Ep. 1086 Lysander Spooner: The Evolution of a Radical Libertarian
The Tom Woods Show
Tom Woods
4.8 • 3.4K Ratings
🗓️ 2 February 2018
⏱️ 35 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Chris Calton joins me to discuss one of the most fascinating figures in libertarian history, and how he evolved from defending the Constitution against the claim that it favored slavery all the way to rejecting the very idea that the U.S. Constitution, or any other constitution, could truly bind the people.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Tom Woods Show, episode 10086. |
| 0:03.4 | Prepare to set fire to the index card of allowable opinion. |
| 0:08.2 | Your daily dose of liberty education starts here, the Tom Woods Show. |
| 0:14.7 | Folks, everybody always thinks the current U.S. President must be the worst, but man is their competition for that title. Check out our free |
| 0:22.7 | course on the presidents and their crimes against liberty at freehistorycourse.com. |
| 0:29.2 | Hi everybody, Tom Woods here. Chris Carlton is with me today. He is the host of the historical |
| 0:34.6 | controversies podcast over at the Meises Institute that people are saying so many |
| 0:38.6 | good things about. And he's written a paper, actually he wrote it last year, but I just read it, |
| 0:43.6 | on Lysander Spooner and the evolution of his thought. Lysander Spooner is a real hero for |
| 0:48.8 | libertarians. And if you're unfamiliar with him, you're going to find out today exactly why |
| 0:53.5 | he's such a great |
| 0:55.2 | guy. But on top of being a great guy, he's a fascinating individual, his own personal history, |
| 1:00.4 | his ideas, the evolution of those ideas are all great, great fodder for an excellent conversation. |
| 1:06.3 | And that's what I presume we are going to have today. Chris, welcome to the show. |
| 1:10.0 | Hey, thanks for having me. |
| 1:11.7 | You're never going to be in a situation where listeners, if you have a good podcast, |
| 1:16.1 | are going to be upset that you're talking about Lysander Spooner. |
| 1:19.1 | That's a great thing about a libertarian podcast. |
| 1:21.3 | Talk about Spooner all you like. |
| 1:22.9 | It just makes people smile all the more. And I had a chance to read a paper of yours that I'm linking to |
| 1:29.4 | at tomwoods.com slash 186 on Spooner and on the evolution of his thought and how it is that he |
| 1:37.4 | eventually arrives at the position we associate with him. Some people who know only his later work |
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