This is not your father’s anarchist philosophy

Speaking of the Anarchists Book Fair, lots of people think of Anarchists as bomb throwers and leftists but that’s not philosophically accurate and there is a reason why libertarians should study anarchist philosophy.  I understand that Murray Rothbard, major hero of a great many libertarians, declared himself anarchist when confronted with the following dilemma.  He was pressed by left-liberal friends to explain why, under his philosphy, citizens could choose a minimalist government but they could not choose a larger, or very large government.   Sort of “where do you draw the line?”  As I understand it Murray saw that drawing that line was impossible and realized that (my words not his) Anarchism is the inevitable result of the search for libertarian truth.  I must confess I had a pretty hard time with ideas like an anarchist court system but once you hear the logic it’s pretty hard to refute.  By the way, it turns out there is a lot of historical precedent.  The idea works and has worked in the past. For lots of excellent, well thought out theory and perspective check out the Mises Institute at www.mises.org.  They have an incredible wealth of info in their media archives.  My treo is pretty filled up with this stuff and I walk around all day listening to the mp3s.  Until they ban walking around with an mp3 player.  Some people listen to smooth jazz or hip hop. I listen to anarchist theory and austrian economics.  On that topic – check out a new book – http://Anarchy and the Law by Edward Stringham.

Im not sure how many attendees at the event will be post-libertarians.  The film fest appears to be located at the Yippie Museum.  That sounds like a load of fun, but I suspect it’s not populated with a lot of libertarians.

At any rate I think the Anarchist Book Fair and mises.org are not to be missed.

Manhattan Libertarian Party