... The person the quote is most commonly attributed to (as "If English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it ought to be good enough for the children of

“Against Intellectual Protectionism”

“Keep Your Laws Off My Brain”

“Pro-Market, Pro-Innovation, Anti-Monopoly”

Brandon:

… how can anyone be more consistently anti-state than Rothbard?

1. By not advocating the enforcement of statist immigration restrictions, as Rothbard did later in his career.

2. By not advocating more stringent government policing, as Rothbard also did later in his career.

3. By not advocating the enforcement of statist copyright laws, as Rothbard did throughout his career.

4. By not advocating the forcible suppression of fractional-reserve banking among informed and consenting adults under the excuse of legal prohibitions on fraud.

5. By not advocating, even tentatively, the nationalization of military-industrial complex firms, as Rothbard did in the middle of his career, during his Left-and-Right phase.

Note that this is all largely independent of whether Rothbard’s savagely authoritarian cultural politics, during the paleo turn, has conflicts with “thicker” conceptions of anti-statism (like Roderick’s or mine) that include commitments to anti-authoritarian Left social and cultural projects. (1)-(5) all have to do with direct issues about calls for violent action by the state or other institutions of legal enforcement, which are issues even on the most emaciated conceptions of libertarianism.

I know that Rothbard very assiduously cultivated his reputation as Mr. Libertarian, as a sort of Parisian-meter-stick for what an resolute, absolutist anti-statist would say about any given issue. And he was really remarkable in his willingness to rigorously think through, to seek out and embrace unflinchingly — even gleefully — the logical consequences of his ethical and political principles, no matter how far out they were from the socio-political status quo and no matter how crazy others might call him. Unlike many a political thinker, his failures in consistency were rarely failures of intellectual courage. But there are plenty of times when he was wrong, plain wrong, sometimes even gleefullly wrong, about what those principles really entailed.

... Well, then there is a rival claimant, and things get correspondingly more complicated. That's a lame non-answer, but I doubt there is any good general

... *That* may be clear, but the would-be forecloser's burden isn't just to show that the current occupier *doesn't* own the house; it's to show that they (the

Fair enough. But then why describe Rand Paul’s beliefs, or the beliefs of other “small-government” conservatives, as “neo-anarchist,” when their beliefs and goals are exactly the opposite of what anarchists propose?

... I don't think Scott was claiming that a culture of personal responsibility would affect the number of sociopaths by persuading them to accept personal

... Anthony, Sure, and to the extent that minarchos are better on these topics, it's correspondingly easier to work with them; and to the extent that a

... Do you mean Nozick? ... Rand and Nozick both hold that the minimal state as they envision it should raise revenue only voluntarily, through donations or

... I agree with you, of course; in fact, I think that Childs is spot-on to point out that if the goal is "objective" law, then that ought to entail that