Spooner argues in this radical essay that the Constitution, which he frames as a legal contract, is not binding. The Constitution has no inherent authority or obligation. It has no authority or ...

In Man Versus the State, Herbert Spencer argues that as the state tries to regulate more of our lives, it inches us closer to slavery. What is essential to the idea of a slave? We primarily think of ...

Lao- Tzu urges that the people be largely left alone; if they are not harassed by the state, they can manage their own affairs well enough. This excerpt from James Legge’s 1891 translation of the Tao ...

In this excerpt from The Rights of Man, here Thomas Paine argues that the order naturally observed in human society is not the result of government. Great part of that order which reigns among mankind ...

There is perhaps no writer better at articulating the economic way of thinking and exposing the myths that plague political debate than the Frenchman Frédéric Bastiat. During his short life (1801-1850 ...

Kant discusses his theory of the state, concluding, “Whatever a people cannot impose upon itself cannot be imposed upon it by the legislator either.” Immanuel Kant is considered to be one of the ...

When it comes to checking tyranny, the jury box beats the ballot box. Spooner argues that the jury, composed of and beholden to the people, serves as constant check on government power, rendering the ...

In this essay from What Social Classes Owe to Each Other (1911), Sumner denounces social reformers who want to run other people’s lives. William Graham Sumner held a professorship in political economy ...

Emma Goldman discusses the nature of the state as an institution and how it is fundamentally at odds with the dignity of the individual. Emma Goldman was a socialist anarchist activist, writer, and ...

“The Church, indeed, taken as a whole, has been constantly changing—constantly advancing—her history is diversified and progressive.” [Church society] was almost completely organized before the close ...

The Swatantra Party carried the torch of classical liberalism in India in the 1960s and 70s. C. Rajagopalachari was the final Governor- General of India, an associate of Gandhi, and the founder of the ...

Thoreau describes his brief imprisonment and discusses the relationship between the state, his community, and his duties as an individual. …Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true ...