Wendy McElroy

Wendy McElroy is a pioneer of 'individualist feminism' — a movement that rejects the traditional left-wing, big-government school of feminism, and argues that only individual liberty will empower women to achieve true equality. ... She edited Liberty for Women (2002), a collection of essays that give the Ifeminist perspective on sex, guns, work, violence, and other topics ... Philosophically, McElroy doesn't call herself a libertarian, but describes her beliefs as 'individualist anarchism.' She also rejects voting and political action, which she says are 'direct violations of libertarian morality.'

Wendy McElroy ... is the editor of Freedom, Feminism and the State ... a historical overview of individualist feminism in America. ... McElroy has also compiled Index to Liberty: 1881-1908, a comprehensive index to Benjamin Tucker's 19th century periodical ... She is a weekly columnist for FoxNews.com, writing under the title 'The ifeminist' -- a column that is widely reposted on the Internet. ... McElroy is also a research fellow at the Independent Institute, and contributing editor to Ideas on Liberty (formerly The Freeman), The New Libertarian, Free Inquiry, and Liberty magazines.

In XXX - A Woman's Right to Pornography, feminist Wendy McElroy boldly and convincingly asserts that pornography benefits women. The message of XXX, as McElroy says, 'is not that every woman should read or watch pornography. It is that every woman should decide for herself.' By giving a history of pornography and feminism in America, McElroy reveals that pornography and feminism make strange bedfellows. ... Wendy McElroy is a committed feminist ... Although she writes in defense of pornography, her personal life is not sensational. She is happily married and lives in rural Canada.

Wendy McElroy presented a more concise argument against voting ... "At the last Liberty Conference," she writes, "a question was posed: 'If you could have ... cast the deciding vote against Hitler, would you have done so?" I replied, "No, but I would have no moral objection to putting a bullet through his skull.'" ... McElroy's willingness to put "a bullet through [Hitler's] skull" demonstrates her revolutionary zeal. But her elaboration makes it clear that she considers voting the kind of serious sin that mere assassination, apparently, is not: A ballot can never be "an act of self-defense ..."

In his periodical Liberty, (May 23, 1885), the quintessential American individualist-anarchist Benjamin Tucker wrote of his British counterpart Auberon Herbert, "I know of no more inspiring spectacle in England than that of this man of exceptionally high social position doing battle almost single-handed with the giant monster, government, and showing in it a mental rigor and vigor and a wealth of moral fervor rarely equaled in any cause." ... Herbert was also cognizant that wars benefited the ruling class at the expense of common men, who were overwhelmingly the ones to fight and die.

The modern-day Middle East centers on Israel, Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt — clustered close to the Mediterranean Sea. Lying near the juncture of Europe, Asia, and Africa, the Middle East has traditionally acted as a commercial, cultural, and military route between the worlds of East and West. ... On June 5, 1916, Hussein's sons led a revolt in Medina. ... Using brilliant guerilla tactics, the Arabs harassed the Turks. Pinning down the enemy — often through hand-to-hand combat — the Arabs allowed Allenby to capture Jerusalem. But, significantly, the ancient Arab city of Damascus was liberated by Arabs.

The Arabs would not have fought so bravely had they known of the Sykes-Picot Agreement, which had been signed by the Entente in May of 1916. In essence, the Agreement divided the Middle East between Britain and France. When the Arabs did learn of the agreement, they were incensed and sent out feelers to their recent enemy, the Turks. ... Arab bitterness burned; the Zionists continued to arm; the British created commissions of inquiry. The Shaw Commission and the Hope-Simpson Royal Commission both recommended that Jewish immigration and land purchases be restricted. The recommendations were ignored.

In 1936, the Arabs went on a six-month general strike, seeking both economic reforms and a moratorium on all debt. The Arabs would call off the strike if the British would end Jewish immigration. Instead, the British increased the immigration quota by 10 percent, establishing the port at Tel Aviv under Jewish control, which became the port of entry for thousands of illegal settlers. ... The Jewish claim was outlined in a 1948 document entitled 'Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel' ... The Arab claim was outlined in 1938, by George Antonius, a Christian Palestinian Arab ...

"Not a plumber fired a salute or hung out a flag. Not a governor proclaimed a day of prayer," wrote H. L. Mencken on December 28, 1917, in the New York Evening Mail. The occasion for the iconoclastic journalist’s lament was "A Neglected Anniversary" ... Mencken wished to demonstrate the dramatic inaccuracies of many newspaper accounts, which are too often swallowed whole by uncritical readers. This phenomenon is especially prevalent in periods of war, when great efforts are made to stir the public's emotions so that it unquestioningly supports the government's policies.

The first issue of the radical individualist periodical Liberty (1881–1908) opened with the words,

Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, these three: but the greatest of these is Liberty. Formerly the price of Liberty was eternal vigilance, but now it can be had for fifty cents a year.

... But what if a contract involved the payment of capitalistic profit such as interest? Tucker was clear: if you signed a contract to pay interest, then it was your right to enter into such a foolish agreement and no one had any business interfering with that contract.

Liberty first appeared on August 6, 1881, from Boston, where Tucker worked as a journalist with the Boston Globe; later, in 1892, Liberty moved to New York City, where it was published until its demise in 1907. Fittingly, [its] superscript was a quotation from Proudhon ...
[Tucker's] death marked the end of an era ... Radical individualism as an organized movement would not appear in America again until the mid 1950s ... By integrating the political theories of Tucker into the economic framework of Austrian economics, the modern libertarian movement was born.

"Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, these three; but the greatest of these is Liberty. Formerly the price of Liberty was eternal vigilance, but now it can be had for fifty cents a year." So wrote Benjamin Ricketson Tucker (1854–1939) on the first page of the first issue of Liberty. ...
Perhaps most destructively, individualism clung to the labor theory of value and refused to incorporate the economic theories arising within other branches of individualist thought ... Unable to embrace statism, the stagnant movement failed to adequately comprehend the logical alternative to the state—a free market.

"Formerly the price of Liberty was eternal vigilance, but now it can be had for fifty cents a year." So wrote Benjamin Tucker (1854–1939) on the first page of the first issue ... The American journal Liberty ... was arguably the finest libertarian periodical ever published in the English language ...
In broad terms, the achievements of Benjamin R. Tucker's journal Liberty were: its influence upon people, its role in the creation and sustenance of an autonomous movement; and the preservation of a tradition without which modern libertarianism could not exist.

A friend just experienced a terrible drug problem. Not with illegal drugs, but with a prescription from her doctor. Her eighty-year-old memory sometimes stumbles, and so, without diagnostic tests, the doctor prescribed a potent Alzheimer medication ...
Kirsch had to use the Freedom of Information Act to procure the results ... Neither government nor big pharma wanted the public scrutiny. While they may turn against each other when power or profits create separate interests, there is one point on which the state and big pharma are in accord: They want your blind acceptance. And your money.

Irish history has been likened to the cry of wind through a ruined house because so much of it deals with destruction and the breaking of a whole into parts. Centuries of conflict between Catholic and Protestant, Irish rebel and British authority offer a dramatic narrative ...
The British responded with the Coercion Bill of 1833 which temporarily suspended habeas corpus, prohibited meetings, and replaced civil courts with military ones. One result: [Daniel] O'Connell and many others abandoned their attempt to reform Ireland through appeals to Britain. Reform would come from within.

In the 1840s, a new voice would be heard in Ireland: the Young Irelanders, who urged the Catholic peasantry to return to their Gaelic roots. Literary and political radicals, the Young Irelanders sprinkled Gaelic terms throughout their writings long before the language was revived in order to redeem the Irish soul by de-Anglicizing it ...
[T]he Parliament Act of 1911 limited the House of Lords' veto power to three consecutive sessions. When the Lords threatened to veto that Act as well, King George V threatened to pack the peerage with Liberals in order to secure passage. The Act passed.

In 1912, Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith introduced a "Government of Ireland Bill" that attempted to establish an Irish parliament with a popularly elected lower house and an appointed senate. A small delegation of Irish was to remain at Westminster to represent Ireland's interest in the Empire. ...
Among the defectors were delegates from the IRA, which split into two factions: those who rejected the treaty and those who reluctantly accepted it as granting "the freedom to achieve freedom." The British began to depart from their oldest colony, which they had occupied for almost 800 years.

In the North, treatment of Catholics deteriorated as one of the most infamous measures in Irish history was passed—the Special Powers Act of 1922. Catholic-rights advocate Bernadette Devlin explained ...
Many observers contend that if the British were to leave Northern Ireland, blood would flow in Northern streets and the South might erupt in civil war. They argue that centuries of differing development have made the North and South into truly separate entities. Others contend the opposite ... These two positions—and those in-between—constitute the ongoing debate and dilemma that is Ireland.

A 16th-century essay entitled Discourse of Voluntary Servitude by the French jurist Étienne de La Boétie (1530–1563) discusses a question that haunts those who love liberty: Why do people obey unjust laws? The Discourse offers insight. It examines the psychology of those who obey, those who command, and those who resist ...
Yet, when the elected ruler tastes power, "he plans never to relinquish his position." The trick was to engineer the future consent of the people in order to ensure his continued power. But how? La Boétie explored the major ways that a ruler engineered consent.

The beginning of a tyrant's rule was the most difficult period because those who had not consented to his rule would obey reluctantly, and brute force might be necessary. Brute force could put down dissent in the short term but it was never a good option. Violence bred martyrs ...
There is something within man and beast that resists the tension of a leash. Rather than break the tension by attacking those who hold the reigns, La Boétie told people to let the tension go slack. People should refuse either violence or submission. They should simply say No. In that word, lies their freedom.

Contemporary feminism's preoccupation with its collectivist past has served to silence the voices of early individualist women. A perfect example is Dr. Gertrude B. Kelly (1862–1934), whose contributions to women's rights are long forgotten ...
As an outlet for writing and theory, she turned to the cause of women's suffrage and of Irish independence, becoming a prominent member of the Irish Women's Council. Ironically, two years after her death in 1934, Mayor Fiorello La Guardia dedicated the "Dr. Gertrude B. Kelly Playground" on 21st Street.

Few aspects of America's past are as thoroughly misunderstood as the history of the labor movements that thrived in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The modern union that arose and usurped their place was the antithesis of what it claimed to be. It did not voice workers' rights. It silenced them. ... The main losers? Small businesses that were forced to deal with big labor. And the individual worker who was stripped of the right to contract in his own name, on his own terms. The very existence of the modern union violates worker's rights.

Habeas corpus is a rarely invoked legal writ, or document, widely considered to be the cornerstone of individual liberty. Also known as The Great Writ, habeas corpus (ad subjiciendum) is Latin for "you may have the body" (subject to examination). The writ is a civil action with the force of a court order, which requires a custodian, usually the government, to produce a detainee. ... the United States enshrined habeas corpus as a foundational right for every human being on American soil. No external threat or internal problem can dismantle the individual freedoms on which America was created.

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) was an introspective man who wandered the woods surrounding the small village of Concord, Massachusetts, recording the daily growth of plants ... How, then, did he profoundly influence such political giants as Mohandas Gandhi, Leo Tolstoy, and Martin Luther King Jr.? ...
Thoreau shed the experience of prison, but he could not shed the insight he had gained into his neighbors nor the questions that accompanied his new perspective. The text of "Civil Disobedience" constitutes the answer he discovered by listening to the "quiet voice within."

Although many Quaker writers had argued from conscience for civil disobedience against war and slavery, Henry David Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience" essay is not tied to a particular religion or to a specific issue. It is a secular call for the inviolability of conscience on all issues, and this aspect may account for some of the essay's enduring legacy ... By his own lights, Thoreau was fortunate in this respect. He had neither property to be seized nor children to go hungry. Accordingly, he did not criticize men who reluctantly obeyed an unjust law out of fear for their families.

Thoreau's criticism is aimed at the form of obedience that springs from a genuine respect for the authority of the state. This obedience says, "The law is the law and should be respected regardless of content." Through such attitudes, otherwise good men become agents of injustice ...
Months [after Thoreau's death], Emerson published a eulogy that concluded,

The country knows not yet, or in the least part, how great a son it has lost ...

As always, Thoreau said it more simply: "For joy I could embrace the earth. I shall delight to be buried in it."

Some readers of Stephen Cox's recently published biography, Isabel Paterson and the Idea of America: The Woman and the Dynamo, may succumb to the same temptation I did. I immediately scanned the index for references to Ayn Rand and then I turned directly to those pages ... The mark of the success ... is that it leaves the reader with such questions. I found myself repeatedly lowering the book to consider throwaway statements such as "Radical individualism is an influence without an institution." Buy this book. Not just because Paterson has waited decades for her place in history but because you deserve the pleasure of meeting her.

One lesson offered to America by the Vietnam War is the folly of forcing regime change in a nation whose religion, culture, history, and politics differ dramatically from its own. As a story, the folly may begin in September 1945, when a slender figure stood on a balcony in Hanoi to address the assembled masses. ... Diem pointed to these acts of violence as evidence of spreading communism. He explained to the Americans that it was necessary to send troops into the villages. Thus, Diem not only destroyed village democracy but also convinced the Americans that he was really eliminating communism.

With American encouragement, Diem defied the deadline for a national election. ... Until then, the North had waited to see whether Ho could be voted into power. The communists themselves were brutal and had violated various terms of the Geneva Accords, but they had not openly confronted the South. ... One thing was becoming evident: merely supporting an anticommunist regime did not work. A special task force was created to reassess American policy toward revolutionary movements in the Third World. The definition of 'war' itself had to be re-examined to take into account revolutionary warfare.

“Counterinsurgency” became the new American buzzword and Vietnam became the testing ground, with American leaders looking to apply its lessons elsewhere — for example, in Cuba. The Kennedy administration developed a policy which broke the containment of revolution into three stages ... In the best of circumstances, regime change most often goes astray owing to unintended consequences, popular resistance, and the almost-inevitable tension between the installed regime and the regime-makers. In a foreign and complex culture, forced regime change seems to be a formula for disaster no matter what the underlying intentions.

A Liberty magazine article (March 1987) on religion was entitled "Freedom is for Everyone (Including the despised 'Rightists')." In it, Murray Rothbard observed, "The libertarian movement, and the Libertarian Party, will get nowhere in America–or throughout the world–so long as it is perceived, as it generally is, as a movement dedicated to atheism ... In the absence of harm, the scorn flies in the face of the spirit of libertarianism, if not the letter of its law. The debate on religion within libertarianism needs nothing so much as a word that both true believers and true libertarians should agree upon: Peace.

The 19th-century individualist anarchist Benjamin Tucker called Lysander Spooner "our Nestor," a Greek name denoting "wisdom." The 20th-century ... Murray Rothbard referred to Spooner as "the last of the great natural rights theorists ... the last of the Old Guard believers in natural rights." ...
Spooner maintained,

If an indictment be found, the jury who try that indictment, are judges of the law, as well as the fact. If they think the law unconstitutional, or even have any reasonable doubt of its constitutionality, they are bound to hold the defendants justified in resisting its execution.

The right of people to defend themselves against the usurpation of government was the central theme of Spooner's next major work, An Essay on the Trial by Jury (1852), which some consider his masterpiece. Benjamin Tucker stated the gist ...
Charles Shively observes of Spooner,

In our time, both his example and his ideas concerning the absolute inadequacy of force and of government remain relevant ... In place of these slave-master relationships, there is a search for forms of cooperation among equals. In this search Spooner was a pioneer and a prophet.

Pixar Animation Studios' feature, The Incredibles, returned me to the Saturday mornings of childhood when I sat enraptured in front of a TV set, careening on fast-paced cartoons and the glucose high from a breakfast of Chocolate Frosted Sugar-Bomb cereal. ... Japanese anime has dominated with its state-of-the-art visuals, punchy political themes, unforgettable characters, and brute originality. The Incredibles is American anime that holds its own with the best without blending in. The movie retains traits that are stereotypical: optimism, a happy ending, radical individualism, family values. American anime has arrived.

Murray N. Rothbard (1926-1995)–the greatest libertarian theorist of the 20th century–expressed what he considered to be the central political issue confronting mankind. He wrote, "My own basic perspective on the history of man ... is to place central importance on the great conflict which is eternally waged between Liberty and Power." ...
Not one realized they were mimicking him. A whole generation of libertarian theorists wanted to be Murray Rothbard. We adopted his slang terms, his gestures ... hopefully some of his intellectual magic has rubbed off as well.

The Voluntaryist seeks to reclaim the anti-political heritage of libertarianism. It seeks to reestablish the clear, clean difference between the economic and the political means of changing society. This difference was well perceived by the forerunners of contemporary libertarianism ... Political anarchists are in the gray realm of agreeing heartily in words to principles which their actions contradict. It is time to have the differences between Voluntaryism and political libertarianism clearly expressed and for non-political alternatives to be pursued. It is time for The Voluntaryist.

The Physiocrats, a group of 18th-century French economists, are often credited with founding Western political economy—the study of "laws" governing the production and distribution of wealth. The word "law" is not used in a legal sense. Rather it refers to a principle or governing rule ... Although their ideas were overwhelmed by the violent forces they helped to release, the Physiocrats made an indelible contribution to the literature and progress of human liberty. In the larger picture, they may have been a small step toward freedom ... but they were one of the first steps and in the right direction.

In September 2000, the United States Postal Service (USPS) launched a $12 million campaign to advertise a new Internet service, eBillPay, through which customers could pay their bills electronically. EBillPay is one of several new e-services designed to woo back the growing army of Americans who would rather click a mouse than lick a stamp to send mail. ... Enforcing those prohibitions required widespread interception ... of private correspondence. It required monopoly. The question posed by Spooner over a century and a half ago remains unanswered: from which passage of the Constitution can Congress claim this right?

I owe an unpaid intellectual debt to Robert LeFevre (1911-1986) with whom I associated in my twenties. LeFevre deeply impacted libertarians who met him personally but current and future generations may not understand why. They will meet only his books, which are deceptively simple and less impressive than was the man himself. ... Whatever one thinks of moral pacifism, LeFevre had a great deal to teach including a vital piece of the puzzle on how a free society should handle violence. Namely, don't. Individuals should eradicate the root causes so that violence doesn't erupt in the first place.

"To me," wrote Voltairine de Cleyre (1866-1912), "any dependence, any thing which destroys the complete selfhood of the individual, is in the line of slavery." Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935) wrote: "To define individual duty is difficult; but the collective duty of a class or sex is clear. It is the duty of women ... to bring children into the world who are superior to their parents ..." ... While minor socialist figures have been examined in depth, the Lucifer staff has barely received a mention. This marked tendency to exclude individualists from feminist history indicates its bias.

'Taking the Fifth' – invoking the right against self-incrimination – is a mainstay of mafia movies in which heinous criminals hide behind liberties guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. ... Personal freedoms have been protected for so long that they are taken for granted as 'the American Way,' as though liberty were indigenous and inherent to American soil. Meanwhile, the Bill of Rights is being eroded to a nub. The great wrongs corrected and prevented by its protections have been forgotten. Like forgotten history, they are destined to be repeated.

Lorenzo's Oil (1992) is one of the best movies you've never seen. This incredible drama hit the big screen for two seconds before skidding into rental stores, where it failed to find the wider audience it deserves ...
Finally, Lorenzo's Oil is a counterargument to the assumed need for government funding and law to regulate all things medical in order to ensure progress and quality care.The movie is a clarion call for individuals to take control of their own bodies and their own medical well being. It is the triumph of personal responsibility over bureaucracy, the individual over the system.

"Who now reads Spencer?" As someone who does, I was seduced by the opening question of this recent book on the thought of Herbert Spencer. The book by Alberto Mingardi (of the Italian think tank Instituto Bruno Leoni) ... presents an accessible yet sophisticated overview of an English philosopher who was key in the development of classical liberalism ...
Herbert Spencer is a well-written, -referenced, and -researched book that never slips into the error of academic cleverness. Mingardi pays respect to a fallen leader who deserves to stand tall. He steps back and lets Spencer speak.

Man, Economy, and State: A Treatise on Economic Principles (2 vols., 1962) by Murray Rothbard is a light bulb of a book that keeps the reader clicking with insights. I am jealous of anyone who reads this book for the first time because it is a remarkable adventure ...
The 'deleted' chapters were later published as the book Power and Market (1970). In a worthy homage, the 2004 edition of Man, Economy, and State reunites the original material as Murray intended his greatest work to be published. The book is like listening to a masterful symphony that is complete at last.

The Castle is a tacky tract house in Melbourne, Australia, where the quirky Kerrigans live in the firm belief that they are the luckiest family in the world. Their house is so close to the airport that planes almost scrape their roof. But instead of complaining, patriarch Darryl feels lucky to have such an up-close view of man's conquest of nature ...
The Castle was a smash hit and an award winner in Australia ... This movie is a comedic treasure. It is a loving homage to the common man who loves his family and his castle, and will fight anyone who threatens either.

The 2005 German film Sophie Scholl: The Final Days ... depicts the anti-Nazi heroine Sophie Magdalena Scholl ... Sophie and her brother, Hans, were leading members of a nonviolent resistance group called the White Rose ...
[Marc Rothemund] created a heart-stopping, heartbreaking movie that is inspirational without preaching. It creates fresh perspective on ... the ability to speak without being killed for doing so. It reminds us to jealously protect that freedom ... especially in times of war when speaking truth to power can easily and officially become "aiding the enemy" and treason.

The movie V for Vendetta (V) is a thriller set in London's dystopian future of 2020, where an anti-government anti-hero named "V" (played by Hugo Weaving) uses violence to bring down a totalitarian right-wing state called Norsefire ...
[Valerie] Page is imprisoned by Norsefire. The journal she writes there provides inspiration to Evey who discovers it during her own imprisonment by V. Those scenes are among the most compelling that I have ever seen on screen. But the movie quickly returns to the muddled and cartoonish agenda of the Wachowski brothers and, so, betrays its own potential.

What do you like to do in your free time? Do you have any hobbies?
My favorite hobby is cooking, especially ethnic food. Years ago, my husband and I moved from a big city to a farm that is down a gravel road with the nearest town containing fewer than 500 people ...
Are there any words of wisdom you wish to pass onto the next generation of Austrian scholars?
... Do not presume that people who are 'wrong' are less intelligent, less decent or well-informed than you. For many years, my BFF was an old-fashioned labor union socialist ... When we disagreed, she did not suddenly become stupid, coarse and ignorant.

This is a recent interview conducted by a Italian free-market periodical. 1) You are one of the leading dissident voices in the gender debate. Could you please explain your vision of individualist feminism, what are its main tenets and how it differs from mainstream feminism? ... These are dangerous measures and the atmosphere created by such campaigns has already led to some women being criminal prosecuted for taking insufficient care of their fetuses. If the fetus is a person, can the pregnant woman become a criminal for taking a drink or a drug that necessarily impacts the fetus?

Wendy, Lei è una delle principali voci dissidenti del "dibattito di genere". Ci può spiegare la Sua visione di femminismo individualista, quali sono i suoi assunti ed in che cosa differisce dal femminismo più tradizionale?
WME: Il principio cardine del femminismo individualista è che le donne e gli uomini meritano un trattamento uguale davanti alla legge. ... A mio modo di vedere un elemento essenziale perché si possa ristabilire un rapporto sano e civile tra i due sessi è eliminare tutte le leggi che favoriscono uno dei due sessi – ed oggi nella maggior parte dei casi si tratta di leggi che favoriscono le donne.

Non è che il femminismo moderno sta finendo per seguire i passi del vecchio tradizionalismo patriarcale nella sua pretesa di definire un modello di ruolo "buono" per le donne e di colpevolizzare le "cattive ragazze"?
WME: Giusta osservazione. Certo la condanna "da destra" delle donne che "usano" la loro sessualità è espressa in termini diversi ... Ed anche se mi sento più vicina a quello che dice Ron Paul che a quello che dicono gli altri candidati, alla fine Paul resta comunque un politico. Quei libertari che vogliono consegnargli "l’anello per governarli tutti" (per dirla alla Tolkien) sono un po’ troppo ottimisti ...

Wendy McElroy is a prolific book author, columnist, speaker and contributor to prestigious journals and magazines, often with an "alternative" slant. She made her reputation as a young writer commenting from a libertarian standpoint on feminism, and taking a pro-ponography position that was anathema to the feminist "old guard" that saw pornography as a tool of chauvanist oppression. McElroy has continued to speak out, nonetheless, on issues of the most importance to her: libertariansim, anarchism and, of course, feminism. She has served as a weekly columnist for FoxNews.com ...