The race for the Republican Presidential nominee in the USA is getting interesting. Last Tuesday the good people of Iowa voted for their favourite Republican, with no clear outcome. Read more

Anarchy has a bad rap. When people hear the word they generally think of angry kids wearing black and burning cars. Or of people running wild in the streets, fighting and looting. But that isn’t anarchy, it is chaos. The difference is important.

Some people claim that anarchy would lead to chaos. Perhaps. That is a discussion worth having. But first people need to recognise that anarchy is not defined as chaos.

Anarchy is the radical extension of classical liberal thought. Liberals believe that people should generally be allowed to control their own lives, with limited government involvement. More radical libertarians believe the government should get out of everything, except police, courts and army. Anarchists simply take it one further and ask why the free market couldn’t supply security and arbitration services, so that the government could disappear entirely.  Read more

Apparently, we are at war. The ‘war on terror’ was declared by American President George W. Bush after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and has so far included the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, changed security rules, and introduced a new foreign policy doctrine of pre-emption and proactive intervention. Will this new international dynamic lead to a reduction in liberty? The answer is probably yes. This is not because terrorists will take our freedom from us, but because the West seems determined to give up our liberty voluntarily.

Terrorism does pose a direct threat to liberty. Any action that would deprive people of their rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is an affront to liberty, and terrorist acts certainly fall into that category. However, by far the greater threat to liberty is that fear will result in bad public policy as some people clamour to give up their freedoms in the hopeless pursuit of perfect safety.

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