What is Lysander Spooner famous for?

[torchbearer]

Please educate me. Dr. Paul mentioned Lysander Spooner several times the other day.. and I don't know who he is... inform me.

 

[foofighter20x]

Lysander Spooner

 

[Bluedevil]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysander_Spooner

 

[Original_Intent]

Wikipedia and google are your friends. In other words, I didn't know either

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysander_Spooner


darn I knew I shouldn't have taken the time for a witty remark!

 

[angelatc]

He founded a company that directly competed with the USPS. It offered lower postage rates though, so the government shut it down.

 

[torchbearer]

What makes him like Ghandi and MLK?

 

[foofighter20x]

He really stuck it to The Man.

 

[foofighter20x]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysander_Spooner

Wikipedia and google are your friends. In other words, I didn't know either

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysander_Spooner


darn I knew I shouldn't have taken the time for a witty remark!

Slow Pokes

 

[torchbearer]

by creating a private postal service?

 

[torchbearer]

Is there a reason Dr. Paul mentioned this guy only in the Cavuto interview? Does wall street have a foundness for Spooner?

 

[foofighter20x]

by creating a private postal service?

What better way to stick it to the government than by directly competing with them and making them look bad while doing it?

 

[torchbearer]

How bad did he get persecuted?

 

[foofighter20x]

How badly depends on to what degree of persecution you consider "being litigated into business failure."

 

[torchbearer]

Any reason why he'd bring him up while debating Cavuto? he mentioned Ghandi and MLK before, but not lysander.

 

[MsDoodahs]

Is there a reason Dr. Paul mentioned this guy only in the Cavuto interview? Does wall street have a foundness for Spooner?

Absolutely not.

Though some who trade are anarchists.

 

[ChicagoLawyer]

Here's a page that libertarian law professor Randy Barnett put together on Spooner:

http://www.lysanderspooner.org/

He was one of the 19th Century's greatest libertarians. He's perhaps most famous for his argument that slavery violated the Constitution, even before the 13th amendment. He also advocated passive resistance in a way that is similar to MLK and Gandhi. I don't know why it was only on the Fox show that Ron Paul mentioned him, but it's great to hear Spooner's name on the air.

 

[RedStripe]

Lysander Spooner is the MAN.

No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority

I have read this many times.

 

[Duckman]

Lysander Spooner is considered to be one of the first proto-libertarians. He took several unpopular positions in his life due to his libertarian convictions, such as his argument that the US had no right to force the Southern states to stay in the union (he took this position despite being a radical abolitionist) and his controversial No Treason pamphlet which argued that America had basically become an empire following the Civil War and that the original constitutional pact betwene states was no longer voluntary and therefore no longer valid.

I think Ron Paul certainly looks to Spooner as a role model, and thus the glowing words. But I don't think Spooner was ever the target of the authorities, except when it came to his alternate postal service company.

Beyond the Wikipedia article there are several pages on Spooner in Brian Doherty's book Radicals for Capitalism, which is a very readable history of libertarian thought.

 

[torchbearer]

Actually, now i remember Ron Paul talking about 'legalizing competition' in the postal market. i think that may have been on colbert? someone help me here. i'm a big enough addict to remember all his on air speeches.... but i'm a lil' fuzzy right now with my 'night time medicine'.

 

[mesler]

I think the point Dr. Paul was making was that disobeying a law that you feel is unjust, while being illegal, is not necessarily immoral, and he cited MLK and Spooner as examples.

I have no idea who Spooner is past his Wikipedia page, so not sure what he did that is considered civil disobedience.