Archive for James Peron

James Peron is the president of Laissez Faire Books, and edits its magazine Laissez Faire!

Who Is a Liberal?

Liberals have it tough. I mean the real liberals. Not the modern watered-down socialists who call themselves liberals, but real, honest classical liberals. There is so much confusion over the term “liberal,” and real ones have allowed fake ones to get away with this subtle destruction of the language. Recently I was reading two different [...]

1May2002 | James Peron | 2 comments | Continued

Scapegoating Gun Owners in South Africa

A small neighborhood grocery store had just opened for business. Without warning five armed men entered and started shooting randomly. Agostino De Andrade was hit by a bullet, but he managed to draw his gun and fire back. Store manager Nelson De Freitas drew his .45 pistol. He said: “Three men were shooting my boss. [...]

1Feb2002 | James Peron | 0 comments | Continued

Liberty, Property, and Crime

No society can long exist in a climate of rampant crime, especially if it is properly defined as any act that violates the life, liberty, or property of another. and when the term “crime” is used, that is generally what people mean. Of course many people, perhaps most, would also include victimless crimes such as [...]

1Nov2001 | James Peron | 1 comment | Continued

The Sorry Record of Foreign Aid in Africa

For almost half a century the countries of Africa have been awash in aid. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been given to African governments. More billions were lent to these same governments. Countless tons of food have inundated the continent, and swarms of consultants, experts, and administrators have descended to solve Africa’s problems.

1Aug2001 | James Peron | 5 comments | Continued

Are There Two Libertarianisms?

Libertarian, or classical-liberal, thinking is routinely divided into two supposedly different camps. In a controversial article some years ago, R. W. Bradford (using the pen name “Ethan O. Waters”) called these “The Two Libertarianisms”: “moralism” and “consequentialism.” Moralism is the belief that individual rights are justified through an appeal to natural law and natural rights. Consequentialism justifies liberalism by arguing that it will “optimize” the wealth and happiness of society.

1Jun2001 | James Peron | 1 comment | Continued

The Pledge versus the Oath

When George W. Bush became president last January, he struck a familiar pose. Raising his right hand before the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, he swore to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.” The oath serves to remind us that the United States is a constitutional republic with a federal [...]

1May2001 | James Peron | 6 comments | Continued

The Ideals of Tyranny

Socialism, along with other movements founded on egalitarianism, has often been held up as a moral ideal. Many people consider the drive for “equality” to be laudable. It is frequently claimed, however, that socialism, although based on a moral principle, failed because it used immoral means to obtain its ends.

1Mar2001 | James Peron | 1 comment | Continued

Original Liberalism

Richard Ebeling is Ludwig von Mises Professor of Economics and chairman of the economics department at Hillsdale College. In January 1914 there appeared three articles in one of the leading newspapers in Vienna, Austria-Hungary, by Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, world-renowned member of the Austrian school of economics and a three-time minister of finance. He warned his [...]

1Feb2001 | James Peron | 0 comments | Continued

South Africas Polarized Politics

Jim Peron is the author of Exploding Population Myths (Heartland Institute). He is executive director of the Institute for Liberal Values in Johannesburg, South Africa. When Nelson Mandela left prison in 1990, the entire world was watching. This act was viewed as the final nail in the coffin of apartheid: an odious system of racial [...]

1Jan2001 | James Peron | 1 comment | Continued

The Declaration of Independence: It’s Greek to Me

The stirring words of Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence said that all men are endowed with certain inalienable rights. To Jefferson these rights existed before the founding of government and the function of government is “to secure these rights.” But he himself said that his ringing words did not express a new idea: “This was the object of the Declaration of Independence.

1Aug2000 | James Peron | 0 comments | Continued

The Evolution of Capitalism

A few centuries ago things looked pretty hopeless for Europe, at least according to “common wisdom” now accepted in political circles. The region was splintered among hundreds of local principalities with no unifying government, no common currency, and no common language. If today’s typical political scientist had had to guess where a system of market capitalism would have arisen, it is doubtful he would have considered Europe a likely candidate.

1Jun2000 | James Peron | 2 comments | Continued

Food, Famine, and Free Trade

For decades population doomsayers have been predicting that massive famines were around the corner. Yet the United Nations Population Fund recently released its report “The State of the World’s Population 1999,” which says, “The world’s population is healthier from infancy through old age than it ever has been.”1 In a press release the United Nations [...]

1Apr2000 | James Peron | 0 comments | Continued
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