Description:

Subtitle: Libertarian Theory, History, and Practice by Tom Palmer

What is freedom? How is freedom related to justice, law, property, peace, and prosperity? Tom Palmer has spent a lifetime — as a scholar, teacher, journalist, and activist — asking and answering these questions. His best writings are now collected in Realizing Freedom: Libertarian Theory, History, and Practice. Palmer’s work ranges from the theory of justice to multiculturalism, democracy and limited government, globalization, the law and economics of patents and copyrights, among many other topics. These essays appeared in scholarly journals and in newspapers such as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and London Spectator. His work is accessible to scholars and thoughtful citizens alike. Palmer has smuggled photocopiers and fax machines into the Soviet Union; organized movements against the draft, taxes, censorship, and victimless-crime laws; and ceaselessly promoted freedom in the most hostile locations, from communist Europe and China to Iraq to the halls of academe.

Endorsements:

“Tom Palmer has the ability to make the complex understandable and to go to the heart of the most difficult problems. He is a valuable resource for journalists and others in search of historical and economic scholarship and philosophical insight, especially about the impact of government intervention and the reasons for respecting the freedom and responsibility of individuals.”
—JOHN STOSSEL
ABC News

“Much of this book is devoted to lively defenses of classical liberal and libertarian rights theory against critics and false friends of many sorts. Even more interesting than these sharp rejoinders, though, is Palmer’s reframing and recharacterization of that rights theory. Drawing on his extraordinary interdisciplinary learning, Palmer offers a sociologically, institutionally, and historically informed libertarianism–one that is true to the rich legacy and tradition of classical liberalism.”
—JACOB T. LEVY
Tomlinson Professor of Political Theory, McGill University; author, The Multiculturalism of Fear

“Tom Palmer has been one of liberty’s most eloquent and learned spokespersons for many years. It is a joy to have so many of his lucid, readable, and trenchant essays, written over most of those years, between one set of covers. The essays are independent of each other, enough so that you can sit down and read one here, one there, without needing to know also the hundred or two hundred pages in between. Whatever sort of essay you pick, I guarantee you a good read.”
—JAN NARVESON
University of Waterloo; author, You and the State: A Short Introduction to Political Philosophy and The Libertarian Idea

“Tom Palmer has been long involved in fighting the battle of ideas; in confronting collectivism, extensive government intervention, and the suppression of human freedom and economic prosperity. This book should be read by all who care about freedom. It is important to remind each generation that freedom can never be taken for granted. Collectivist, anti-libertarian ideologies did not cease to exist at the moment the Iron Curtain fell.”
—VACLAV KLAUS
President of the Czech Republic