During a time when enslaved Americans sought freedom through escape, Elizabeth Freeman challenged her legal status as property—and won.

In this excerpt from Letter IX of John Rankin’s Letters on American Slavery, Rankin argues that slavery is incompatible with ...

Jefferson explains that the Declaration of Independence sought to capture a particular strain of political thought that was important and prevalent in the time leading up to the American Revolution.

Crypto- anarchism is a philosophy whose advocates think technology can assist them in creating communities based on consent rather than coercion. Crypto- anarchists wish to be free from state ...

The socialist calculation debate revolves around the question of whether central planners can, at least in principle, make the economic calculations necessary to achieve the rational, efficient ...

The life of the subversive novelist José Rizal proves that sometimes the pen really is mightier than the sword. After José and his family suffered numerous times at the hands of the Spanish colonial ...

Strange things happen when political parties realize it’s possible to win elections with fewer votes. Structural explanations for polarization—from first past the post elections to the advent of ...

How a group of veterans restored democracy to a small town. Paul Meany is the editor for intellectual history at Lib er tar i an ism .org, a project of the Cato Institute. Most of his work focuses on ...

Alex Nowrasteh makes compelling evidence- based counter arguments to the most common objections to immigration. From “immigrants are going to take American jobs” to “they’re going to commit crimes” or ...

The American Founders saw themselves as engaged in a long English tradition of resistance to tyranny. They designed the Constitution to avoid tyrannies of both democratic and autocratic varieties.