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Argument: Libertarianism abandons the social contract and Western political thought

Issue Report: Libertarianism

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G. Eyclesheimer Ernst, Firearms Policy Journal, Volume 2, No. 1 – “The libertarian fantasy is very simple… As a matter of political theory, it says we reverse the process John Locke described in The Second Treatise on Government: we dissolve Civil Society and return to the State of Nature which the libertarians imagine will be a benign wonderfully free place without any obligation to and coercion by sovereign political community.”[1]

Douglass North, 1993 Nobel prize winner in economics. – The evolution of government from its medieval, Mafia-like character to that embodying modern legal institutions and instruments is a major part of the history of freedom. It is a part that tends to be obscured or ignored because of the myopic vision of many economists, who persist in modeling government as nothing more than a gigantic form of theft and income redistribution.[2]