Because taxes can be a form of theft, and because taxes need not be theft at all, a reasonable question to ask is how we can tell the difference. The baseline, the starting point, is that property belongs to the individual. He is the one that Thou shalt not steal applies to. He is the …
When the Mountain is Smoking
It is easy for conservatives to talk about how much we love liberty, but this too often comes off like commenting on how much we love ice cream. What such a person actually loves is the sensation for which ice cream is the necessary apparatus. But while it is lawful to love ice cream in …
Lots of Potential
“When the surgeon is gone from the hospital, his instruments are lined up in the drawer, full of potential” (Against the Church, p. 192).
A Gracious Gift of the Creeps
I recently read Peter Leithart’s piece on nature at the Trinity House page here, and my initial reaction was to pose a test case scenario for him. It looked like this. I wrote Peter and asked him to write an article that assumes his “un-metaphysic” about nature, and use it to demonstrate the sinfulness of …
A Real Guarantee
“One of the things we should not want to find ourselves doing is to affirm that God is like that manufacturer who issues a ‘lifetime guarantee’ for His products, and then when it breaks and you take it in, you discover that the guarantee was for the lifetime of the product, which apparently ended at …
Liberty As Durable Goods
In a recent post I claimed that property rights were human rights. A question naturally arose as to whether I was responding to this essay by Brad Littlejohn, which, as it happened, I was not. The impetus for my post came out of a biography of Samuel Adams that I am currently enjoying. Be that …
Created Nature
In any discussion of nature, one of the things we must always be on guard against is this. We are a sinful race and when we sin intellectually, it is always with the materials that are ready at hand. We fail, when we fail, because we have not resisted our own temptations. We also failed …
On Pirate Ship Governance
I have been arguing that Christians need to learn how to stand for liberty, but in order for this to happen they must first learn what it is. And when this happens, they will find themselves saying some outrageous things, like I am about to do. Human rights — which everyone is automatically in favor …
Book of the Month/September 2014
In this wonderful book, Children of the Living God, Sinclair Ferguson carefully discusses the new birth, the glory of adoption, and the ramifications of living together in God’s family. Regeneration “means to come to share in the risen life and power of Jesus Christ, and to enter into vital fellowship with him” (p. 18). This …
More Than One Application
