Sublime

What distinguished libertarians from mainstream pro-business Republicans—Mailer’s parade of delegates in Miami Beach—was their pure and uncompromising idea. What was it? Hayek: “Planning leads to dictatorship.” The purpose of government is to secure individual rights, little else.

the single most salient feature of the government that we have evolved is not that it discriminates in favor of one side and against the other. The single most salient feature is that it discriminates against all sides to favor itself.

In The Ethics of Liberty Rothbard explains libertarian anarcho‐capitalism as the only logically coherent implication of the idea of free will and self‐ownership:

Les libertaires, de l’autre côté, à l’exception des anarchistes extrémistes, ont essayé d’être scientifiques, utilitaires, rationalistes, hostiles aux passions violentes et ennemis de toutes les formes profondes de la religion. Ce conflit existait en Grèce avant le développement de ce que nous appelons la philosophie et est déjà explicitement conte

Jim is what I call a rugged individualist. His brand of individualism comes straight out of the philosophy of the Enlightenment era, the writings of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, the same philosophical roots as the American Revolution and soon after that the French Revolution. Gone forever was the doctrine of the divine right of kings. It got repla