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11/20/08
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September
25, 2006 Note: A rough 2003 draft of this article was mistakenly published in Reason Papers no. 28 (Spring 2006) instead of the finished 2006 version. This is the correct, final version. The morality of warfare is an issue that has long divided libertarians. The spectrum of libertarian opinion on the subject ranges all the way from Leonard Peikoff, who defends the use of nuclear weapons against civilian targets,[1]to Robert LeFevre, who denied the legitimacy of all violence, even in self-defense.[2] Needless to say, most libertarians fall at various points between these two extremes — though the divisions have become sharper since the 9/11 attacks. (One of the more ironic manifestations of these divisions is that French libertarians are far more likely to support current US foreign policy than American libertarians are; perhaps anti-government thinkers tend to be more attracted to whatever position their own government opposes.) What view of warfare is most consistent with libertarian principles? Here I shall distinguish between libertarianism as a normative ethical theory — a theory of justice — and libertarianism as a descriptive social theory. Libertarians disagree with one another as to the extent of the former's dependence on the latter; utilitarian libertarians profess to believe the dependence total, while natural-rights libertarians profess to believe it nonexistent, but in practice both groups tend to treat the dependence as partial, and so will I.[3] (Read the rest here. Click the "back button" to return to The Price of Liberty.)
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