There is good reason to believe that current government policies will not last. The direct and indirect costs of government controls have never been greater. Government debt, already at record levels, is only projected to grow at an even faster pace for the next decade. When central banks are left with no choice but to raise their lending rates to curb monetary inflation, the cost of carrying debt will balloon, putting debt-ridden governments at greater risk of insolvency. In fact, the parasitic political class now constitutes a majority of the population as early as three years ago. Accordingly, it certainly seems likely that the ship of state is going down hard.

As a result, some further fear a violent backlash will follow the collapse of the federal government, which will trigger dependent state and local governments to come crashing down too. It is all nightmarish stuff, which is why those who actually care for the poor and needy should support reducing the size of government now.

Ring Around the Rosey

This is not the first time a government is facing impending doom. All governments at one time or another will collapse or be overthrown. That is no surprise. Even a constitutionally limited government, if one existed, would still employ violence to solve complex social problems. Under political government, ruthlessness is rewarded and productiveness is preyed upon.

A Pocket Full of Posies

I will take my literary license here and say the ashes sung about are the posies, or dollars, becoming worthless. That is definitely the trend for the past 100 years. Prior to 1913, it had been that the value of the dollar gradually increased, save for times of war. But with the creation of the Federal Reserve, the progressive income tax, and later moving to a fully fiat dollar, the decline of the dollar has signaled the transfer of wealth from the productive to the political class, who receive substantial income and privileges from government power.

Governments dreads deflationary periods (meaning a reduction in the supply of money in the economy). The availability of credit becomes harder, so government tax receipts go down as people begin saving more. Incomes and prices fall, which puts even less money in the hands of government.

An inflationary policy, meanwhile, loots people’s savings and tames their judgement of government action in light of their own increasing financial anxiety. The government’s economic outlook does not look as bleak relative to taxpayers’ own conditions. More importantly though, people become compliant when they fear the backlash of openly opposing government actions.

We All Fall Down?

So I have painted a pretty grim picture. And there is really nothing that can be done about it. I mean that. But even if my predictions come to pass, do not fret. That the dollar is backed by nothing works to our advantage. If the the dollar was still on a commodity standard, there would be real assets behind those paper promises, which would give people something to cling to.

When the dollar becomes worthless, people will just stop working for the government. The existing government people with any real power will be too busy slipping away with their stolen loot. Everyone else will just walk away. There is nothing to fight over because the dollar is worthless. Government employees switching to the private sector will rapidly increase productivity in the economy. Resources will be better allocated. It will not be easy, but the invisible hand is an incredible thing. We can soften any crash by getting people more independent, which is a good thing anyway. The federal government will still exist. They might still pass a flury of laws, such as to confisgate gold as happened under Franklin Roosevelt.

It will be a time of confusion for people. I do not expect a great majority are ready to face fundamental questions such as the scope of control they seek over other peaceful people. The more fundamental question worth asking is whether a 600-year-old solution called the nation-state, which has never delivered on the promise of maintaining peace and security, is worth saving.

In my mind, the move toward complete liberty will take place another day. First, it requires a change in people’s respect for themselves, rejecting the cannibalistic view of man as a sacrificial animal for society and, instead, replacing self-effacement with a new outlook that sees each individual’s life an end in itself.

Last week, Supreme Court Justice nominee Elena Kagan, the White House’s solicitor general, was being questioned by Sen. Tom Coburn (Okla.) about natural rights.

The day before, he had unsuccessfully tried to get Kagan to concede that the constitution’s Commerce Clause does not give government the power to mandate by force (“Law is force,” Bastiat said) that Americans must consume fruits and vegetables. Kagan, by the way, never answered definitively but seems to say that non-economic activity, which presumably means eating, falls outside the scope of federal powers. Yet, in the case of marijuana, just possessing the substance was considered a commercial activity if the law were part of a larger regulatory (control) framework. So a stand-alone law mandating everyone in America eat their veggies would be unconstitutional, but if it were part of a national health care initiative, it is probably a go.

In his follow-up questions the next day, Coburn asked if self-defense was a natural right pre-existing the constitution. Kagan’s response was revealing. According to a CNN transcript, she said,”Senator Coburn, I believe that the Constitution is an extraordinary document, and I’m not saying I do not believe that there are rights pre-existing the Constitution and the laws. But my job as a justice is to enforce the Constitution and the laws.”

I am not defending the constitution by any means, nor do I expect the government to abide by its own rules and laws. However, it should be pointed out when government people do not live up to their own rules. Kagan is directly in conflict with the ninth amendment of the Bill of Rights, which states that “the people” possess other rights not previously enumerated. Famously, the founders said that we are endowed “with certain unalienable rights …. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men.” For Kagan to say “I don’t have a view of what are natural rights, independent of the Constitution” means she is completely unfit by the government’s own standards to serve on the Supreme Court.

I cannot just fault Kagan. Though widespread, the idea that government should exist to defend our liberty and property is already completely contradictory. Government systematically assaults our liberty and property. From “all men are created equal” to “Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes” signals a complete defiance of inalienable rights and the natural law of equal liberty. Taxation is modeled on the idea of paying royalties for the privilege of engaging in commerce, owning property or earning a living.

I am aware Kagan is all but guaranteed to be confirmed. She will be one of nine people who ultimately interpret what the constitution means. So when it comes down to it, the rule of law is still the rule of men (and three women). But through indoctrination and guilt-laden propaganda, people have come to accept and embrace the authority over them. The whole show — the law, the authority and, ultimately, the government — are just manifestations of bad ideas.

Ideas fuel fear and avarice. You cannot shoot an idea or dynamite a myth. They are invincible to violence, even self-defense. Luckily, ideas also fuel truth and beauty.

Liberty supporters are at a distinct advantage though. Lies require constant supervision and constant maintenance. Lies must be heaped upon lies. Truth and beauty stand on their own. Like scientists, philosophers and intellectuals must transmit their discoveries if their work is to have any value. In business, that is the role of the entrepreneur, to turn concepts into consumables. For truth and beauty to have any power, they too must be communicated and acted upon to be made real. They must be practiced. That is the most admirable role of the liberty activist. That is how we will get our certainty and our freedom now, by living it.

In his book The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, he said, “It is only in a highly authoritarian society, where sudden, substantial, all-round changes could be decreed that a flexible wage-policy could function with success.” Astoundingly, he thought authoritarian societies were more susceptible to the market process. In an earlier comment, he said that was “because men want the moon. … There is no remedy but to persuade the public that green cheese is practically the same thing and to have a green cheese factory (i.e. a central bank) under public control.” So Keynes thought the role of government was to deceive individuals in the public into making decision they otherwise would not have made. In an authoritarian society, he swooned, there is no need for such pretenses.

Part of Keynes’ confusion was failing to distinguish between the total wage income and the hourly wage rate of an employee. In today’s market, there are all sorts of adjustments that employers can consider when wanting to cut their overall labor costs, such as reducing the number of labor hours and providing fewer health benefits. But those are best achieved in an open, dynamic market process.

Governments, as commonly conceived, are incapable of this downward flexibility because they are anything but open and dynamic. They are a violent assault on reason. Government escalates in a progressively intrusive way, making it what is sticky downward.

For the most part, conservatives, who rightly deplore their stolen tax dollars being redistributed to make welfare recipients more dependent on government handouts, hardly ever talk about reducing government welfare. Not including the automotive and financial industry bailouts, entitlement spending almost doubled under George W. Bush from 2002 to 2009. Instead, conservative politicians look to expand government power in hopes of deterring those who have moved into the country without government permission. They understand how difficult it would be politically to reduce government handouts, even to those without the ability to vote. Their best bet is to advocate for more government power, more police, more laws, more taxes.

Worse still, government is slippery upward. The reason why conservatives do not more vigorously advocate for reducing government welfare is varied. It might be because they do not want to be called racist, or it might be because it would hurt their chances of gaining control of government to impose their own social agenda. It is also not worth much of an individual’s time to lobby congressmen to reduce spending when the extra savings would probably just be spent on some other boondoggle. Violence does not produce positive overall results. It is less than a zero-sum game. In government, you are either stealing or being stolen from. The power of the state is being used immediately for your benefit, or the power of the state is being used against your benefit.

I can understand why conservatives clamor for more laws. On their own, they could not afford to kick out all the foreigners, to hire bounty hunters and deport them. That would be awfully expensive, and people might not look too kindly on using violence against peaceful people, even against those who broke an arbitrary government edict. But somehow, people acquire a different moral nature while wearing a government-issued uniform. If they can lobby for power of their own, they can use the government to achieve something, financially and culturally, not possible otherwise. The government’s monopoly on taxation means they can spend resources they did not have access to beforehand, extinguishing liberty one amber at a time.

We can see why government does not solve problems but only makes them worse. We can also see why reducing government aggression, at least through the conventional electoral process, has been so fruitless.

Originally posted at DFW Alliance of the Libertarian Left

Monday’s Fully Informed Jury Association event for the Campaign for Liberty — Tarrant County went beyond expectation. We passed out close to 400 trifolds, had some good conversations and met a total apologist for government aggression and discrimination.

So here is the background. Tom and Rafael joined Katy and me downtown at the Tarrant County Justice Center on Monday morning. I had never seen such a large jury pool. The line stretched into the street. We were not approached by any law enforcement, and everything was going as expected. Although, one uniformed officer asked what we were doing while waiting for the signal to say walk. I asked if he would like to know about the rights of jurors. He said he already knew about them.

Well, about the time we were passing out our last few trifolds, around 7:50 a.m., another group of people walking toward the Justice Center found their way to our intersection. They appeared to be led by this woman with an official-looking placard around her neck. In the video, she identified herself to be a licenced attorney. She was instructing the group of people with her about the location of restaurants in the neighborhood.

At first, the lady said she did not want any literature. However, once people around her started reading our paperwork, she asked for a copy. Tom said something about judges not informing jurors of their rights to examine the law, and the lady butted in and said that that was illegal for jurors to do.

By that time, I got my camera and asked if she would talk about it. That is when the video started rolling.

Tom then asked her a hypothetical about the obsolete three-fifths clause in the constitution which counted blacks as just a fraction of their actual population for congressional representation. In the clip, she admits she would be willing to enforce racial discrimination laws, among other laws. Tom then turned in disgust to her answer. What you don’t see in the video is that she quickly yanked on his elbow to get his attention. It was not a rough yank, but it was something that would have gotten some fierce retaliation had we done that to a government employee.

She suggest that we try to change the law through the legislative process rather than practicing jury nullification. She did acknowledge she does not like many of the laws either.

I asked her to respond to Martin Luther King’s line that “An unjust law is no law at all.” She said, “Generall, yes, an unjust law is not law.” (So I don’t understand her reasoning about enforcing obviously discriminatory laws.)

Tom further asked, “What if I don’t agree with the law that Jews are no longer persons?” She said, “Then you don’t sit on a jury that is judging that question.” I cringed. I could not believe her response. She again insisted that we respect the rule of law and work within it to affect change. Rafael started to question her if the US PATRIOT Act was just, but she must have misunderstood him and said something about a trade law.

Tom then gave us some historical examples that we was talking about, but I had to cut him short because YouTube videos can only be so long.

As I have been informed, the Texas constitution does have some language somewhat favorable toward jury nullification. (Edit: See Chris’ comment below for a more detailed explanation.) In the Texas Bill of Rights, it states that “in all indictments for libels, the jury shall have the right to determine the law and the facts, under the direction of the court, as in other cases.” This would seem to lend itself to support for the right of jurors to determine which laws they wish to have enforced in their communities.

What we plan to do is to prepare and practice delivering talking points about some common objections and questions we get during our outreach events. I think that may help overcome some common concerns and also encourage more people to attend the events.

Talk of liberty always spikes when Republicans are out of office. Then, it should have come as no surprise that I heard a presentation on the meaning of liberty by Marlene McMillan, “America’s expert on the principles of liberty,” at a Republican convention in Fort Worth last month. (If anyone is interested in my reasons for attending, I might write about that later.)

By far, my favorite speech of hers was at the Bedford city council meeting last year in which she spoke against the city’s daytime curfew ordinance.

McMillan offers a $377 online seminar on the concept of liberty centered around Biblical teachings, which consists of a handful of streaming videos and pre-recorded phone calls. Last month’s presentation was her second I had attended. The first came last year at an Educators of Liberty event in Fort Worth after the April 15 tax day rallies. Both presentations were about the same. The audience received a card with the trees of liberty and tyranny printed on one side and her definition of liberty on the other.

McMillan’s definition of liberty is “the opportunity to make a choice to assume responsibility and accept the consequences.” There are number of things that I like about her definition.

First, by using “opportunity,” she is seemingly implying that liberty does not guarantee success, only the pursuit of success.

Second, choices are a good thing. Choices are maximized in a decentralized decision-making process, so she seems to acknowledge a move away from authoritarian tendencies.

Third, responsibility and consequences are part of the fabric of liberty that makes it so beneficial. Allowing people to experience the reward (or failure) of their labor gives an automatic feedback for future decisions. Liberty and responsibility go hand-in-hand as each requires the other to have any true meaning.

However, as appealing as these concepts are to liberty, they are just a few of the consequences of liberty, but not liberty itself. She is applying a package deal to the concept of liberty, as Ayn Rand would say.

Defining ‘Capacity’

I think what McMillan is defining in the notion of capacity. The operative words in her definition are “the opportunity to make a choice.” For example, Merriam-Webster defines “capacity” as “the facility or power to produce, perform, or deploy.”

Let’s look at it. Under one scenario, say that a flower nursery only sold yellow flowers. That would certainly limit the opportunity for some customers who want red roses. If the flower shop was not open on Thursdays, they are limiting the liberty of customers and employees, according to McMillan’s definition. In fact, almost any act limits someone else’s “opportunity to make a choice to assume responsibility and accept the consequences.” If two parties make an exclusive contract, they have limited the opportunity for other to do business with them. In fact, every action I take comes at the exclusion of all other actions within that moment in time. Making any “choice to assume responsibility and accept the consequences” could conceivably be an act of tyranny because that choice could exclude others from making that same decision at that moment in time. So truly, liberty is tyranny, according to McMillan.

In addition, one could characterize charity as anti-liberty by this definition. Charity allows people to escape the full consequences of their actions and not assume responsibility.

Defining ‘Liberty’

So what is a clear, coherent definition of this solemn word? Dating back to John Locke’s Second Treatise on Civil Government, philosophers have called liberty the existence of being removed from the violence of others. Locke said, “For liberty is to be free from restraint and violence from others.”

Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX) calls freedom “the absence of government coercion.” (Note: McMillan dislikes the connotation of the word “freedom,” but for this discussion I have used the words interchangeably.) Murray Rothbard said liberty is “the absence of coercion” in his book The Ethics of Liberty. F.A. Hayek agreed with Rothbard, but the two disagreed on the meaning of coercion.

French pamphleteer Frederic Bastiat asked, “In short, is not liberty the freedom of every person to make full use of his faculties, so long as he does not harm other persons while doing so?”

I think it is important to use “coercion” rather than “violence” because there are many substitutues for violence that people can use, such as fraud and theft. I think of coercion as “an act by an individual against the will or without the permission of another human being with respect to that which the human being has rightful control, such as his or her body or property.” This would very clearly include such decietful acts as fraud and theft.

I asked McMillan by e-mail about my interpretation of liberty. She said:

The problem with defining a word by what it does not include, rather than what it does include, is that in the end you still do not know what it is. You only know what it is not. Because we get more of what we talk about as well as more of what we focus upon, a definition that only includes the negative is flawed in premise and therefore is flawed in result.

But “the absence of coercion” is not defining liberty by what it is not. It is stating what condition must not be present for liberty to exist, namely coercion. Saying that “liberty is not coercion” would be defining liberty by what it is not. The definition of black in the color spectrum is the absence of any color. Only color has an existence of its own. A vacuum is the absence of matter. I accept that the same is true of liberty.

I think Bastiat would back me up on this. He said that justice is identified by a lack of injustice. “Justice is achieved only when injustice is absent.”

McMillan appears pretty successful delivering her message and is a great orator and presenter. Ultimately, however, her message is flawed in such a way as to eschew the violence of the state, a territorially monopolistic and individually non-consensual political organization. It is great that people are talking about liberty — what it means and how they can act upon it in their lives. Yet, in an age when pro-war, pro-torture, pro-empire politicians (like Sarah Palin) call themselves pro-liberty, then it is worth examing what they mean so as to avoid being manipulated by false rhetoric.

I do think those terms have a legitimate use in referencing the means and the scope to which those means are used.

With that said, Darian Worden gave a great presentation (below) on why libertarianism is a left ideology. You can learn more about left-libertarianism at the Alliance of the Libertarian Left and join local ALLies in the Metroplex at the DFW Alliance of the Libertarian Left.

More of Worden’s work can be found at the Center for a Stateless Society.

As I write this, the Free State Project has topped just over 10,000 signers.

The goal of the FSP is to recruit 20,000 liberty lovers who agree to migrate to New Hampshire and see what happens. There is not much more to it, but it could have major social and political influence.

The idea is credited to Jason Sorens, then a Ph.D. student at Yale in 2001 who studied the historical impact of American migration patterns. He concluded that the reason libertarians had failed so miserable was that they were too dispersed among the population. He proposed that the solution would be to concentrate our numbers.

New Hampshire — the “Live Free or Die” state — was chosen by a wide margin for its general pro-liberty disposition and its relatively small state population, only 1.3 million. New Hampshire has the lowest local and state tax burden in the continental United States, the lowest record of violent crime per capita, and the second-lowest dependence on federal spending. There is no seat belt law for adults, no mandatory car insurance, permit-free open carry.

As a FSP signer, I have agree to move within five years of the FSP reaching its goal of 20,000 signers. The only goal of the FSP is to move liberty activists who believe the “maximum role of civil government is the protection of life, liberty, and property.” Approximately one thousand have already made the move. The population of New Hampshire and its citizen legislature reduces the burden of entry for political activists. Several “Freestaters” have been elected to the state legislature and several more have been elected to local office.

Several others have worked outside the conventional political process in promoting liberty. Notably, Free Keene, with the tagline “Peaceful Evolution,” is focussed on promoting a stateless society. One of the earliest movers, Dave Ridley, has long documented just such an evolution.

The FSP hosts two major social events annually. The New Hampshire Liberty Forum, which features leading speakers from around the world, is taking place this weekend. The Porcupine Freedom Festival (PorcFest) takes place one week during the summer. Why the porcupine? Because its quills do no harm unless it is being aggressed against.

Some of the most active FSP members have come from North Texas. In addition to Ridley, Sam Dodson and Russel and Kat Kanning are all locals to the DFW Metroplex.

Anyone looking to achieve “Liberty in Our Lifetime,” no small feat, should give the FSP a look.

George Donnelly makes two contributions today. The first is his rebutal to the grieved Joseph Stack, who published a suicide note online before flying a single-engine plane into an Austin building housing the offices of the Internal Revenue Service on Feb. 18. Stack had claimed he was left no other option, stating that “violence not only is the answer, (sic) it is the only answer.” Donnelly wrote:

Am I powerless? My vote doesn’t count. My voice is not heard in the corridors of power in Washington. My bank account is too small to fund political change. My salary is siphoned off into FICA taxes, income taxes, gas taxes, mortgage payments, credit card payments and inflated grocery bills before I see a dime. At any time I could be assaulted by the cops, fined by meter maids, tasered by the state police, murdered by the ATF, seized by the FBI or left penniless by the IRS. I am a punching bag standing patiently in line for my turn in the wringer. …

When I’m frustrated I remember that none of it matters. It doesn’t matter that the wrong candidate won office. He doesn’t rule me! He only has as much power as I voluntarily grant him. I never agreed to be bound by the laws he passes. I live my own life with integrity and honor by following the natural law: I do not aggress against others and I keep my word. …

As I grow more happiness and independence in my own life, I will help others do the same. I’ll boycott the strategies, agencies, options and involuntary obligations that once led me into vulnerability. I’ll exhort others to do the same. Soon we will be free, happy, at peace and prosperous. I am powerful. I have many options. I can overcome. I can make a better life for myself. I can.

In another post, “We Must Live in Alignment with Our Principles,” Donnelly makes a point I’ve been reconciling in my own mind.

Liberty starts with each of us. If we can’t make the voluntary society happen in our own lives, what hope is there of making it happen on a large scale? Change requires that good people set good examples. If nothing else, your efforts will keep the promise of liberty alive until conditions become more favorable. It’s our best option. No one will make this happen but ourselves. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.

~ Answering the ‘Yes, But the State is Inevitable’ Falsity

For context, Benjamin Tucker defined government as “the subjection of the noninvasive individual to an external will.” BK Marcus answered whether government was inevitable.

And for me, the question “Isn’t some form of State inevitable?” is like saying We will never get rid of rape and robbery, murder and torture, so what sense does it make to take a principled stance against these things? They will always be with us.

It’s sad to me that such a basic thing as the principled opposition to coercion is considered to be extremist, unreasonable, unrealistic. Why do I have to believe in permanent peace to oppose war? How is it utopian to denounce force?

I share your confidence that force and fraud will always be with us, and I will always oppose them. But Statism is more than the prediction of “the subjection of the noninvasive individual to an external will.” Statism is the claim that institutionalized proactive coercion is justified. Anarchism rejects that conclusion” (emphasis in original).

~ The New Normal for Government Services

Wendy McElroy has a post from TechDirt about the new ways that government is servicing you. In California, the city of Tracy is going to charge residents $300 and non-residents $400 when the fire department is called to a medical emergency. I would completely support this but for the fact that residents already have to pay for the fire department with taxes. The reason the city is having to take such measures is to pay back the government-backed labor union that lobbies for excessive compensation and funded the city council member’s election campaigns. The city spends $9 million per year in a city of 80,000 on employee pensions and deposits ¢33 for every dollar the police and fire fighters make in wages.

No charge will be issued when the fire department responds to a car collission or a fire. So the solution is simple enough, according to McElroy: “In short, if you see someone have a heart attack in the street, you should quickly set a trash bin on fire.”

~ Think Small, Change the World

Libertarian persuasion guru Michael Cloud has some advice and motivation for activists.

Because the vital few, the great men and women, the key events were indispensable and necessary to what happened — but they were *not* sufficient to make it happen.

Without the vital, indispensable small actions of many forgotten individuals, the great events would have faltered, fizzled, and failed. …

Think small. Start small. Work small. For liberty. You can change the world.

~ Speaking of Changing Minds

Seth Godin has a post on the importance of extremists. He concludes:

It’s interesting to note that an enormous amount of apparently principled argument goes on about relatively tiny movements in where the line is being drawn. In most cases, to paraphrase an old joke, “we’ve already figured out what sort of girl you are, now we’re just arguing about the price.” It’s not the principle, in fact, it’s just the degree of compromise we’re comfortable with and content to argue over.

And so it’s left to the zealots. The people at either end have little hope of moving the masses all the way to their end of the argument. Instead, what they do is make it feel safer to change the boundaries, safer to recalibrate the compromise. Over time, as the edges feel more palatable, the masses are more likely to be willing to edge their way closer to one edge or another. Successful zealots don’t argue to win. They argue to move the goalposts and to make it appear sane to do so.

I was watching the Howard Zinn documentary The People Speak based in part on his book A People’s History of the United States. A speech, “Ain’t I a Woman,” from Sojourner Truth proved to be very powerful and inspirational — even for a guy.

Well, children, where there is so much racket there must be something out of kilter. I think that ‘twixt the negroes of the South and the women at the North, all talking about rights, the white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what’s all this here talking about?

That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain’t I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain’t I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man – when I could get it – and bear the lash as well! And ain’t I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain’t I a woman?

Then they talk about this thing in the head; what’s this they call it? [member of audience whispers, "intellect"] That’s it, honey. What’s that got to do with women’s rights or negroes’ rights? If my cup won’t hold but a pint, and yours holds a quart, wouldn’t you be mean not to let me have my little half measure full?

Then that little man in black there, he says women can’t have as much rights as men, ’cause Christ wasn’t a woman! Where did your Christ come from? Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him.

If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back , and get it right side up again! And now they is asking to do it, the men better let them.

Obliged to you for hearing me, and now old Sojourner ain’t got nothing more to say.

The life of Joseph Stack, the man the FBI believes flew his single-engine airplane into an office complex housing the Internal Revenue Service, ended in tragedy Thursday. It has been reported that at least one other man inside the Austin building was killed following the impact and many others were sent to the hospital to treat injuries.

To the loved ones of Mr. Stack and his victims, I offer my condolences. For Stack, I have nothing but condemnation for his acts. His brutality was needless and heartless.

I agree with Stack that what the IRS does is evil. Taxation is extortion.

What is easy to overlook is that the vast majority of people who advocate for government intervention into peaceful people’s lives do not see it that way. That’s just the way it is, they say.

Part of it is a lack of education. They have not read the books we have or heard the speeches we have. They have never studied agorism or read How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World by Harry Browne. And so they are still indoctrinated in government slavespeak.

Part of it as well is they believe that with enough government intervention and threats of violence, they can overcome circumstances they dislike in society. The only practical solution they see is violence. To offer voluntary and consent-based solutions to their problems seems so foreign them. In fact, in Stack’s suicide note of sorts, he said “[V]iolence not only is the answer, it is the only answer.”

So if the news reports are accurate and this man did do this, then he would have been acting under the same failed premises as those he intended to attack. He was a frustrated, desperate man who was willing to take his life rather than become a victim of the IRS any longer. But that is not how he will be remembered. He did not advance the cause of liberty one inch. He set it back. I’ve written before why violence is not the path to liberty.

For those of us whose highest political end is individual liberty, I believe one of our missions is to explain why violence and threats of violence are at best temporary antidotes to social ills — like heroin to an addict. Luckily, most everyone lives by the non-aggression principle everyday; it only takes making them aware of this and convincing them that the same principle applies to government too.

I would suggest reading Stack’s letter. An excerpt is below.

I can only hope that the numbers quickly get too big to be white washed and ignored that the American zombies wake up and revolt; it will take nothing less. I would only hope that by striking a nerve that stimulates the inevitable double standard, knee-jerk government reaction that results in more stupid draconian restrictions people wake up and begin to see the pompous political thugs and their mindless minions for what they are. Sadly, though I spent my entire life trying to believe it wasn’t so, but violence not only is the answer, it is the only answer. The cruel joke is that the really big chunks of shit at the top have known this all along and have been laughing, at and using this awareness against, fools like me all along.

He was obviously an intelligent and lucid man. He was angry at an unmerciful system that cripples ingenuity and compassion. He hoped to be a martyr in the revolt; but really, he is just a killer.

Leonard Read, the founder of the Foundation for Economic Education, said principles are not compromised; they are abandoned. Principles, by their nature, are utilized or they are not.

That is an important reminder for those who believe the maximum role of government should be the protection of life, liberty, and property — which I think, logically construed, means self-government; however, I respect that others disagree. Our time is going to be most wisely spent improving ourselves and building relationships with like-minded liberty people. Even still, while the conventional political process is still dominant, there are ways for principled people to use political tools for their own benefit.

The conventional political dichotomy is a struggle between short-term opportunism and long-term progress. I think there is a simple reconciliation that can be made between the two camps. That is, under no circumstances, never ever, should we ever support an expansion in the role of government or a further restriction on a peaceful person’s liberty. Second, any policy support should be done with the explicit purpose of decreasing the role of government and directly benefiting peaceful individuals.

Any strategy or policy goals that we recommend or follow should be consistent with the purpose of restoring individual liberty and responsibility. I understand the importance of intermediate goals or markers to help fully achieve our ultimate purpose. But our means of achieving that purpose should not be contradictory to that end. For example, a lot of politicians try to justify tax cuts because they believe it will actually increase the total revenues to the government treasury. I believe this is wrong and sends an inconsistent message.

The goal of a tax cut should be to reduce the burden of government. Again, we should not advocate the re-legalization of cannabis on the grounds that it will raise tax revenues, but because prohibition is immoral and counterproductive. Expanding government and further restricting the liberty of others to correct another ill-fated government policy is an abandonment of principle. As Ron Paul said, “Few Americans understand that all government action is inherently coercive.” Reducing the level of coercion in people’s lives is a worthy goal.

Principles in Practice

The goals that we have should be radical — not liberal- or conservative-lite. This serves two purposes. First, it provides cover for not-so-radical views to be considered more mainstream, thus limiting the fear of ostracism people might have for holding these slightly less radical views. It provides an objective guidepost — like a lighthouse — for gauging the success of our efforts during darker times.

I would also like to suggest two methods of communicating these ideas. We should definitely take the time, on an intellectual basis, to refute anti-liberty or collectivist ideas. But we must acknowledge that the people advocating these mistaken ideas are not dimwitted. In fact, many know exactly how they benefit from these policies. They are ripping us off, so we must make direct, populist appeals that reveal that fact.

By its nature, government is crude and unaccountable, so there will be an infinite supply of aggrieved individuals. Ideally, that means that we don’t have to convert individuals fully to the virtue of liberty before taking action together. Over time, I hope that those who are “liberty minus one” or “liberty minus whatever” come to see the error of their ways.

Some Ideas to Bat Around

Sometimes, pick losing issues to get the message out by presenting a pro-liberty analysis. I’m not saying be a stick-in-the-mud. The situation might provide an opportunity to get some free media publicity or lay the groundwork for winning progress on the issue in the future. Liberals have deployed this technique by pushing socialized health insurance and environmental regulations.

Now, I don’t even know how possible this next one is. Those arrested for committing consensual crimes could be high-target prospects for the liberty message. When I’m passing out Fully Informed Jury Association literature on jury nullification, those called for jury duty are naturally receptive to the material I am providing. I’ll usually stay a little past the time when potential jurors are due to report in downtown Fort Worth in order to catch any stranglers. When I do, I just happen to pass out literature to defendants, and they are just as interested in the concept of jury nullification as potential jurors, if not more so. There has got to be a way of contacting those folks by getting ahold of  some public records.

His particular justification is the social contract (compact) theory, an ex post facto excuse for a dominant majority to subjugate the will of a minority while simultaneously attempting to evade their own psychological trauma for doing so. There are many versions of the social contract, some larger in scope than others, but his happens to be quite limited. He believes a social contract obliges adults to defend the rights of others in the community and to deliberate in an assembly to make legitimate changes to the government.

We’re going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good. — Hillary Clinton

This is all well and good, but I didn’t understand how a social contract could be established or what happens to those who disagree that a social contract had been established. As it turns out, individuals agreeing to pool their resources to defend against threats to their liberty (or rights) are forming a social contract. In doing so, a society is innately created, and as children become adults, they inherit this social contract and further these obligations of protection and deliberation onto their children, and so on and so on. Already, we can see the circular argument in this theory. Liberty and rights are a function of living in a society; societies cannot be formed for the protection of liberty since the concept of liberty is meaningless and has no value before joining a society. (For someone concerned about protecting liberties, forming a government is doubly confusing since governments are the greatest violators of liberty to have ever existed.) Ludwig von Mises said, “Society is division of labor and combination of labor.” The protection of liberty is not the purpose of society, but it is a fortunate consequence. Instead, the purpose of joining or maintaining a society is to form a division of labor, making the efficient protection from criminals one of the society’s many byproducts. Society is a mental pursuit, first. It is an attempt by individuals to quell some easiness about their existence, to improve the material conditions they experience. Some individuals in a society may make an explicit loyalty oath among themselves to defend each other from criminals, to educate the young, or to share their food in common, but those are not a necessary condition for a society to be created. In theory, a group of self-sufficient families who otherwise never interacted could form a self-defense compact, but they would get none of the benefits of a society. If an obligation of protection were a necessary component of forming a society, then it could equally be stated that there is an obligation to feed, to house, and to care for, and to educate the less fortunate, neccessitating an intrusive government that redistributes income. While I agree that it is moral to lend assistance to those who are deserving, I also agree with Lysander Spooner that those are acts “which each man must be his own judge, in each particular case, as to whether, and how, and how far, he can, or will perform them.”

Another justification, I was told, was that the majority support the social contract, yet the vast majority of people are not legislators. By what right may legislators make laws if they are so greatly outnumbered? Supposedly, these legislators are chosen by the people in the society — who have reached a certain age, have not committed one of the several thousand vague laws or regulations, have filled out paperwork correctly within a certain number of days before the election, have citizenship approval of the government, and have attended the polling station on a certain day within an allotted number of hours every two years. In 2008, only 31 percent of United States citizens chose who would be in control of the government’s thermonuclear warheads, and most polls give Congress a job approval rating of less than 30 percent. Worse still, government regulators — the ones who interpret and enforce the laws to their own liking — never stand for election. Setting aside the immorality of majoritarianism, it is impossible to prove the intent of those supporters. It is possible that the support of anyone who chooses to remain within a territory was contingent on preserving some liberties or being made a slave. If my only options are to live in a neighborhood prone to terrorism or a neighborhood prone to vandalism, I could probably live with some random vandalism. That decision is not an approval of vandalism as much as it is an objection to being killed. In a stateless society, there exists an additional option, to form your own community or not participate, just as individuals can provide their own services, which ensures that the market has the possibility of satisfying the smallest minority of one.

I don’t know of anyone who believes that the majority will should be followed all the time, so there must exist a higher standard. Others believe that the will of the majority may be fallible but nevertheless should be given priority. Can the will of the majority be accurately determined by the political process? Voters are never given the choice of none of the above, so it is impossible to determine if a candidate won an election because he or she was the true favorite or if he or she was the “lesser evil” who actually stood a chance of winning. Determining the will of the majority is preposterous, but perhaps this centralized bureaucracy with no financial incentive to provide timely, efficient service had a crystal ball in its possession that could read the mind of every resident. It would still be necessary to prove that the will of the majority had not been tampered with by bribes or propaganda from the government. Nothing could be less true. Those in the government give one another special favors; they bailout failing companies, stymie competitors, offer discounted credit, and give preferential treatment to politically connected laborers. That is what they do. Government-approved education is compulsory during a child’s most formative years. In 2008, H. Walter Croskey, a California appeals court judge, in essence made homeschooling illegal in the state, saying that “A primary purpose of the educational system is to train school children in good citizenship, patriotism and loyalty to the state and the nation as a means of protecting the public welfare.”

Well, maybe the government’s crystall ball can see past the theft and propoganda of the government. Even still, a social contract, since it is not material, in no way makes clear that the agreement is perpetually binding on everyone except those who intentionally opt out. Implicit contracts are unenforceable because the terms of the agreement are not objective, so any enforcement is capricious. If someone is obliged to defend the rights of others in the society, how many times, to what extent, and by what means? Who knows. For this reason, individuals ought not enforce implicit contracts; and individuals acting in concert under the guise of a government have not moral claim to enforce them either.

If nothing else, the social contract is a self-defeating idea because it violates the premise of its own existence, the protection of liberty, since a coercive majority may impose the social contract on a minority. (There are also the tiny discrepancies that no government has ever been established this way and that United State Supreme Court justices have ruled since 1855 and subsequently that agents of the government do not have an obligation to protect residents from “killers or madmen.”)

When I confronted the scholar with some of these seeming contradictions in the social contract theory, he said that if I knew of a mortal threat to the community, “[Y]ou had better respond and do your part, or I will hang your ass.” At that point, I knew there was no purpose in continuing the discussion. Once a person resolutely accepts evil and proudly brandishes it (at your throat no less), rational discussion ceases.

He continued that the social contract exists to serve “the group” as a whole since it “may not be rational for the individual member.”

How many things that are good for you, that you will benefit from, need to be imposed on you … with force? — Brett Veinotte

Contemplating the risk and reward of negating the peaceful will of another human being for the sake of the collective is moral cannibalism, giving man the same status as a sacrificial animal. Insofar as force is applied, the only tool available for human beings to progress and flourish — his reasoning mind — is lost.

That is OK. Those who believe aggression is wrong are actually at a distinct advantage — several actually — when it comes to spreading our ideas. The first is that we are not trying to impose beliefs or positive obligations on others. We are seeking but a “mere negation,” as Frederic Bastiat said. We only “oblige him only to abstain from harming others.” For anyone but authoritarian sociopaths, that seems simple enough. Other political ideologies require coalition building for a dominant majority to implement and sustain them, while the believers in a voluntary society must only win over a much lower threshold, something of a passive neglect on the part of anyone who does not share our opinions. We only have to convince them to leave peace lovers alone, you see.

Second, we seek to respectfully disagree. If some think that the best way to protect us from terrorists is to build military instillations in foreign countries, I say go for it. I am confident they are just looking out for our best interests. Personally, I disagree and think that trading with others promotes mutual aid. It was Bastiat again who said that “When goods do not cross borders, soldiers will.” (What does some French guy know about war anyway?) In this instance, it seems both sides are at a stalemate as to what to do together. There really is no settlement that could be made, so both sides should be free to part ways and spend their time and money how they best see fit. Surely, in a free country, peaceful and civil people can agree to that much.

And if we do live in a free country, then surely anyone who peacefully disagrees should not be attacked or threatened by the government for having a different opinion. What good is freedom, after all, if we can’t peacefully disagree? Freedom of thought would be a petty and shallow consequence if others did not respect that freedom themselves. For that matter, what good would it do to disagree if someone could use force without repercussion to compel peaceful people’s obedience? Free people should not be made, by force, to counteract their conscience by being taxed to pay for or participate in actions and programs they found repugnant. Surely, in a free country, peaceful and civil people can agree to that much.

If someone can’t simply agree to disagree, anyone who insists on imposing a positive obligation on peaceful people is just a bully. In fact, what took place was not a discussion at all. It was more a hostage negotiation — between hostage negotiator and hostage taker. That is important to remember. Hostage negotiations are distinct from discussions. It is no longer an examination of facts and hypothesis, but a relationship based on control. Early in a negotiation, the hostage taker may attempt to take the dominant role of authority figure. The early role of the hostage negotiator is to access the circumstances and uncover background information, finding what brought the subject to those conclusions. Once the assessment is made, it is time to build rapport and perhaps reduce the stress of the situation. The goal is always to convince the hostage taker to let everyone go free. If no progress can be made, however, it is best to halt the negotiation to retain some self pride.

Some Advanced Techniques

One post-negotiation technique I have practiced over the years is building cognitive dissonance. I save it for after the negotiation period because it creates a sense of tension by making observations the listener believes are true yet should not be true by his or her own assumptions. The tension can be applied quickly and has a way of building over time, like a delayed detonation in the mind.

For longer encounters, use Socratic questioning, which requires more finesse from the questioner and intellectual honesty from the listener, to create some cognitive dissonance. Jan Helfeld is especially adept at this. His questioning of Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) illustrates an example of how this might be done. In this clip, Helfeld got the senator to admit that those in government use coercion and that individuals in their ordinary capacity had no right to initiate force. The senator said that the government had been delegated that power by the people through the constitution. Helfeld again confirmed with the senator that ordinary individuals do not have the right to initiate force, and then he asked how individuals could delegate to the constitution the power to initiate force if they themselves do not have that right to delegate. Basically, how can they delegate a right they do not have?

Try isolating the moral nature of the relationship being proposed; get to the root of the issue; get to the priority of it all. You know you’ve found it when someone responds by saying “Yes, but.”

At other times, it can be helpful to make a statement and ask listeners what they think of it. The most important lesson I’ve learned about discussion is that I cannot change anyone’s mind. Only they can. The harder I try and the more effort I expend, the less I am likely to succeed. It really is like any other relationship. Coming across as pushy or arrogant leaves healthy people resentful of the time they spent with you. The key to it all is asking questions. (I mean in a real way; I think people recognize someone acting artificially.) If I am genuinely curious about the reason why someone thinks a certain way, more often than not I am reciprocated in kind. If nothing else, it helps me understand the objections others have and how I can improve my own ideas. I also listen to words and phrases that are repeated or given an extra emphasis. The great thing about speech is how much easier it is to recognize the different vocal inflections. Those are all little insights that reveal what is important to someone.

It is nearly impossible get a reversal of opinion, a complete conversion, on the spot. It’s probably some ego thing we have in our mind. So I’m not that ambitious when introducing these ideas for the first time. It’s easy to forget that I didn’t always hold the beliefs I do now; we are all trying to integrate our own understanding of the world. Since we can’t change their minds, we can change the assumptions on which their ideas are based. If you want to light the fires of liberty, be patient for these combustive ideas to soak in.

(Note: In a later post I will write about the three most important points to get across in any political discussion.)

Immigrants and their friends and families, many of whom have experienced or witnessed government persecution, could have been the most receptive audiences of a consistent message of liberty. Instead, they may have permanently associated the message of liberty with a perceived hostility toward immigrants. In the long term, that is going to create some challenges for future candidates wanting to promote a message of individual autonomy. They recognize the common objection — that some immigrants take far more from the government trough than they contribute — as a spurious argument, at best, since some government employees and some government contractors take all of their resources from the government, yet immigration foes do not propose deporting them. For that matter, legal immigrants are far more likely to acquire government welfare than unsanctioned movers.

What brings this to mind is the announced immigration platform of one of Paul’s supporters, Texas Republican gubernatorial candidate Debra Medina, someone to whom I have donated my own time and money. For the most part, she sounds a lot like Paul in that she really dislikes the federal government. She wants to nullify the enforcement of some federal laws she believes are unconstitutional and to end property taxes. Thumbs up on my end, though I would prefer nullifying all federal laws and ending all taxes. As someone opposed to non-consensual monopoly government, I can’t enthusiastically endorse any policy other than to disband. However, that shouldn’t discourage me from critiquing existing political proposals or from identifying that some ideas are better or worse than others.

Some of her proposals, like wanting to reduce the scope of gun regulations and to nullify sham free-trade treaties like NAFTA that primarily benefit corporate special interests, would be great. Her most disagreeable idea is to assign “sufficient numbers of Texas National Guard and Texas State Guard” to help local law enforcement. Ethically, it is an abandonment of the non-aggression principle (NAP) as she openly calls for the use of aggressive force to solve what she perceives to be a social problem. The troops and all their resources are funded by the use of force, taxation. In turn, they will initiate force against peaceful movers and foreign entrepreneurs. (Insert the obvious caveat that not all individuals wishing to cross the border are peaceful.) The result will be failure, as all government prohibitions are. It will increase the violence on the border, breed corruption among those guarding the border, and cost a fortune. She also plans to target documented movers convicted of a state or federal law. So for those who break a non-violent federal law, which is done by each individual on average three times a day, they could get tossed, again violating the NAP.

What a Consistent Immigration Policy Looks Like

Since Medina has already shown her support for nullification of unconstitutional federal law, let’s start with all federal immigration laws. The constitution provides no existing expressed powers for the federal government to make immigration policy, only for the naturalization process of becoming a citizen. In fact, the Texas constitution that congress approved after Reconstruction had a Bureau of Immigration, as did most other former Confederate states.

Step two would be to end all government welfare benefits. Then fully re-legalize the prostitution, drug and arms trades. It would completely eliminate the need for anyone to enter the country by sneaking across the desert or trespassing on private property. The vast majority wanting to cross the border conventionally would be those wanting to earn their own way. The fear is that gangs would run wild, causing chaos in the streets. That is unfounded since dishonest criminals who could no longer sustain themselves on inflated black-market profits can in no way compete on the open market. Those wanting to live off the government or engage in criminality would remain in their own country.

We could reduce the scope of government, relieve taxpayers of an extra burden, and demonstrate the fruits of freedom. Government meddling and excuses to circumvent the Bill of Rights would be curtailed, which might get the ire of conservatives in the Republican Party who would rather imprison strangers rather confront the reality of emancipating themselves. If there were ever a litmus test for empathy for the oppressed, immigration surely is it.

An Examination of Alternatives

But maybe I am being too hard on Medina. She’s running a state-wide race in Texas, after all. It is extremely unlikely voters would support a candidate who took such radical steps. We can’t expect someone to be agreeable on every issue, and she would certainly be better than the any other credible choice. The other candidates in the running would have no qualms about some academic non-aggression principle. I agree with all that. But I presume that she has read Paul’s books and articles, in which he has advocates his support for the NAP. In End the Fed, he said for example, “We must reject the initiation of violence by individuals or governments as morally repugnant.” Apparently, even Ron Paul does not get the full impact of that idea. His claim is that it is an “invasion,” yet his emphasis is on curtailing it through economic means by removing the welfare incentives. Medina lists that at the very bottom of her of proposals and puts the state guard patrol at the very top, a complete reversal of Paul’s priorities.

My primary and probably only significant purpose in participating in electoral politics is to spread the ideas of liberty. I readily concede that if I want to participate in electoral politics, I can’t expect ideological purity. Engaging the government in any manner, driving on government roads or attending government school, is a regretful concession. I suppose that “When one gets in bed with government, one must expect the diseases it spread,” as Paul declared. The temptation is to bite one’s tongue. That is my source of resentment for electoral politics. It offers this simple, elegant solution, making it very seductive. The danger is that by not expressing criticism of supposed pro-liberty candidates who abandon that message, assuming that is their highest political goal, we come across as just another empathetic-less political movement wanting to impose our beliefs on others. I don’t even ask that a politician be opposed to all forms of aggression to receive my support, only that he or she oppose increasing the present scope of violence against the peaceful. In this respect, Medina readily and consistently advocates increasing the use of government violence against largely peaceful immigrants. If I were to vote for her in the March primary or the November general election, I would necessarily be sacrificing the interests of an already exploited group of people for my own interests.

I think it is more practical to practice libertarianism consistent with its principles. There are steps that have already proven more effective and more immediate. Primarily, they focus on liberating ourselves to demonstrate firsthand how beneficial living by these principles can be. That is, if you want freedom, you don’t have to participate in the elaborate resource-depleting, shame-inducing rituals of voting and petitioning for a band of thieves to recognize your humanity. Those rituals and institutions are in place to obscure the violence behind it all. Once the glaring blessings of liberty are realized, all mystic pretenses for an intrusive government will be shattered. Now I’m not saying that being right is easy, for if it were easy than it would have already been done.

Chapter III – Natural Law Contrasted With Legislation

Section I

Natural law, natural justice, being a principle that is naturally applicable and adequate to the rightful settlement of every possible controversy that can arise among men; being too, the only standard by which any controversy whatever, between man and man, can be rightfully settled; being a principle whose protection every man demands for himself, whether he is willing to accord it to others, or not; being also an immutable principle, one that is always and everywhere the same, in all ages and nations; being self-evidently necessary in all times and places; being so entirely impartial and equitable toward all; so indispensable to the peace of mankind everywhere; so vital to the safety and welfare of every human being; being, too, so easily learned, so generally known, and so easily maintained by such voluntary associations as all honest men can readily and rightully form for that purpose—being such a principle as this, these questions arise, viz.: Why is it that it does not universally, or well nigh universally, prevail? Why is it that it has not, ages ago, been established throughout the world as the one only law that any man, or all men, could rightfully be compelled to obey? Why is it that any human being ever conceived that anything so self-evidently superfluous, false, absurd, and atrocious as all legislation necessarily must be, could be of any use to mankind, or have any place in human affairs?

Section II

The answer is, that through all historic times, wherever any people have advanced beyond the savage state, and have learned to increase their means of sub-sistence by the cultivation of soil, a greater or less number of them have associated and organized themselves as robbers, to plunder and enslave all others, who had either accumulated any property that could be seized, or had shown, by their labor, that they could be made to contribute to the support or pleasure of those who should enslave them.

These bands of robbers, small in number at fist, have increased their power by uniting with each other, inventing warlike weapons, disciplining themselves, and perfecting their organizations as military forces, and dividing their plunder (including their captives) among themselves, either in such proportions as have been previously agreed on, or in such as their leaders (always desirous to increase the number of their followers) should prescribe.

These tyrants, living solely on plunder, and on the labor of their slaves, and applying all their energies to the seizure of still more plunder, and the enslavement of still other defenceless persons; increasing, too, their numbers, perfecting their organizations, and multiplying their weapons of war, they extend their conquests until, in order to hold what they have already got, it becomes necessary for them to act systematically, and cooperate with each other in holding their slaves in subjection.

But all this they can do only by establishing what they call a government, and making what they call laws.

… And their laws, as they have called them, have been only such agreements as they have found it necessary to enter into, in order to maintain their organizations, and act together in plundering and enslaving others, and in securing to each his agreed share of the spoils.

All these laws have had no more real obligation than have the agreements which brigands, bandits, and pirates find it necessary to enter into with each other, for the more successful accomplishment of their crimes, and the more peaceable division of their spoils.

Thus substantially all the legislation of the world has had its origin in the desires of one class—of persons to plunder and enslave others, and hold them as property.

Section III

In process of time, the robber, or slaveholding, class—who had seized all the lands, and held all the means of creating wealth—began to discover that the easiest mode of managing their slaves, and making them profitable, was not for each slaveholder to hold his specified number of slaves, as he had done before, and as he would hold so many cattle, but to give them so much liberty as would throw upon themselves (the slaves) the responsibility of their own subsistence, and yet compel them to sell their labor to the land-hodling class—their former owners—for just what the latter might choose to give them.

Of course, these liberated slaves, as some have erroneously called them, having no lands, or other property, and no means of obtaining an independent subsistence, had no alternative—to save themselves from starvation—but to sell their labor to the landholders, in exchange only for the coarsest necessaries of life; not always for so much even as that.

The purpose and effect of these laws have been to maintain, in the hands of the robber, or slave holding class, a monopoly of all lands, and, as far as possible, of all other means of creating wealth; and thus to keep the great body of laborers in such a state of poverty and dependence, as would compel them to sell their labor to their tyrants for the lowest prices at which life could be sustained.

The result of all this is, that the little wealth there is in the world is all in the hands of a few—that is, in the hands of the law-making, slave-holding class; who are now as much slaveholders in spirit as they ever were, but who accomplish their purposes by means of the laws they make for keeping the laborers in subjection and dependence, instead of each one’s owning his individual slaves as so many chattels.

Thus the whole business of legislation, which has now grown to such gigantic proportions, had its origin in the conspiracies, which have always existed among the few, for the purpose of holding the many in subjection, and extorting from them their labor, and all the profits of their labor.

And the real motives and spirit which lie at the foundation of all legislation—notwithstanding all the pretences and disguises by which they attempt to hide themselves—are the same to-day as they always have been. They whole purpose of this legislation is simply to keep one class of men in subordination and servitude to another.

Section IV

What, then, is legislation? It is an assumption by one man, or body of men, of absolute, irresponsible dominion over all other men whom they call subject to their power. It is the assumption by one man, or body of men, of a right to subject all other men to their will and their service. It is the assumption by one man, or body of men, of a right to abolish outright all the natural rights, all the natural liberty of all other men; to make all other men their slaves; to arbitrarily dictate to all other men what they may, and may not, do; what they may, and may not, have; what they may, and may not, be. It is, in short, the assumption of a right to banish the principle of human rights, the principle of justice itself, from off the earth, and set up their own personal will, pleasure, and interest in its place. All this, and nothing less, is involved in the very idea that there can be any such thing as human legislation that is obligatory upon those upon whom it is imposed.

Natural law is rooted in the fixed nature of human beings. It is universal, constant, discoverable, and tangible. When not implemented, it still offers an unyielding examination of the status quo, of what “ought to be, irrespective of what is,” as Lord Acton might say.