Liberty-Finder » Philosophy

Founding Fathers of the United States

admin — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 11:44:15 +0000

The Founding Fathers of the United States were the political leaders who signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776 or otherwise took part in the American Revolution in winning American independence from Great Britain, or who participated in framing and adopting the United States Constitution in 1787-1788, or in putting the new government under the Constitution into effect. Within the large group known as “the founding fathers,” there are two key subsets, the Signers (who signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776) and the Framers (who were delegates to the Federal Convention and took part in framing or drafting the proposed Constitution of the United States). Most historians define the “founding fathers” to mean a larger group, including not only the Signers and the Framers but also all those who, whether as politicians or jurists or statesmen or soldiers or diplomats or ordinary citizens, took part in winning American independence and creating the United States of America. The eminent American historian Richard B. Morris, in his 1973 book Seven Who Shaped Our Destiny: The Founding Fathers as Revolutionaries, identified the following seven figures as the key founding fathers: Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, John Jay, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton. (CC Wikipedia 04/25/2010)

Objectivism

admin — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 20:00:51 +0000

Objectivism is the philosophy created by the Russian-American philosopher and novelist Ayn Rand (1905–1982). Objectivism holds that reality exists independent of consciousness; that individual persons are in direct contact with reality through sensory perception; that human beings can gain objective knowledge from perception through the process of concept formation and inductive and deductive logic; that the proper moral purpose of one’s life is the pursuit of one’s own happiness or rational self-interest; that the only social system consistent with this morality is full respect for individual rights, embodied in pure laissez faire capitalism; and that the role of art in human life is to transform man’s widest metaphysical ideas, by selective reproduction of reality, into a physical form—a work of art—that he can comprehend and to which he can respond emotionally.

Rand originally expressed her philosophical ideas in her novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, and other works. She further elaborated on them in her magazines The Objectivist Newsletter, The Objectivist, and The Ayn Rand Letter, and in non-fiction books such as Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology and The Virtue of Selfishness. (CC Wikipedia 04/23/2010)

Habeas corpus

admin — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 22:02:52 +0000

Habeas corpus ‘Latin: “You (shall) have the body)” is a writ, or legal action, through which a person can seek relief from unlawful detention, or the relief of another person. The writ of habeas corpus protects persons from harming themselves, or from being harmed by the judicial system. Originally a feature of English law, the writ of habeas corpus has historically been an important legal instrument safeguarding individual freedom against arbitrary state action.

Edmund Burke

admin — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 15:28:38 +0000

Edmund Burke (1729 – 1797) was an Anglo-Irish statesman, author, orator, political theorist, and philosopher who, after relocating to England, served for many years in the House of Commons of Great Britain as a member of the Whig party. He is mainly remembered for his opposition to the French Revolution. It led to his becoming the leading figure within the conservative faction of the Whig party, which he dubbed the “Old Whigs”, in opposition to the pro-French-Revolution “New Whigs” led by Charles James Fox. Burke lived before the terms “conservative” and “liberal” were used to describe political ideologies. Burke was praised by both conservatives and liberals in the nineteenth-century and since the twentieth-century he has generally been viewed as the philosophical founder of modern conservatism. (CC Wikipedia – 03/13/2010)

Classical Liberalism

admin — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 16:59:32 +0000

Classical liberalism is a political ideology that developed in the 19th century in England, Western Europe, and the Americas. It is committed to the ideal of limited government and liberty of individuals including freedom of religion, speech, press, and assembly, and free markets. Notable individuals who have contributed to classical liberalism include Jean-Baptiste Say, Thomas Malthus, and David Ricardo. There was a revival of interest in classical liberalism in the 20th century led by Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman and other economists.

The phrase classical liberalism is also sometimes used to refer to all forms of liberalism before the 20th century. And, after 1970, the phrase began to be used by libertarians to describe their belief in the primacy of economic freedom and minimal government. It is sometimes difficult to tell which meaning is intended in a given source. (CC Wikipedia – 02/28/2010)

Montesquieu

admin — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 08:48:00 +0000

Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu (1689 - 1755), was a French social commentator and political thinker who lived during the Era of the Enlightenment. He is famous for his articulation of the theory of separation of powers, taken for granted in modern discussions of government and implemented in many constitutions throughout the world. He was largely responsible for the popularization of the terms feudalism and Byzantine Empire. (CC Wikipedia – 02/19/2010)

Freedom

admin — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 08:42:47 +0000

Freedom is the human value, or situation, to act according to one’s will without being held up by the power of others. (CC Wikipedia – 02/19/2010)

Civil liberties

admin — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 08:24:00 +0000

Civil liberties are rights and freedoms that protect an individual from the state. Civil liberties set limits on government so that its members cannot abuse their power and interfere unduly with the lives of private citizens.

Common civil liberties include the rights of people, freedom of religion, and freedom of speech, and additionally, the right to due process, to a trial, to own property, and toprivacy.

The formal concept of civil liberties dates back to the English legal charter the Magna Carta 1215, which in turn was based on pre-existing documents namely the English Charter of Liberties, a landmark document in English legal history.

Many contemporary states have a constitution, a bill of rights, or similar constitutional documents that enumerate and seek to guarantee civil liberties. Other states have enacted similar laws through a variety of legal means, including signing and ratifying or otherwise giving effect to key conventions such as the European Convention on Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

It might be said that the protection of civil liberties is a key responsibility of all citizens of free states, as distinct from authoritarian states.

The existence of some claimed civil liberties is a matter of dispute, as are the extent of most civil rights. Controversial examples include reproductive rights, civil marriage, and the right to keep and bear arms. Whether the existence of victimless crimes infringes upon civil liberties is a matter of dispute. Another matter of debate is the suspension or alteration of certain civil liberties in times of war or state of emergency, including whether and to what extent this should occur.

An individual who actively “supports or works for the protection or expansion of civil liberties” is called a civil libertarian. (CC Wikipedia – 02/19/2010)

Anarcho-capitalism

admin — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 00:58:14 +0000

Anarcho-capitalism is an individualist anarchist political philosophy that advocates the elimination of the state and the elevation of the sovereign individual in a free market. In an anarcho-capitalist society, law enforcement, courts, and all other security services are provided by voluntarily-funded competitors such as private defense agencies rather than through compulsory taxation, and money is privately produced in an open market. Because personal and economic activities are regulated by the natural laws of the market through private law rather than through politics, victimless crimes, and crimes against the state are rendered moot.

Anarcho-capitalists argue for a society based in voluntary trade of private property (including money, consumer goods, land, and capital goods) and services in order to maximize individual liberty and prosperity, but also recognize charity and communal arrangements as part of the same voluntary ethic. Though anarcho-capitalists are known for asserting a right to private (individualized or joint non-public) property, some propose that non-state public/community property can also exist in an anarcho-capitalist society.For them, what is important is that it is acquired and transferred without help or hindrance from the compulsory state. Anarcho-capitalist libertarians believe that the only just, and/or most economically-beneficial, way to acquire property is through voluntary trade, gift, or labor-based original appropriation, rather than through aggression or fraud

Anarcho-capitalists see free-market capitalism as the basis for a free and prosperous society. Murray Rothbard said that the difference between free-market capitalism and “state capitalism” is the difference between “peaceful, voluntary exchange” and a collusive partnership between business and government that uses coercion to subvert the free market. “Capitalism,” as anarcho-capitalists employ the term, is not to be confused with state monopoly capitalism, crony capitalism, corporatism, or contemporary mixed economies, wherein natural market incentives and disincentives are skewed by state intervention. So they reject the state, based on the belief that states are aggressive entities which steal property (through taxation and expropriation), initiate aggression, are a compulsory monopoly on the use of defensive and/or punitive force, use their coercive powers to benefit some businesses and individuals at the expense of others, create monopolies, restrict trade, and restrict personal freedoms via drug laws, compulsory education, conscription, laws on food and morality, and the like. The embrace of unfettered capitalism leads to considerable tension between anarcho-capitalists and many social anarchists who tend to distrust the market, and believe that free-market capitalism is inherently authoritarian.

Murray Rothbard

admin — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 00:50:20 +0000

Building on the Austrian School’s concept of spontaneous order in markets, support for a free market in money production and condemnation of central planning,[4] Rothbard sought to minimize coercive government control of the economy. He considered the monopoly force of government the greatest danger to liberty and the long-term wellbeing of the populace, labeling the State as nothing but a “gang of thieves writ large” – the locus of the most immoral, grasping and unscrupulous individuals in any society.[5][6][7][8]

Rothbard concluded that virtually all services provided by monopoly governments could be provided more efficiently by the private sector. He viewed many regulations and laws ostensibly promulgated for the “public interest” as self-interested power grabs by scheming government bureaucrats engaging in dangerously unfettered self-aggrandizement, as they were not subject to market disciplines which would quickly eliminate such parasitic inefficiencies if they were to occur in the competitive private sector.[9][10][11]

Rothbard was equally condemning of state corporatism. He criticized many instances where business elites co-opted government’s monopoly power so as to influence laws and regulatory policy in a manner benefiting them at the expense of their competitive rivals.[12]

He argued that taxation represents coercive theft on a grand scale, and “a compulsory monopoly of force” prohibiting the more efficient voluntary procurement of defense and judicial services from competing suppliers.[13][6] He also considered central banking and fractional reserve banking under a monopoly fiat money system a form of state-sponsored, legalized financial fraud, antithetical to libertarian principles and ethics.[14][15][16][17] Rothbard opposed military, political, and economic interventionism in the affairs of other nations.[18][19]

Murray Newton Rothbard (1926 – 1995) was an American intellectual, individualist anarchist, author, and economist of the Austrian School who helped define modern libertarianism and popularized a form of free-market anarchism he termed “anarcho-capitalism“. Rothbard wrote over twenty books.

Building on the Austrian School’s concept of spontaneous order in markets, support for a free market in money production and condemnation of central planning, Rothbard sought to minimize coercive government control of the economy. He considered the monopoly force of government the greatest danger to liberty and the long-term wellbeing of the populace, labeling the State as nothing but a “gang of thieves writ large” – the locus of the most immoral, grasping and unscrupulous individuals in any society.

He argued that taxation represents coercive theft on a grand scale, and “a compulsory monopoly of force” prohibiting the more efficient voluntary procurement of defense and judicial services from competing suppliers. He also considered central banking and fractional reserve banking under a monopoly fiat money system a form of state-sponsored, legalized financial fraud, antithetical to libertarian principles and ethics. Rothbard opposed military, political, and economic interventionism in the affairs of other nations.