In our first number on Lysander Spooner’s No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority, our author systematically rejects the notion that individuals consent to government by paying taxes or voting. There, the case is decidedly abstract and philosophical, but for our second number we turn to the more explicitly legal and constitutional. Spooner begins by demonstrating that the Constitution purports to be a contract between either sovereign individuals or sovereign state governments.

This episode was written by Anthony Comegna, narrated by Caleb Brown, and produced by Mark McDaniel

Lysander Spooner’s No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority (written 1867-1870) was in many ways the great man’s greatest contribution to liberal thought and without a doubt the best example of his originality as a thinker. With this inaugural item, we present our listeners one of the most radical, forceful, and influential statements of libertarian anarchism in American history. 

This episode was written by Anthony Comegna, narrated by Caleb Brown, and produced by Mark McDaniel.

In this sly and amusing commentary on the emerging American monetary system, one Ferret Snapp Newcraft describes his upbringing as a young captain of finance.  Through his youth, he travels the countryside with his swindler father, learning the methods and ideology of graft. 

This episode was written and narrated by Anthony Comegna and produced by Mark McDaniel.

Karl Hess was an influential figure among high-level Republicans in the early 1960s. As a speechwriter for the GOP, Hess has been credited as the author of Barry Goldwater’s most iconic line, “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice; moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” Over time, Hess became more radical and his close associations with the both the GOP and broader white collar society strained and ultimately dissolved. Hess became an anarchist.

Robert Anton Wilson, is best known for co-authoring the popular Illuminatus! Trilogy published in 1975. Wilson and his co-author, Robert Shea, had been editors at Playboy magazine and began cataloging the letters they’d receive describing various conspiracies of governments and secret societies. Wilson has been described as “maybe” a futurist, author, lecturer, stand-up comic, guerrilla ontologist, psychedelic magician, outer head of the Illuminati, quantum psychologist, Taoist sage and Discordian pope.

The wide-ranging discussion presented here took place at the 1987 nominating convention of the Libertarian Party.

Written by Caleb O. Brown and produced by Mark McDaniel.

In the final portions of Barry Goldwater’s movement-making 1960 book, he turns his pen from domestic affairs and the philosophy of limited government to the realm of foreign affairs and the supposed “Soviet Menace.”

The Conscience of a Conservative was fist published under the name of Senator Barry Goldwater. The book was a smashing success beyond anyone’s expectations. Over 3.5 million copies sold, and its success garnered Goldwater enough national fame to secure his party’s nomination in 1964. For decades, it has been considered an unparalleled foundational text. It begins by identifying the most important distinctions between movement conservatives and their well-meaning but misguided fellows, left and right.

Classics of Liberty is narrated by Caleb O. Brown, written by Anthony Comegna, and produced by Mark McDaniel.

Source: Dixon, ed. Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the Supreme Court of the State of Wisconsin, with Tables of the Cases and Principal Matters. Abram D. Smith, Official Reporter. Vol. III, Containing Cases Decided at the June and December Terms, 1854. Chicago: Callaghan & Company, Law Publishers. 1875. 13-134. See also: Dunley, Ruth. “A.D. Smith: Knight-Errant of Radical Democracy,” (PhD Diss.). The University of Ottowa. 2008.

The Smiths moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1842, where Abram, styled “Governor of the People,” gave expansionist speeches laced with radical liberal visions of American Manifest Destiny. He practiced law and delivered inspiring speeches, winning him election to the state Supreme Court. In 1852, a Missouri slave named Joshua Glover escaped his master and resettled in Racine, Wisconsin. When federal marshals tracked, captured, and beat Glover on 10 March, 1854, locals alerted famous abolitionist and publisher of the Milwaukee Daily Free Democrat, Sherman Booth. Booth led a crowd of 5,000 in an assault on the city jail on 13 March, 1854. The crowd broke into the jail, freed Glover, and made public demonstrations of their victory. Officials soon charged Booth with aiding and abetting a fugitive slave.

Booth’s attorney, Byron Paine, appealed to the court to release his client, claiming that the Fugitive Slave Act violated the rights of Wisconsin by denying citizens due process of law. Smith’s decision of 7 June, 1854 nullified the Fugitive Slave Act in the state of Wisconsin. In this first of two selections from Smith’s arguments, he explains the nature of the case before him, weighs the various claims involved, and explains his reasoning that the Fugitive Slave Act was indeed an unconstitutional breach of authority, incommensurate with the national government’s strictly delegated powers.

O’Sullivan and his Democratic Review gained fame, notoriety, and influence by spearheading the movement to produce an authentically American national culture distinct from European antecedents.  Publishing now-canonical authors like Whitman and Hawthorne as well as editorials written by O’Sullivan himself, the Democratic Review trumpeted the concept of “Manifest Destiny” cast in a decidedly radical liberal direction.  The wider New York cultural movement identified itself with the phrase “Young America,” sharply contrasting the United States, which O’Sullivan called “The Great Nation of Futurity,” with the monarchies, aristocracies, and corporate-plutocracies proliferating throughout the Old World.  O’Sullivan and his fellow Young Americans were far from perfect, and by no means were they equivalent to modern libertarians, but their visions and concepts of republicanism, democracy, and the United States constituted one of the most virulent and influential strains of liberal thinking in the entirety of nineteenth-century America.

On the evening of 29 October, 1835, radical liberal conspirators poured into Tammany Hall, fulfilling their carefully-laid plans to overtake the local Democratic Party nominating conventions from the conservatives who controlled the Hall.  After shutting down the conventions and subsequently the gas lamps throughout the hall, the radicals lit the room with their newly-invented friction matches popularly called “loco-focos.” They nominated their own slate of candidates.

The following morning, the press condescendingly referred to the rump conventioneers as the “Loco-Foco Party,” a name which they adopted as a badge of honor. The party later drafted the defining document of their equal rights movement, the Loco-Foco Declaration of Principles.

Show Notes and Further Reading

Benjamin R. Tucker’s “The Relation of the State to the Individual”