Government Is Force

“Government is force, and war is the inevitable, ultimate and deadliest expression of that base characteristic. Force and coercion are not only incompatible with freedom and liberty, they are destructive of them. Freedom and liberty can only survive and flourish in a society where peaceful exchange of goods, services, and ideas is preserved and protected by the respect of everyone involved, by mutual consent. Just as freedom and responsibility are said to be two sides of the same coin, so are peace and prosperity.” – R. Lee Wrights

As Long as Government Exists, Our Freedom Is Insecure – Sheldon Richman

An article by George H. Smith from a few years ago makes a distinction about freedom that seems worth pursuing. In “Jack and Jill and Two Kinds of Freedom” (also a podcast), Smith distinguishes between (as the title indicates) two kinds of freedom, or between freedom and liberty. He tells the story of Jack, who wants to climb a hill to fetch a pail of water and needs Jill’s help to bring the heavy pail back down. Being a “moral nihilist,” Jack is just as willing to force Jill to help him as he is to persuade her. It all depends on his cost-benefit calculation at the time. In Smith’s story, Jack chooses persuasion and succeeds, so he does not need to resort to Plan B, compulsion. Jill, by the way, does not know that Jack would have forced her.

Jill, on the other hand, is a libertarian who believes in rights and justice. Had the tables been turned and she needed Jack’s help, her only acceptable course would have been persuasion.

What are we to make of this? In both scenarios Jack and Jill are free, Smith writes, in the sense that neither was subjected to force. “Freedom in this sense depends on how others act in regard to me. And since actions are guided by value judgments, I can be free only to the extent that others value my freedom by refusing to aggress against me.” But, he adds, the quality of their freedom is not the same:

Jill’s freedom, since it depends on Jack’s pragmatic calculations, may be called pragmatic freedom. And Jack’s freedom, since it depends on Jill’s moral values, may be called moral freedom. This does not mean that Jack somehow has “more” freedom than Jill; the distinction here is qualitative, not quantitative. Jack has a better quality of freedom than Jill, because his is more secure.

Read the rest via As Long as Government Exists, Our Freedom Is Insecure – Reason.com.

To Govern Thyself, Know Thyself

A Finer Clay

The claims of these organizers of humanity raise another question which I have often asked them and which, so far as I know, they have never answered: If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good?  Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race?  Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind? –  Frédéric Bastiat, The Law [1850]

What if our democracy is a fraud? – Andrew Napolitano

What if you were allowed to vote only because it didn’t make a difference? What if no matter how you voted, the elites always got their way? What if the concept of one person-one vote was just a fiction created by the government to induce your compliance?

What if democracy as it has come to exist in America today is dangerous to personal freedom? What if our so-called democracy erodes the people’s understanding of natural rights and the reasons for government and, instead, turns political campaigns into beauty contests? What if American democracy allows the government to do anything it wants, as long as more people bother to show up at the voting booth to support the government than show up to say no?

What if the purpose of contemporary democracy has been to convince people that they could prosper not through the voluntary creation of wealth but through theft from others? What if the only moral way to acquire wealth is through voluntary economic activity? What if the government convinced the people that they could acquire wealth through political activity? What if economic activity includes all the productive and peaceful things we voluntarily do? What if political activity includes all the parasitical and destructive things the government does? What if the government has never created wealth? What if everything the government owns it has stolen?

What if governments were originally established to protect people’s freedoms but always turn into political and imperialist enterprises that seek to expand their power, increase their territory and heighten their control of the population? What if the idea that we need a government to take care of us is a fiction perpetrated to increase the size of government? What if our strength as individuals and durability as a culture are contingent not on the strength of the government, but on the amount of freedom we have from the government?

What if the fatal cocktail of big government and democracy ultimately produces dependency? What if so-called democratic government, once it grows to a certain size, begins to soften and weaken the people? What if big government destroys people’s motivations and democracy convinces them that the only motivation they need is to vote and go along with the results?

What if Congress isn’t actually as democratic as it appears? What if congressional elections don’t square with congressional legislation because the polls aren’t what counts, but what counts are the secret meetings that come after the voting? What if the monster Joe Stalin was right when he said the most powerful person in the world is the guy who counts the votes? What if the vote counting that really counts takes place in secret? What if that’s how we lost our republic?

What if the problem with democracy is that the majority thinks it can right any wrong, write any law, tax any event, regulate any behavior and acquire anything it wants? What if the greatest tyrant in history lives among us? What if that tyrant always gets its way, no matter what the laws are or what the Constitution says? What if that tyrant is the majority of voters? What if the majority in a democracy recognizes no limits on its power?

Read the rest via NAPOLITANO: What if our democracy is a fraud? – Washington Times.