Libertarianism is adherence to the non-aggression principle, which in turn is short-hand for a certain private property order being inviolate. This private property order involves non-transferable bodily-self-ownership, transferable ownership of external scarce resources one has homesteaded or is a transferee of, and restitution whenever either of the above types of ownership are violated. The more thoroughgoing is one’s embrace of the non-aggression principle, the more that person is a libertarian. In his 2008 essay, Libertarianism through Thick and Thin, Charles Johnson, an impressively erudite libertarian scholar, argues that this is an excessively narrow or “thin” conception of libertarianism, and that libertarianism … Continue reading The Perils of Thick Thinking