John Locke lays out the foundational arguments of liberalism: people have rights preexisting government, and government exists to protect those rights. Nicknamed the "Father of Liberalism," Locke's ...

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 ...

William Graham Sumner held a professorship in political economy at Yale and did pioneering work in sociology when the field was in its infancy. In addition to doing academic work that spanned a ...

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 ...

“He fell upon Government, and shew’d, that every Man was born free, and had as much Right to what would support him, as to the Air he respired.” One of the most important primary sources of any kind ...

“Plantain was resolved that he would now make himself King of Madagascar, and govern there with absolute Power and Authority.” Clement Downing served on a variety of ships in the Indian Ocean as an ...

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 ...

“Let us attach ourselves firmly [to] civilization — justice, legality, publicity, Liberty; and let us never forget [that we] are under the eye of the world.” At seven years old, Francois Guizot, who ...

When the Roman Empire collapsed, society persisted and new regimes thrived. Europe quickly became a patchwork of new and competing socio- political orders. We, whose duty it is to afford suitable ...

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 ...

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 ...