Essays

The Cause of All Mankind
Collected Writings on Human Liberty
by Barry Loberfeld

abortion.html	Abortion: Not for Women Only What difference would it make -- to feminists -- if it could be shown that all men support legalized abortion?
affirmative-action.html	Affirmative Action, Negative Justice
anarchism.html	Liberty Against Anarchy: An Open (Though Posthumous) Letter to Roy Childs Failure to distinguish what can and cannot be private has been central to most of the controversies surrounding “free market anarchism.”
anarchy.html	Anarchy, State, and Morality Can one ever coerce?
antisemitism.html	What Will the Goyim Think About the Neocons? The Politics of Anti-Semitism There's just no appeal to the minds of the mindless. Bigotry is hatred that has no reason and requires none.
arms.html	Grouped Hits on the Second Amendment The Second Amendment is often undermined by those who style themselves its most fervent upholders.
arms2.html	The Attack on Self-Defense The life-or-death issue that the gun debate will always be about.
atlas.html	Is Atlas Ever Shrugging?
chomsky.html	Who Would Be a Free Man? The Political Economy of Noam Chomsky
church-n-state.html	Knocking OVER the Wall: The Suppression of Church by State What does Jefferson's metaphor really mean?
compulsory.html	"Compulsory Education": A Contradiction of Realities Compulsion and education -- force and thought -- are related like darkness and light: the presence of one is the absence of the other.
denying.html	Denying the Other Holocausts "Although history will always be at a disadvantage when contending with the mythic power of irrational prejudices, it must contend nonetheless ... And if history matters, its practitioners matter even more."
discrimination.html	In Defense of (the Freedom of) Discrimination A government that persecuted people who wanted to associate with those different from themselves has inverted into one that persecutes people who don’t want to.
diversity.html	Demographic Diversity: Left vs. Right vs. Reality What would the contemporary promoters of “equality” consider a just and “natural” — i.e., evincive of a total absence of any form of bias — outcome?
doublestandards.html	Dictatorships and Double Standards Redux We should denounce and marginalize those who propagate the ideas that inspired Stalin just as surely as we denounce and marginalize those who propagate the ideas that inspired Hitler.
economics.html	Economics: A Trialogue What this science can teach us.
edfirst.html	Education and the First Amendment The specter of censorship is less an argument against giving tax dollars to vouchers schools than an argument for withdrawing tax dollars from all schools, which would effectively grant to education the same freedom given to religion, speech and the press.
education.html	Freedom of Education: A Civil Liberty So why not defend educational liberty with the same commitment given to, say, religious liberty?
evolution.html	The Intellectual Chaos of "Intelligent Design"
evolution2.html	Truth and Falsification Can science say anything about religion?
falwell.html	An Open Letter to the Reverend Jerry Falwell A minister cannot deliver a simple sermon on personal morality for fear of government reprisal?
feminism.html	Feminism: Selected Contentions What "feminism" meant ... and came to mean.
history.html	History as Heresy: The Socialist Immolation of Reality What does a bin Laden-recommended author consider a "Cold War myth" — and why?
immigration.html	Keep 'Em Out? Kick 'Em Out! Being a long-time defender of "open borders," I have a question I've been fairly dying to ask those on the opposite side of the divide:
induction.html	A (Very Brief) Defense of Induction
jurynull.html	"A Government of Laws Instead of Men" The Verdict on Jury Nullification In this Brave New World of crime and punishment, jurors are no longer charged with the responsibility of determining only whether the accused actually broke the law -- "guilty" or "not guilty." Now, it is theirs to decide -- by God knows what standard -- whether the law should apply to the case before them.
labor.html	"A Race to the Bottom" But perhaps the real question is why activists, polemicists, and politicians continue to see strife and misfortune where the economist sees harmony and opportunity.
leftism.html	Requiem for the Left It was only the belief in this "call" -- this façade -- that kept the Left alive.
liberalism.html	Liberalism: History and Future The mixed economy doesn't present us with a mosaic portrait of the just society, but with a jigsaw of pieces taken from different puzzles.
marx.html	A Due Answer Once output is seen as a function of numerous inputs, and the inputs as supplied by more than one class of people, the notion that surplus value arises from labor becomes plainly arbitrary and unsupported.
modlib.html	Modern Liberalism at Wit's End Corporate socialism and Communist socialism are of course not twin totalitarianisms, but they are kindred Orwellianisms:
obfopo.html	The (Tangled) Roots of Objectivist Foreign Policy If the Objectivists recognize the necessity of "clarification in today's intellectual chaos," then why does Objectivist Y continue to uphold as a principle what Objectivist X has rejected as "a contradiction in terms"?
philosophy.html	Leonard Peikoff vs. Philosophy He maintains that while philosophy produced Objectivism, it may not review, let alone revise, its own product.
poverty.html	What About the Poor? We don't need state charities for the same reason we don't need state churches, state families, or state anything else, i.e.,
progressivism.html	The Meaning of "Progressive" Politics In a public square increasingly devoid of common referents, forward-and-back, much like left-and-right, reveals neither where someone is coming from nor what he’s going after.
racism.html	The Mirage of Racist America—and the Reality of the Racist Left America’s problem is not a racist society, but racist socialists. Collectivists cannot stop racism because racism is collectivism—the valuing of a reification over flesh-and-blood-and-brains individuals.
reactionary.html	What's Really Reactionary And there, to meet all the Left's theories (Marxist and variant) of history, is our theory of the history of the Left:
rightism.html	"Sock It to the Left!" The Rise of the Spite Right The "conservatism" of today isn't that of Taft or Goldwater. It arguably isn't even that of a "Religious Right," since it seeks not to serve any God, but only to stomp its Devil.
rightism2.html	"Owning the Libs" How the Spite Right Became the Trump Right
selfishness.html	What’s So Selfish About Capitalism If that is “selfishness,” let us make the most of it.
skepticism.html	After-Dinner Conversation How certain is uncertainty?
social-justice.html	An Inquiry Concerning "Social Justice" and Its Influence Here the lesson of socialism teaches what should have been learned from the lesson of pre-liberal despotism ...
suburbia.html	Saving Suburbia? The Idiocy of "Smart Growth" If there's already too much "sprawl," what's the logical solution?
supremecourt.html	The Strange Case of Justice Breyer and Mr. B. There cannot be anything more horrific than allowing the Constitution -- the palladium of our national unity -- to become anyone's weapon in the culture wars.
supremecourt2.html	Supreme Court Expansion: An Illiberal Scheme “Exactly where in the Constitution does it say that the Supreme Court must have nine members?”
tariffs.html	Buy American? Sell American! Whom does protectionism protect?
trade.html	Anti-Trade: A Vortex of Absurdity Applied consistently, the policy of anti-trade would transform the entire world into a deserted island on which we are each of us stranded all alone.
wages.html	The Minimum Wage: Cui Bono?
war-n-taxes.html	To Refuse Allegiance to the State Who owes government what?
waronterror.html	Letter to a Conservative Friend Military preemption -- the "Bush Doctrine" -- is nothing but global gun control.