Available from: Amazon.com | Nine-Banded Books | Underword Amusements

Marked by an incisive moral skepticism seldom encountered in libertarian discourse, Rollins’ original 1985 tract presented a blistering critique of one of the central tenets of the liberal  ⁠— and libertarian ⁠—  worldview: the idea that humans have unalienable rights merely because they are alive.

While Rollins was not the first to question the philosophical basis for natural rights, his monograph received attention for its hard-hitting style and for its confrontational engagement with the arguments of the most recognized individualist advocates of “natural law.”  The essentially “egoist” core of Rollins’ skepticism would also draw comparison to the work of Max Stirner.

As TGGP writes in his introduction:

The difference between Stirner’s The Ego and His Own and Rollins’ Myth is that the former is more deeply animated by the author’s iconoclastic elan than by the rigorous strictures of analytical discourse. Where Stirner was mirthfully content to spin logomachian webs and toss Young Hegelianisms at Young Hegelians, Rollins sets out not to declare his defiance toward an impotent God but to carefully deprive believers of their deity. And Rollins’ act of Deicide is accomplished in cutting measures, without pomp or apologies or safe, humanistic palliatives.

It would be well enough to bring The Myth of Natural Rights back into print as a standalone volume, but this new edition has been extensively supplemented with contemporaneous texts and commentaries. The definitive text of Rollins’ scathing work is thus followed by a series of essays that document a conflagration that erupted in the pages of Samuel Edward Konkin III’s journal New Libertarian in its wake. Publisher Kevin I. Slaughter, in his new preface, likens the embroilment to a similar episode that played out in Benjamin R. Tucker’s individualist-anarchist periodical Liberty more than a century ago, when advocates of objective morality clashed with the amoral egoists of the day.

Readers with a longer memory than the internet will recognize the names who leap into the fray on one side or the other: Jeff Riggenbach, Murray N. Rothbard, Robert Anton Wilson, Robert LeFevre, George H. Smith, and Sidney E. Parker.

The specter of natural rights haunts the minds of men still. This book, for the dissenting few, will serve either as ammunition for intellectual combat, or as a palliative against the brutal futility of the mass mind. As L.A. Rollins was fond of saying, “make the most of it!”

Table of Contents

• 2019 Publisher’s Preface Kevin I. Slaughter
• 2008 Publisher’s Preface Chip Smith
• 2008 Introduction TGGP
• The Myth of Natural Rights
• New Libertarian Debates
• Author’s Note
• Natural Outlaws vs Natural Lawmen Samuel Edward Konkin III
• Libertarians: Natural Outlaws, Natural Bastards Jeff Riggenbach
• On the Duty of Natural Outlaws to Shut Up Murray N. Rothbard
• Roughing-Up Rights George H. Smith
• A Letter Sidney E. Parker
• Natural Law Robert Anton Wilson
• Natural Rights! Robert LeFevre
• Kranky Notions Jeff Riggenbach
• A Reply to My Reviewers
• Instead of an Afterword
• Acknowledgements
• Recommended Reading
• Cover Gallery

One of the greatest archivists of the Individualist Anarchist and Egoist tradition is James J. Martin, who, beginning with his book

Today I will be presenting something very few of you have heard, two selections from Jeff Riggenbach’s audiobook recording of The Ego and His Own. This was originally released on an audiocassette edition, by Laissez Fair Audio.  Comprising 10 tapes and released in 1994, I’m not aware of any subsequent release in any format since that time. I have produced this recording from a set of tapes donated to the Union of Egoists by Chip Smith, proprietor of Nine-Banded Books.

Some of the other people associated with/published in Invictus:
George H Smith (co-editor – author of Atheism: The case Against God)
Harry Elmer Barnes
Jeff Riggenbach (Listen to episode three of our podcast!)
Wendy McElroy (Index of Liberty, egoist feminism, and much more)
Michael Hoy (Loompanics Unlimited!)
Lysander Spooner
Murray N. Rothbard
John Zube
Pete McAlpine
Kerry Thornley

We are still raising funds to purchase an entire set of Libertarian Microfiche, to ensure that things like this don’t get lost forever.

If you’d paid attention to the site you’ll have noticed a great deal of material has been pulled from the Libertarian Microfiche Project that was run by John Zube from 1978 to around 2012. Over the course of time Mr. Zube committed about 500,000 pages of libertarian, anarchist, free market and other related material to microfiche in a series he called Peace Plans.

Between my co-founder Trevor Blake, our good friend Dustin and myself we are ready to match donations dollar for dollar to go toward purchasing an entire set of microfiche and archival sleeves and archival storage boxes.

We need a total of  $2,000 to purchase the fiche and the archival supplies to properly store them. Beginning in August of 2016, all money donated to the UoE project will go just to the Libertarian Microfiche Publishing Peace Plans acquisition until it and the archival materials are all together in the Union of Egoists archive.

I have registered http://www.libertarianmicrofiche.com and resurrected the index to the Peace Plans from the grave of archive.org. To get an idea of the magnitude and importance of his work and the archive, spend a few minutes browsing the site.