Part 1 | Part 2
The first issue of the radical individualist periodical Liberty (1881–1908) opened with the words,
Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, these three: but the greatest of these is Liberty. Formerly the price of Liberty was ...
The 2005 German film Sophie Scholl: The Final Days (Die letzten Tage) depicts the anti-Nazi heroine Sophie Magdalena Scholl (May 9, 1921 February 22, 1943). Sophie and her brother, Hans, were leading members of a nonviolent resistance group called ...
Lorenzo’s Oil (1992) is one of the best movies you’ve never seen. This incredible drama hit the big screen for two seconds before skidding into rental stores, where it failed to find the wider ...
In 1853, Lucretia Mott described the Quaker women of the Massachusetts community into which she had been born. “Look at the heads of those women; they can mingle with men; they are not triflers; they have intelligent subjects of ...
The Castle is a tacky tract house in Melbourne, Australia, where the quirky Kerrigans live in the firm belief that they are the luckiest family in the world. Their house is so close to the airport that planes almost ...
O, why was I born with a different face?
Why was I not born like this envious race?
Why did Heaven adorn me with bountiful hand,
And then set me down in an envious land?
William Blake’s poem “Mary” (1803) could have been ...
Part 1 | Part 2
The right of people to defend themselves against the usurpation of government was the central theme of Spooner’s next major work, An Essay on the Trial by Jury (1852), which some consider ...
Part 1 | Part 2
The 19th-century individualist anarchist Benjamin Tucker called Lysander Spooner “our Nestor,” a Greek name denoting “wisdom.” The 20th-century libertarian Murray Rothbard referred to Spooner as “the last of the great natural rights ...
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
Thoreau’s criticism is aimed at the form of obedience that springs from a genuine respect for the authority of the state. This obedience says, “The law is the law and ...
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
Although many Quaker writers had argued from conscience for civil disobedience against war and slavery, Henry David Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience” essay is not tied to a particular religion or to ...