This book elaborates and defends the idea of law without the state. Animated by a vision of peaceful, voluntary cooperation as a social ideal and building on a careful account of non-aggression, it features a clear explanation of why the state is illegitimate, dangerous, and unnecessary. It proposes an understanding of how law enforcement in a stateless society could be legitimate and what the optimal substance of law without the state might be, suggests ways in which a stateless legal order could foster the growth of a culture of freedom, and situates the project it elaborates in relation to leftist, anti-capitalist, and socialist traditions.
If I had a motto these days, it would be, "Give peace a chance." I hope my writing and speaking can help people find ways to craft patterns of social life marked by peaceful, voluntary cooperation.
Everything I've published to date has been non-fiction. I write about law, politics, ethics, and religion, largely from a philosophical perspective.
My philosophical work is very much in the analytic tradition, though I'm inclined to embrace the process metaphysics of Alfred North Whitehead, Charles Hartshorne, John Cobb, and David Ray Griffin. My metaphysics informs my religious views, in turn: a Christian, born into the Seventh-day Adventist community, I've gained a lot from encounters with the Dutch Reformed tradition; with Catholics like Karl Rahner, Nicholas Lash, and Henri Nouwen; and with the Anglican communion (think Austin Farrer and John Macquarrie, among others).
My work in ethics and political philosophy reflects my own idiosyncratic take on the "new classical natural law" theory articulated by Germain Grisez and John Finnis. Politically, I'm a left-wing market anarchist. I take anarchism to be the project of doing without the state. I support the elimination of states and their replacement by a diverse array of consensual communities in which people experiment with ways of being human and of being free: I favor panarchy or "anarchy without adjectives."
I'm a market anarchist because (while I don't think all communities should be forced into a cookie-cutter mold), I'd opt for a state-free community in which people enjoyed robust individual possessory rights and were free to structure relationships through exchange. My market anarchism is left-wing because I support inclusion and oppose subordination, deprivation, and aggressive and preventive war. I own the individualist anarchists as forebears; I'm happy to identify as both, in something like the sense suggested by Benjamin Tucker, a socialist and a libertarian. I appreciate Kevin Carson's mutualism and his critique of "vulgar libertarianism," and I welcome the recovery by Carson, Brad Spangler, and others of "socialism" for use by libertarians.
My day job is as associate dean of La Sierra University's School of Business. At La Sierra, I teach courses in business ethics, global poverty, employee and labor relations, religion and science, political philosophy, theology, and social theory. On a more personal level: I'm sentimental and nostalgic. I'm an insomniac, an early riser, a geek, a technophile, and a vegetarian. I abhor authority. Friendship is central to who I am. Born in Glendale, I've lived in SoCal most of my life and it still moves and excites me. I write, teach, and work as an academic bureaucrat. My wife and I explore the region and devour TV shows via Netflix. And I read, and read, and read.
