Sunday, December 5, 2010

The Philosophy of Liberty



The philosophy of  liberty is based on the principal of self ownership.
You own your own life.
To deny this is to imply that another person has a higher claim on your life than you do.
No other person or groups of persons, owns your life.
Nor do you own the lives of others.

You exist in time; Past Present and Future.
This is manifest in; Life, Liberty, and product of your Life and Liberty.
To loose your life is to loose your future.
To loose your liberty is to loose your present.
And to lose that product of your Life and Liberty is to lose that portion of your Past that produced it.

A product of your Life and Liberty is your Property.
Property is the fruit of your labor, the product of your time, energy & talents.
Property is that part of Nature which you turn to valuable use.
Property is the property of others that is given to you by voluntary exchange and mutual consent.
Two people who exchange Property voluntarily are better off or they wouldnt do it.
Only they may rightfully make that decision for themselves.

At times some people use Force or Fraud to take from others without voluntary consent.
The initiation of Force or Fraud to take Life is Murder; To take Liberty is Slavery; And to take Property is Theft.
It is the same whether these actions are done by one person acting alone, or by the many acting against the few, or even by officials with fine hats.

You have the right to protect your own Life, Liberty, and justly acquired Property from the forceful aggression of others.
And you may ask other to help defend you.
But you do not have the right to initiate force against the Life, Liberty and Property of others.
Thus you have no right to designate some to initiate force against others on your behalf.

You have the right to seek leaders for yourself but you have no right to impose rulers onto others.
No matter how officials ae selected; by vote, birth or violent revolution.
They are only human beings and they have no rights or claims that are higher than those of any other human being.
Regardless to the imaginative labels for their behavior...
or numbers of people encouraging them.
Officials have no right to murder, enslave or to steal.
You cannont give them any rights that you do not have yourself.

Since you own your life, you are responsible for your life.
You do not rent your life from others who demand your obedience.
Nor are you a slave to others who demand your sacrifice.
You choose your own goals based on your own values.
Success and failure are both the necessary incentive to learn and grow.

Your action on behalf of others or their action on behalf of you is virtuous only when it is derived from voluntary, mutual consent.
For virtue can exist only where there is free choice.
This is the basis of a truly free society.
It is not only the practical and humanitarian foundation for human action.
It is also the most ethical.

Problems in the world arise from the intiation of force by government have a solution.
The solution if for the people of the earth to stop asking government officials to initiate force on their behalf.
Evil does not arise only from evil people, but also from good people who tolerate the initiation of force as a means to their own ends.
In this manner, good people have empowered evil people throughout history.

Having confidence in a free society is to focus on the process of discover in the marketplace of values, rather than to focus on  some imposed vision or goal.
Using government force to impose a vision on others is intellectual sloth and typically results in unintended, perverse consequences.
Achieving a free society requires courage to think, speak, and act.
Especially when it is easier to do nothing...

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