Realizing Freedom: Libertarian Theory, History, and Practice

Readers looking for a guide to classical liberal thought will benefit from this extensive and well-considered essay, compiled by a leading authority in the field.

What is freedom? How is freedom related to justice, law, property, peace, and prosperity? Tom Palmer has spent a lifetime—as a scholar, teacher, journalist, and activist—asking and answering these questions. Since its publication in 2009, Realizing Freedom has been the recipient of wide acclaim, both in the United States and around the world. Now, this expanded edition adds even greater depth and dimension to the book, with newly added essays that confirm Palmer’s role as one of liberty’s most articulate advocates. A tireless educator, Palmer has traveled the world to bring the message of freedom to people on every continent. At home, he has been an incisive commentator on current affairs as well as an original and innovative thinker in political philosophy. The essays in this volume are drawn from his decades of work on the theory of justice, multiculturalism, democracy and limited government, globalization, the law and economics of patents and copyrights, among many other topics, and reflect the many levels on which Palmer has promoted individual liberty.

“Tom Palmer has the ability to make the complex understandable and to go to the heart of the most difficult problems.”

—John Stossel

“Compelling, important, accessible, and erudite, this new and substantially expanded edition of Realizing Freedom brings together decades’ worth of insight by Tom G. Palmer, one of the global liberty movement’s leading advocates.”

—Robert M. S. McDonald, associate professor of history, United States Military Academy, West Point

“Tom Palmer’s Realizing Freedom is essential reading for libertarians and their critics alike. It offers clear and concise rejoinders to common and not so common objections to the case for a strictly limited government. In the process, it demonstrates not only the breadth and depth of libertarianism as a political tradition but also the brilliance and clarity of Palmer’s thought.”

—Mark Pennington, professor of political economy, King’s College, University of London

TOM G. PALMER is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, the vice president for International Programs at the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, and the general director of the Atlas Global Initiative for Free Trade, Peace, and Prosperity. He received his doctorate in politics from Oxford University.