I've been interested in the work and ideas of Lysander Spooner for many years. One of the plans (or hopes, I guess I should say) I had for this community was to spark a renewed interest in what has been called "native american anarchism", i.e., the work of men like Spooner, Ben Tucker, and Josiah Warren. (Some people include Thoreau in this grouping, but I do not think of Henry David as an anarchist, rather more like a radical Jeffersonian democrat.) Below are some links to pages devoted to the life and work of Spooner, let's read and discuss his continued relevance, if we feel there is any.
Arguably the best Spooner page online, created by Randy Barnett, a law professor at Boston University School of Law: http://www.lysanderspooner.org/ (Barnett himself is a very interesting fellow, judging by the brief bio on his webpage.)
Here, http://www.mises.org/rothbardintro…, one will find Murray Rothbard's fascinating introduction to Spooner's Vices Are Not Crimes, in which Rothbard describes LP, accurately I think, as a libertarian pietist. I disagree with Rothbard's description of Tucker and the anarchists who followed in his wake---he sees a stark difference between Ben and Lysander which I simply do not recognize---but his overall argument is unique and mostly convincing.
Interesting, though, I think somewhat flawed, is this discussion http://www.davekopel.com/2A/LawRev… of Spooner's writings on the unconstitutionality of slavery, within the context of an historical review of interpretations of the 2nd Amendment of the Federal Constitution. Spooner advocates not only an individual right to keep and bear arms, but the rightness of slaves bearing arms in the defence of their own "life and liberty", including preventing being recaptured and returned to slavery.
Finally, at least for now, a heated dismissal (http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHi…) of the claim by libertarians "that Lysander Spooner is another individualist anarchist whose ideas support 'anarcho'-capitalism's claim to be part of the anarchist tradition."
That should give us something to talk about.
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