A classical liberal “limited government”, is not utopian? And if an eternally vigilant population can conceivably act to keep a government limited, can anarchists not similarly assume the same societal vigilance in keeping their institutions from exceeding their proper bounds? In an e-list debate many years ago (ironically, a debate between neo-Objectivists on anarchism vs limited government), George Smith made the point that it will not do for minarchists to subject their limited government to philosophical analysis, while subjecting free market justice agencies to sociological predictions. I have no problem in assuming the worst in people, but if one insists, against all logic, that there *can be * effect and permanent natural checks against governmental tyranny, why is a similar assumption unwarranted among anarchists regarding a stateless society? In fact, in a society that, by definition lacks any formal territorial monopoly of legitimized violence, I think it can be argued that popular vigilance would be much harder to overcome.

” I agree to this Constitution with all its faults—if they are such—because I think a general government necessary for us, and there is no form of government but what may be a blessing to the people if well administered; and I believe, further, that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic government, being incapable of any other”

http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/writings/franklin_on_const.htm

Still, I hope for a “classical liberal” limited government with an eternally vigilant population to KEEP IT LIMITED. Sadly, we have gone from Jefferson, Franklin, and Madison to Bush, Clinton, Obama, and McCain – and most people prefer it that way!

1. She was an atheist. This seems silly because how does one prove a negative? [And how does one credibly defend the West?–IM]

2. She opposed all altruism when only involuntary altruism should have been opposed.

3. She was pro-choice thus violating the rights of the unborn. Did she think her right to sexual pleasure trumped an innocent person’s life?

But she took on the two main enemies of freedom, big government and central banking, so she remains a hero. [As a defender of natural rights she was brilliant.–IM]

Knowing about someone doesn’t necessarily mean I have to read a 50-page speech written by a fictional character in their novel.

I’ve never read any of her books cover-to-cover, and probably never will. I proudly carry this fact like a bumper sticker.

[It’s beyond me how anyone who confesses to knowing nothing about a significant thinker can be proud of condemning her based on know-nothingness. You condemn your own assertions.—IM]

“…fundamentally different and competing views of justice (right and wrong) will arise in anarchy. It’s inevitable. How does one reconcile this with a view of the immutability of the natural law and the emphasis on the search for truth as the ultimate value of justice?”

While you admit that this same problem plagues minarchism, I don’t see how it should lead one to doubt anarchism any more than the validity of limited government. Justice and the rule of objective law flows from a culture and intellectual tradition that upholds these values, and as such really has nothing to do with whether it is administered by a “final arbiter” (which, even by todays standards, is largely a fiction) or a plurality of competing institutions.

Can we conceive of a decentralized network of institutions specializing in protection and defense based on identical or uniform principles of natural justice, but differing perhaps in optional matters, such as price? I agree that such an outcome is questionable in any human society given human diversity. However, that such an outcome is virtually nonexistent in the modern state presents a problem for minarchism. If one can make the sociological prediction that true justice will fail under any coercive, territorial monopoly of violence, this argument must have equal force against any theoretical consideration of minarchism, and does not merely function as a “cheap victory” for anarchists.

In short, I think anarchism, like atheism, is inherently negative, as it pertains to the absence of a state. Libertarian anarchism is a more ambitious theory of a society in which the principles of justice you refer to are upheld by voluntary economic relations. This may be considered wishful thinking, but under minarchism it is inconceivable. A society with liberty and property as the prevailing values *might* be able to tolerate a stateless legal order. It cannot *in principle*, tolerate the state.

Ms. Mercer, I find your articles outstanding and I have no doubt about the thought you would put into a position as fundamental as this. So I hope in registering my disagreement, I have done justice to your viewpoint.

I admire Hans-Hermann Hoppe, but I disagree with him in one major way and that’s because I think the case he makes for anarchism is far, far from unassailable. To be antiwar is to be against the greatest sort of war conceivable: the War of All Against All, which I think comes of anarchy by implication, and therefore by definition.

“Private production” of things like defense and even roadways is praxeologically indefensible since the driving motive from the perspective of the supplier will generally be that of attaining the highest profit gains, rather than the aggregate utility that comes of such things in the long run. But anarchists would contend that “absolute freedom” is more important than justice that does not deviate; though principally they are against a private court ruling unjustly, they have no sense of rational expectations. I can’t stand it when the people at Mises.org try to explain away the solidly limited government views of people like Bastiat, Menger, Bohm-Bawerk, Mises, and Hayek for their own “market anarchist” agenda. R. Dr. Israel Kirzner may be, in my opinion, insufficiently radical politically, but his interpretation of Mises comes out to be highly accurate.