Ayn Rand (1905-1982)

Main works: “The Fountainhead”, 1943; “Atlas Shrugged”, 1957 Known for: Rand launched a brutal attack on the morality of a Western liberalism that criticises self-interest. “Atlas Shrugged”, a political screed presented as a romance, remains a staple of best-seller lists and perhaps the single most influential clarion call for anti-state individualism. Her uncharitable view of human frailty and the trials imposed by the unfairness of life makes her an incendiary figure on the left. But echoes of her writing are heard in the endless political obfuscation about causes and solutions. Her thesis, that a cynical pursuit of altruism undermines self-esteem, innovation, evolution and broad prosperity, resonates as—or perhaps because—public support for socialism grows.

Friedrich Hayek (1899-1992)

Main works: “The Road to Serfdom”, 1944; “The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism”, 1988; “The Constitution of Liberty”, 1960 Known for: Hayek was the person most cited by readers after the publication of our initial bibliography. This reflects how powerfully he continues to resonate in the political debate about government. Hayek was not an absolute libertarian, and he allowed for government to provide some assistance, but he remains a controversial figure on the left because of how marginal those concessions were. He argued that the expanded presence of the state created a corrosive force that ended in the loss of individual freedom and prosperity. The strongest antipathy to his views, however, may be found among his fellow economists, because he argued that information was too scattered for either a state or an individual to make realistic assumptions or centralised plans. Read more about Hayek in our series on great liberal thinkers

Isaiah Berlin (1909-1997)

Main political work: Two Concepts of Liberty, 1958 Known for: Berlin defined a crucial faultline in liberal thinking when it came to individual freedom. He recognised that the gulf between “positive” and “negative” liberty would lead to divergent definitions of liberalism—and indeed it has. Negative liberty is best defined as freedom not to be interfered with. Positive liberty empowers individuals to live fulfilling lives, even if that requires interference from government; for example, in the form of education provided by the state. But positive liberty is ripe for exploitation, Berlin reasoned, and may allow government to force its goals upon citizens in the name of freedom—enabling totalitarianism. 

John Rawls (1921-2002)

Main work: A Theory of Justice, 1971 Known for: One of the most influential political philosophers of the 20th century, Rawls used a thought experiment, “the veil of ignorance”, to make the case for a philosophy he dubbed “justice as fairness”. If you were dreaming up an ideal society, Rawls argued, but didn’t know what lot you would be dealt, it would be in everyone’s self-interest to ensure equality of opportunity and shared wealth. Today, the veil of ignorance is commonly used to argue for more redistribution, but Rawls noted an important caveat: that inequality in distribution was permissible if it benefited the least well off in society. That sentiment would be shared by many who resist the growth of redistributive policies that undermine economic vitality, and hence the opportunities of the most vulnerable.

Robert Nozick (1938-2002)

Main work: “Anarchy, State and Utopia”, 1974 Known for: Though they are both considered liberals, Nozick was the anti-Rawls. He found much to dislike in Rawls’s theory of redistributive justice, arguing that people owned their talents. Successes belonged only to the individuals to whom they were attributed, not to society writ large. Nozick’s small-government liberalism was echoed in the policies of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. Liberty, Nozick said, disrupts patterns. Justice cannot demand some preferred distribution of wealth. Read more on Berlin, Rawls and Nozick in our series of philosophy briefs.

Judith Shklar (1928-1992)

Main work: The Liberalism of Fear, 1989 Known for: Shklar viewed limited, democratic government as a necessary defence that shields people, especially the poor and weak, from the abuses of the state and its agents—such as the armed forces and the police. She saw freedom from cruelty and the division of powers as the twin pillars of her “liberalism of fear”. In her attempts to define this slippery ideology, she argued that a “liberal era” that truly upheld the notion of equal rights did not really exist in America until after the civil war. Liberalism, Shklar wrote, “was powerful in the United States only if black people are not counted as members of its society.” As a rebuke to critics who called her theory reductionist, Shklar asked why, in discussions of political philosophy, emotions must always play second fiddle to “causes”.