All Posts Tagged With: "Thomas Jefferson"
Titles of Ignobility: Suicide as Secession
According to the World Health Organization, the United States stands 39th on the list of countries ranked by suicide rate. Despite this, nowhere else in the world is suicide so passionately medicalized and prohibited as in the United States. Why do people kill themselves? Because they are mentally ill, assert the mental health experts, a [...]
21Sep2011 | Thomas Szasz | 43 comments | ContinuedThe Great Decision: Jefferson, Adams, Marshall, and the Battle for the Supreme Court
The Supreme Court’s decision in Marbury v. Madison (1803) is among the most famous in its history. Shrouded in myth and featuring a cast of historical demigods, the story of the case is a staple of biographies of the second, third, and fourth presidents, as well as Chief Justice John Marshall. Constitutional law courses commonly [...]
25Aug2010 | Kevin Gutzman | 1 comment | ContinuedJefferson’s Economist
See update below. In 1817 the Frenchman Destutt de Tracy (1754–1836) published his Treatise on the Will and Its Effects. Thomas Jefferson was so enthusiastic about Tracy’s book that he had it translated, then edited and revised the translation himself. He renamed it A Treatise on Political Economy. Why was Jefferson so excited about the [...]
20May2010 | Sheldon Richman | 1 comment | ContinuedTGIF: Jefferson’s Economist
In 1817 the Frenchman the Count Destutt de Tracy published his Treatise on the Will and Its Effects. Thomas Jefferson was so enthusiastic he had it translated into English. Read TGIF here.
5Mar2010 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedJefferson’s Economist
In 1817 the Frenchman the Count Destutt de Tracy published his Treatise on the Will and Its Effects. Thomas Jefferson was so enthusiastic he had it translated into English.
5Mar2010 | Sheldon Richman | 16 comments | ContinuedTGIF: Congress Declares Independence
What a difference a year can make. On July 6, 1775, the Second Continental Congress, meeting in Philadelphia, issued the Declaration of the Causes and Necessities of Taking Up Arms. Significantly, the document declared, “We have not raised armies with ambitious designs of separating from Great Britain establishing independent states.” The rest of TGIF is [...]
2Jul2009 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedCongress Declares Independence
What a difference a year can make. On July 6, 1775, the Second Continental Congress, meeting in Philadelphia, issued the Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms. It had been drafted by a radical in Congress, Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, but revised — “toned down,” it is said, — by the leading [...]
2Jul2009 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Sage of Tampa
“The natural progress of things,” according to Thomas Jefferson, “is for government to gain ground and for liberty to yield.” But this lament does not suggest that the primary author of the Declaration of Independence was resigned to inaction. He also said, “A little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary [...]
1Apr2009 | Lawrence W. Reed | 0 comments | ContinuedAlbert Jay Nock and Alternative History
Albert Jay Nock (1870–1945) was a leading ideologist of the Old Right, a loose collection of individualist intellectuals, journalists, and a few politicians who opposed the growth of government in the first half of the twentieth century. Nock’s writing appeared in the Nation, the original Freeman (1920–1924), which he founded with Francis Neilson, the American [...]
1Nov2008 | Joseph R. Stromberg | 2 comments | ContinuedFor Equality; Against Privilege
The freedom philosophy can be boiled down to two phrases: for equality, against privilege. Intuitively, this should sound uncontroversial. We just finished celebrating the Fourth of July, which commemorates the Declaration of Independence. Thomas Jefferson’s elegant statement of the freedom philosophy proclaims: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. [...]
7Jul2006 | Sheldon Richman | 2 comments | ContinuedPatently Unnecessary?
The idea that government should issue patents for inventions is odd on its face. How can someone claim an exclusive right in a “practical application” of nature’s principles? Of course, an inventor can have a right to an object. But a right to bar others from using the application embodied in that object? That’s hard [...]
1Apr2006 | Sheldon Richman | 1 comment | ContinuedJeffersonians in Space
Some of us occasionally have stumbled on a television show actually worth watching, only to see it canceled perhaps after just a season or two on the air. For defenders of freedom and individualism, it was even worse. In 2002 a science-fiction show with unmistakable libertarian leanings wound up lasting only four months. “Firefly” premiered [...]
1Apr2006 | Raymond J. Keating | 1 comment | ContinuedPresidents and Poverty
Conventional wisdom holds that fighting poverty
has only lately been a concern of American
presidents, and that before Franklin Roosevelt
it was hardly a concern at all. This stubborn error
persists.
Liberty: The Other Equality
Equality is an ideal upheld by a number of ideologies,
but nowadays it is seldom associated with
libertarianism or classical liberalism. Indeed, both
libertarians and their critics typically think of equality as
an ideal in tension with the ideal of liberty as libertarians
understand it.
The Republic of West Florida: Freedom Fight or Land Grab?
Probably not one American in a hundred knows anything about the short-lived Republic of West Florida (1810). At first glance it might seem to have sprung from a worthy fight for self-government and independence from Spain. On closer inspection, however, this venture, born of low-level filibuster and high-level intrigue, illustrates the same ingrained American propensity [...]
1Jun2005 | Robert Higgs | 2 comments | ContinuedBook Reviews – May 2003
The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power by Max Boot Basic Books • 2002 • 448 pages • $30.00 hardcover; $16.00 paperback Reviewed by Ivan Eland Max Boot provides a thorough and relatively candid history of the U.S. government’s involvement in small wars. The section of the book on [...]
1May2003 | FEE Admin | 0 comments | ContinuedInternal Improvement: National Public Works and the Promise of Popular Government in the Early United States by John Lauritz Larson
University of North Carolina Press • 2001 • 324 pages • $55.00 cloth; $19.95 paperback Reviewed by Burton Folsom, Jr. In 1805 Thomas Jefferson, in his second inaugural address, focused attention on the limited government of his presidency: “[I]t may be the pleasure and the pride of an American to ask, What farmer, what mechanic, [...]
1Jun2002 | Burton W. Folsom Jr. | 0 comments | Continued-
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