Portal:Libertarianism

Introduction

Libertarianism (from French: libertaire, lit. 'free and egalitarian'; or from Latin: libertas, lit. 'freedom') is a political philosophy that holds freedom, personal sovereignty, and liberty as primary values. Many libertarians believe that the concept of freedom is in accord with the Non-Aggression Principle, according to which each individual has the right to live as they choose, as long as they do not violate the rights of others by initiating force or fraud against them.

Libertarians advocate the expansion of individual autonomy and political self-determination, emphasizing the principles of equality before the law and the protection of civil rights, including the rights to freedom of association, freedom of speech, freedom of thought and freedom of choice. They generally support individual liberty and oppose authority, state power, warfare, militarism and nationalism, but some libertarians diverge on the scope and nature of their opposition to existing economic and political systems. (Full article...)

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Minarchism is a libertarian political ideology which maintains that the state's only legitimate function is the protection of individuals from aggression, theft, breach of contract and fraud (such states are sometimes called night watchman states). Some minarchists defend the existence of the state as a necessary evil. Minarchism is closely associated with right-libertarianism, propertarianism and classical liberalism.

Samuel Edward Konkin III, an agorist, coined the term in 1971 to describe libertarians who defend some form of compulsory government. Konkin invented the term "minarchism" because he initially felt dismayed of using the cumbersome phrase "limited-government libertarianism".

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But what the Left That Was demanded was not the symbolic image of the "broken rifle" - so very much in vogue these days in pacifist boutiques - but the training and arming of the people for revolutionary ends, solely in the form of democratic militias. A resolution coauthored by Luxemburg and Lenin (a rare event) and adopted by the Second International in 1906 declared that it "sees in the democratic organization of the army, in the popular militia instead of the standing army, an essential guarantee for the prevention of aggressive wars, and for facilitating the removal of differences between nations.

This was not simply an antiwar resolution, although opposition to the war that was fast approaching was the principal focus of the statement. The arming of the people was a basic tenet of the Left That Was, and pious demands for gun control among today's leftists would have been totally alien to the thinking of the Left That Was. As recently as 1930s, the concept of "the people in arms" remained a basic tenet of independent socialist, no to speak of anarchist, movements throughout the world, including those of the United States, as I myself so well remember. The notion of schooling the masses in reliance on the police and army for public safety, much less turning the other cheek in the face of violence, would have been regarded as heinous.

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— Murray Bookchin (1921–2006)
Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism (1995)

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Credit: JayCoop

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General images

The following are images from various libertarianism-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1Spanish anarchist militiawomen during the 1936 Revolution (from Libertarianism)
Image 2Thomas Paine, whose theory of property showed a libertarian concern with the unequal distribution of resources under statism (from Libertarianism)
Image 3Gary Chartier, a left-libertarian of the free-market anti-capitalist school (from Left-libertarianism)
Image 4The Political Compass: the green quadrant represents left-libertarianism and the purple right-libertarianism (from Libertarianism)
Image 5Tea Party movement protest in Washington, D.C., September 2009 (from Libertarianism)
Image 6A diagram of the typology of beliefs in libertarianism (both left and right, respectively) (from Libertarianism)
Image 7John Locke, regarded as the father of liberalism (from Libertarianism)
Image 8Members of the Spanish anarcho-syndicalist trade union Confederación Nacional del Trabajo marching in Madrid in 2010 (from Libertarianism)
Image 9Former congressman Ron Paul, a self-described libertarian, whose presidential campaigns in 2008 and 2012 garnered significant support from youth and libertarian Republicans (from Libertarianism)
Image 10Sébastien Faure, prominent French theorist of libertarian communism as well as atheist and freethought militant (from Libertarianism)
Image 11Murray Bookchin, a left-libertarian (formerly) of the social anarchist school (from Left-libertarianism)
Image 12The Nolan Chart, created by American libertarian David Nolan, expands the left–right line into a two-dimensional chart classifying the political spectrum by degrees of personal and economic freedom. (from Libertarianism)
Image 1317 August 1860 edition of Le Libertaire, Journal du mouvement social, a libertarian communist publication in New York City (from Libertarianism)
Image 14Murray Bookchin, American libertarian socialist theorist and proponent of libertarian municipalism and communalism (from Libertarianism)

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Ruwart in 2018

Mary J. Ruwart (born October 16, 1949) is an American retired biomedical researcher and a libertarian speaker, writer, and activist. She was a leading candidate for the 2008 Libertarian Party presidential nomination and is the author of the book Healing Our World. (Full article...)

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Lysander Spooner Adam Smith Frédéric Bastiat Murray Bookchin Murray Rothbard Ayn Rand Ron Paul Milton Friedman Noam Chomsky Lew Rockwell Walter Block Steve Kubby Hans-Hermann Hoppe Randy Barnett John Stossel Nicholas Sarwark Gary Johnson Jo Jorgensen