Category Archives: Uncategorized

John Stuart Mill and Alexis de Tocqueville are in agreement that the “tyranny of the majority” poses the greatest danger of all to individual liberty, but what is to be done? We already saw Mill’s proposed remedy (the harm principle) … Continue reading →

I introduced John Stuart Mill’s libertarian harm principle (or what I prefer to call “Mill’s proviso”) in my previous post: people should be free to think, speak, and act as they please as long as no else is harmed. But … Continue reading →

N.B.: I dedicate this blog post to our nation’s military veterans. Does the law-liberty dilemma have a solution? One possible approach to the paradox of politics is to replace liberty with some other master criterion, and to this end, we … Continue reading →

I will resume my series on the paradox of politics in my next post; in the meantime, enjoy:

Why do I include the English social reformer Jeremy Bentham (1748-1843) in my survey on the “paradox of politics”? Because Bentham’s solution to the law-liberty dilemma is at once novel, original, and extremely dangerous! Before Bentham, the main goal of … Continue reading →

I will resume my series on the paradox of politics in the next day or two. Today, however, I will be attending the SpaceU Symposium at my home institution, the University of Central Florida, where I will be presenting my … Continue reading →

Last month (October 2025), I wrote up a series of blog posts on “the paradox of politics”: the perennial tension between law and liberty, coercion and consent, authority and autonomy. More specifically, I surveyed four of the greatest Anglo-American minds … Continue reading →

That is the title of this new book-length defense of space exploration, which I have also added to my ever-expanding Thanksgiving week reading list! (I had the honor of meeting the author, the legendary space activist Rick Tumlinson, at a … Continue reading →

That is the title of this paper by Namrata Goswami, a professor of space security at the USSF-Johns Hopkins University. I had the pleasure of meeting Professor Goswami at the National Space Society’s 2025 “Space Settlement Summit“, which is meeting … Continue reading →